The Golden Calf of Modern Unity
Unity has become a golden calf in the modern Pentecostal church. We bow at its feet, terrified that the slightest accusation of dissent or fracture of opinion will damn us for “touching the Lord’s anointed.”
If you didn’t grow up in Western Evangelical Pentecostal circles, you may not know the weight of those words. But for those of us who did, phrases like “Don’t question leadership, they are God’s anointed” or “Do not sow division” have been mantras in the church since the 1980s. Books like Undercover, A Tale of Three Kings, Honor’s Reward, and others like it discipled a generation of men and women into believing that the unity Jesus prayed for in John 17 was synonymous with shutting up and obeying the Lead pastor or those in authority over you.
I’ve been told in the past that I “hurt the unity of the church” by reporting chronic sins and abuses among pastors and leaders. Others, like Julie Roys, Rachael Denhollander, Jeri M. Massi, Anne Marie Miller and the countless women and men who dared to speak truth, have been called far worse. The refrain is always the same: protect the unity of the church.
But let’s be honest, when those in power use the word unity, what they often mean is silence. Exposing sin is rebranded as “disunity” until the spotlight of the nation forces leaders to condemn the very evils they once covered. This is not the oneness Jesus prayed for in John 17. This is a counterfeit unity, an idol built to protect reputations rather than reveal God’s love.
The Oneness Jesus Actually Prayed For
The irony is that the very passage most often weaponized, John 17, is not talking about “unity” the way we talk about it in English. When Jesus prayed, “that they may be one [hen], just as we are one [hen],” the word he used carried a depth we flatten. Hen speaks of oneness, a mystical kind of union with the divine, a cohesive identity of purpose, will, and action. Hen is not blind conformity. It does not mean silence in the face of sin. It is not sameness of thought. It is not obedience to unchecked authority. It is oneness of identity, rooted in the love, character, intimacy, and mission between the Father and the Son.
To be one is to reflect the intimacy and alignment of Jesus and the Father. The church’s oneness is not found in keeping everybody quiet, but in bearing together love and truth.
Later, Paul uses a related word, henotēs, in Ephesians 4 when he calls the church to the “unity of the Spirit.” This is not a fragile truce we keep by suppressing hard truths. It is a Spirit-born wholeness, a harmony forged not by cover-ups, complicity, or silence, but by holiness, again, rooted in the character of Christ and purpose for humanity.
When leaders equate John 17’s oneness with institutional loyalty or silence, they are not defending Christ’s prayer. They are defending their own power. They have turned unity into an idol and Jesus’ prayer in the garden into a mockery.
The oneness Jesus prayed for was never about protecting reputations. It was about revealing God’s love. That love is not demonstrated through silence and self-preservation. It is revealed in truth.
Fire in the Sanctuary
Jeremiah declared that the word of the Lord is like fire, like a hammer that shatters rock into pieces (Jer. 23:29). His very description of God’s demonstration of truth came in the thunder of iron hitting flint. It is not soft like a whisper; it is collision that breaks into pieces what seems impenetrable. It is a fire that consumes. That is what happens when God refuses to let his people be seduced by a false sense of security and self-preservation. The prophets of Jeremiah’s day smoothed over wounds with easy words. “Peace, peace,” they said, when there was no peace. They plastered over the fractures of the nation wrought with idolatry and sweet talked a people walking away from covenant with Yahweh with hollow promises, trying to hold together what was already rotting from within.
This is what false unity is doing in the church today. It takes what is fractured, what is infected, the black mold of sin, and it covers it with a thin coat of paint while we breathe infected air from marble lobbies, depressed, stressed, and desperately clinging to control. Each confrontation being called persecution and attack. This false unity tells survivors of abuse to be quiet. It calls truth-tellers Jezebel. It protects reputations of the powerful instead of protecting the people they were called to steward.
