Hello again, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to another episode of Freedom's Creed. Thank you for tuning in to the podcast. My goal each week is to provide things that I am interested in, of course, but things that I think that you will also be interested in as well. And certainly I want to provide the best content that I can for you, my listeners. And today is no different. I'm really a pretty simple guy when it gets right down to it. I think that I am very practical and maybe even stubborn. I don't know. But I try to look at things in uh with an open mind and an open view, knowing that I don't know everything. I certainly want to learn more. I want to expand my own intelligence. I want to expand the depth of the knowledge that I have now, build upon that, and of course be as compassionate and as open-minded as I possibly can, all the while maintaining and striving to uphold the principles that I believe in. With that, I will be talking today about being divisive, about divisiveness, and how I think it is a destructive force. It doesn't do anything to unify us. In fact, being divisive is promoting disunity. And disunity is something that we should all be running the opposite direction from. We should be willing to be more unified, even if we have disagreements, that's okay. That really should have nothing to do with how unified we can be. I'm actually going to end up the episode talking about the Berlin Wall and my experience going through that as a part of history and the fact that I was actually in Germany when the wall came down. Essentially, from the dawn of time, differences of opinion have always been a factor in human relations. Are we any better at resolving these differences today compared to those who came before us? Well, I'll be citing a few examples, not to get into any great detail about any of these things, but to just to give you a sense of or a frame of reference for what I'm talking about. The first example that I'll cite is going back to Cain and Abel. So for all of those who are familiar with the Bible, most people are familiar with the story of Cain and Abel and eventually how Cain was jealous of Abel and eventually killed him. That act of murder came about because of the division that existed between the two brothers. Fast forward now to the Huns of the 4th and 5th centuries. They were a ruthless group of military people who conquered much of Europe, or at least went through Europe and the Roman Empire, laying waste to pretty much everything that they touched. What of the struggle between the Scottish and the English of the 13th and 14th centuries? There was great division amongst those two factions and a lot of strife between the two over really a division in the way that they thought about each other. I'm seriously oversimplifying things here, but it's just to try to prove a point about how division is really something that that has plagued us throughout our history. Look at the wars and the conflicts that existed in the probably from the at least the 15th century through the 19th century of the American colonies and the American Indian tribes. There was certainly conflict there and a lot of division. The Great War for Independence with England that took place in the 18th century. There was a lot of division and conflict there. And certainly divisiveness never brought anybody together, that's for sure. Not only in that war, but in any conflict, any war. The Civil War of the 19th century, same thing. It was division over various ideologies and various positions, whether it was the southern states wanting to break free from the Union because of slavery or what have you, there were a lot of divisions that resulted in these various conflicts and wars. The world wars of the 20th century, World War I and World War II, these conflicts and wars arose over countries and peoples unable to unify, not necessarily to unify with respect to the various sovereign nations, but to unify in friendship and be unified in purpose. Of course, in the United States in the 20th century, we had great division among the races, divisions that were so wide and so deep that it truly fractured and splintered the relationships between the people. And that's the really sad part about all of this. It almost, if you're like me, you almost would like to go back in a time machine if you could and be a part of some of these things that took place in history. And if you're like me, you like to believe that if you were there, that you would have fought for the rights of all people, irrespective of skin color or any other difference or characteristic of human beings. But that really is a bit of a pipe dream because none of us can go back in time. All we can do is to try to find the best thing to do with the time that we're given now to make sure that we are doing what we can to create unity, to create harmony. Even if we disagree, it's okay to disagree. But it's not okay to make it personal, to attack people personally for the things that they believe, even if it's 180 degrees from what we believe, that accomplishes nothing. It creates more division. And uh more division is not what we need right now in our country. Divisiveness is disunity. What's to be gained by disunity? Nothing, as far as I'm concerned. Of course, though, we have in our culture various subsets of our culture, I suppose, where it seems that divisiveness is the name of the game. There are organizations, unfortunately, that seem to thrive on being divisive, like, for instance, political parties, activists and various organizations, the media, big tech, and really we could probably name a lot more of these organizations, even individuals, but I won't at this point in time. Suffice it to say that there are too many people and organizations that are out there today, in my humble opinion, that are thriving off of being divisive, even profiting off of it. And that's pathetic. Certainly, social media, unfortunately, has made this division worse because a person can, with complete anonymity, destroy the character and sometimes the confidence of other people by the things that they promote on their social media platforms. And to me, that's the height of irresponsibility. It's there's nothing funny about it, there's nothing cool about it, it's it's just not something that we should be engaging in. And if we see it, we ought to have the courage to call it out for what it is. I certainly understand that people might think of what I just said as far as being against divisiveness and and how it really accomplishes nothing but I get it, there are people who completely disagree with that sentiment. They indeed love being divisive, they love engendering it, they love encouraging it because for them it's profitable. For them, it's the thing that helps create a living for them, possibly. I don't know. There's so many different ways that people can be divisive and they use it to their benefit. To me, why not strive to do something that's more unifying and spend your energy and time doing that as opposed to being destructive and tearing down the way that we can be more unified and less divisive? Sadly, this divisiveness that I'm talking about is not exempt from families. How many times have we heard of instances where family members, because of some sort of conflict or disagreement, members of the family refused to speak to each other ever again? That's really sad. I heard of an account some years ago. Whether it's true or not, I don't know at this point, so I can't say for sure. Even if it's folklore, it's a good story for us to remember. The story goes like this: that there were two brothers living in the same house, and one day they had a major boilover, a big conflict, big argument, and they yelled at each other and words were spoken that they would not have said under normal circumstances. Well, it was decided upon that they would draw a line down a certain part of the house, and that they restricted the other from going across that line to the other part of the house. Apparently, this went on for some time, and the two never resolved their differences and eventually died, never having resolved the division that had been created between them, and it was something that could have most likely been avoided. Again, I don't know if this is a true story or not, even if it's not, it's certainly an example of how we shouldn't conduct ourselves or live. In 1989, I was living in Germany with my wife and three children at the time. I was in the military serving in what was then West Germany, well west of Berlin, and what was referred to at that time as East Germany. I remember it well, like it was yesterday. My wife and I had the television on, and there was what was referred to as the Armed Forces Network. We would watch the news or other programs, sitcoms, things like that. It was very limited, I remember that. And I think it was a Saturday morning, if I recall, and we all of a sudden what we were watching got interrupted, and they showed the Berlin Wall and hordes of people standing upon the wall, and we were like, wow, what is going on? As it turns out, it was the wall literally coming down and the border being dissolved between east and west. For nearly three decades, that division had been in place since 1961. Sadly, it divided families, friends, neighbors from one another. There are instances and stories of people actually waving at each other across the border, but had no way of being able to be together physically. It goes without saying, but it was a big deal all across the world. Here's this wall that had existed, this division that had existed for nearly three decades, and now all of a sudden, in really what seemed as though it was an instant, it was being torn down. It was being dissolved right before our very eyes. It was incredible to watch. I often wished that I could have been in Berlin near the wall when that took place, and to actually see it for myself firsthand. It would have been so cool to see that. Well, the unification of the two Germanys took place, and there was a lot of bitterness, I guess I would call it, of the former West Germans towards the former East Germans because the government mandated that West Germans should pay all East Germans a sum of Deutschmarks. I can't remember now what it was, and I know this because I've studied it, and because we had a soldier in my section who spoke German. He was married to a German lady, and our part of our mission was to visit other units of our host nation, and the discussion would come around to the fact that they were upset that they were being taxed a certain amount of money to pay East Germans. It was great for East Germans, of course, because they were getting this free money and they were coming into or being reunited into a country where they didn't have to wait 10 or 12 or 15 years just to get a car. And believe me, the car was a piece of junk. So even though this unification or reunification took place, there was some hard feelings from Westerners towards Easterners. And I think some of that still exists today, even though we're, gosh, we're over 30 years since the wall came down. So it's been longer since the wall came down than the wall was actually up. So I would love to travel over to Berlin and see it for myself today and see what it's actually like. I think it'd be cool to talk to the older generations and see what their perspective is, and then of course talk to younger people who this is all they know. They've never known a divided Germany. In any case, let me switch gears for a minute by briefly mentioning or referring to Abraham Lincoln's house divided speech, which he gave when he was running for Senate, I believe, in 1858. The idea for this particular line about a house being divided cannot stand, of course, came from something that Jesus had told his disciples and others, when the ruling class of people at the time, the Pharisees and the Scribes, attributed his casting out of a devil to the devil himself, and that Jesus had a devil. Jesus himself saying in the book of Matthew, quote, that every city or house divided against itself shall not stand, end of quote. This account, of course, is where Jesus is making reference to the fact that at the time he was being accused of having a devil, and he himself was saying to the to the people, Well, if I'm a devil, then why would I cast a devil out of a person? Isn't that counter to what I would be doing if I had a devil? So in any case, it's a brief Sunday school lesson if you missed church last Sunday. But I think it's fitting, especially for those organizations or people who claim to not be divisive and that they are just trying to get the word out to the masses, yet in their hearts and in their minds, they are definitely trying to be divisive and to make things worse for people of all different backgrounds and races. So that's just my opinion. The bottom line, ladies and gentlemen, is that we ought to be striving to be more unified and less divisive amongst ourselves. And where does that start? It starts with us. It starts with how we conduct ourselves, even in the midst of having a discussion with someone whose political beliefs or religion or any other belief is 180 degrees different than our own. It's okay. We don't have to agree 100% on everything, and we won't agree 100% on everything, but there's no reason why we have to be divisive about it. I want to end this episode with a quote from Ronald Reagan. And if you remember your history, or if you were not alive then and you read about it or you were taught it, hopefully that was the case. If this is the first that you're learning about it, then it's not good commentary on the education system in our country, but that's probably another episode, so I'm not going to get into that here. But on June 12th, 1987, Ronald Reagan, speaking at the Berlin Wall, had this to say. As I looked out a moment ago from the Reichstag, that embodiment of German unity, I noticed words crudely spray painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner. This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality. Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall, for it cannot withstand faith. It cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom. Open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. End of quote. Amazingly, a little over two years later, that wall did indeed fall. I truly hope that all of us can tear down those walls of division that may exist between us and be more unified and more harmonious one to another. Not some utopia, no. But in reality, find a way to really get along, to be more unified, to be less divisive. And with that, if you can think it, you can plan it. If you can plan it, you can do it.