But the word of God does not make peace with lies. It burns through pretense. It smashes the idol of unity we’ve built and exposes what is hidden underneath. And that breaking, that burning, is not cruelty, it is the mercy of our Lord extending again his hand to a rebellious people, because until infection is exposed, there can be no healing.
Jesus the Divider
We forget sometimes that Jesus said it ever so plainly:
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time? Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
(Luke 12:54–59, bolded is mine)
Can you not see what is happening in the church? God is exposing the rot, the systemic abuses, the manipulation, the obsession with power and control and he will not let it stand. He is shattering the fragile structures we have called “church” so that his people can rise in holiness. This is no time for denial. This is no time for false peace. His call is clear: repent desperately, while there is still time.
“You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?” (v.56)
Here’s the reality, these are not the words of a polite Messiah here to keep everyone comfortable, avoid confrontation, and just “keep the peace.” These are the words of a consuming fire, a hammer breaking up a hardened heart. Jesus knew that his presence would split households, split synagogues, split churches, and split movements wide open.
Why? Because his very life forces a choice. Light cannot cozy up to darkness. Truth cannot share space with deception. Holiness cannot marry corruption. His kingdom always confronts and eventually destroys whatever we’ve built in its place.
And notice how Jesus ends: with a word about reconciliation. But not the false reconciliation we see in the church today, where victims are pressured to forgive quickly and move on so the institution can move on. Biblical reconciliation never places the burden on the wounded to make it right. The responsibility falls on the one who has done the wrong. If you have sinned, it is your repentance that paves the way for reconciliation. Anything less is coercion, not Christ.
Unfortunately, this teaching has not always been taught and is why those who expose abuse are often branded as divisive. This is why survivors are silenced while leaders are protected. Because if we take Jesus at his word, then division is not always the enemy. Division is Holy. Sometimes it is the evidence that Christ is cutting through the lies we’ve learned to live with.
The division Jesus brings is never about destruction for destruction’s sake. It is about separating what is true from what is false, what is holy from what is corrupt. He is the one who draws the line in the sand, and in doing so, he reveals where our allegiance really lies.
Shaken for Holiness
Hebrews 12 pulls at this even more:
“Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? … God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness.” (vv. 7, 10)
This is not the soft correction of a polite God. This is the refining fire of a holy Father who loves his children too much to let rot remain. His discipline is not rejection, it is restoration. His shaking is not cruelty, it is mercy.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.” (vv. 1–2)
Holiness always demands a throwing off. A separation. A division. To run the race, some weights must be cut loose. To see clearly, some veils must be torn down. To heal, infected wounds must be exposed and purified. I heard a pastor say once, “The victimizer often becomes the victim when confronted.” I pray that church can one day say, “The victimizer becomes the repentant when confronted.”
False unity is so dangerous, it resists the very shaking that Hebrews says is necessary for true holiness. It silences the discipline of God by insisting that nothing is wrong except the one who speaks out. But when God shakes his church, he does it so that what cannot be shaken will remain. What is true, what is pure, what is holy, these endure the fire. Everything else crumbles.
Christ’s fire does not burn to destroy but to purify. His hammer does not crush for cruelty’s sake but to break open what has been hardened by sin, so that healing might come.
Division as Mercy
My cry is for the purity of the Bride of Christ. That his people would walk humbly, repentantly, standing in oneness that is rooted not in silence or obedience to men, but in the character and mission of God.
My prayer is for those who have been victimized: that you would find healing and strength, that you would not bow to despair, that you would recognize the true character of Christ is not passivity, not looking the other way, not excusing the powerful. His true character is found in the consuming fire, the strong hammer of justice, the divisive boldness of Jesus that brings discipline to those who have harmed you.
This is the strange gift of holy division: it tears down what is false so that what is true can stand. It exposes corruption so that righteousness can be seen. It strips away idols so that Christ alone is revealed. And when the fire is finished and the hammer has struck, what remains is not ruin, but a remnant that is purified, faithful, alive.
Division is not the end of the church. It is the mercy of God refining her.