(Disclaimer: grammatical errors and pretty long because I had to get this off my chest)

One of the best movies to come out in the last 10 years regardless of genre is Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This movie was epic due to its fight sequences, adventure style story telling and last but not least exploration of its characters and organizations.

In this movie S.H.I.E.L.D is in the process of launching Project Insight, which is a program that uses a persons history, either that be generational, legal, academic, or personal to determine if they should be eliminated preemptively. It’s the idea that you stop a target before it starts. This Idea/algorithm was developed ultimately by Dr Zola after he was captured by Captain America during World War II (in the first movie). He was recruited to S.H.I.E.L.D., where he secretly reformed Hydra within its ranks, sowing global chaos using the Winter Soldier(Captain America’s friend) as their primary assassin. Now as the movie goes along S.H.I.E.L.D is unraveling due to the split between its own agents and those secretly working for Hydra. It’s one side versus the other side……. But they share the same building. Imagine going to work and the person next to your cubicle is a secret agent when everybody’s occupation at this particular job is that of a secret agent. A double secret agent is crazy work.

The reason I recapped this movie is because I believe it’s allegorical of what’s going on within the body of Christ today. Yesterday as I scrolled instagram, I witnessed something that grieved my soul. A well know “Pastor” making a generalized post, and in the comments a well known “Prophet” responds as well as other members worldwide in the body of Christ. This starts a comment section back and forth between multiple “Christians” and it just looks bad.

I’m bringing this up because it’s a recurring theme. Not just the calling out, but the constant back and forth. The constant arguing, the constant disagreement. The body of Christ at large is literally being infiltrated and unraveled by its own members. We can’t agree on anything, you have one side believing the other side is demonic and false teachers and the other side that thinks folks are false prophets and etc. It’s almost as if people only became Christians just so that they can argue. Nobody knows who really is who, but accusing the next of literally being. It’s like that spider man meme

Jesus said it like this in Matthew 12:25-26:

“And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, “^[c]Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and ^[d]any city or house divided against itself will not stand. ²⁶ If Satan casts out Satan, he ^[e]is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?”

Now in context Jesus had just finished delivering a man from demonic possession. And religious sect of Judaism known as the Pharisees heard of this and accused Jesus of being the devil himself. The above scripture is Jesus’s response to them. BUUUUUUUUUUUUUT because God is the divine author, this isn’t just Jesus’s response in real time to the Pharisees, Jesus is breaking the fourth wall and sending a prophetic warning to his future disciples. Why? Because contrary to popular belief, the kingdom of darkness is very well organized. So I believe Jesus is saying “hey, everybody who reads this in the future, because I know people will read this in the future. It’s strength in unity.”

But as usual we are missing the point. ALL YE WHO ARGUETH ONLINE. Using your public platforms to send curses disguised as warnings, brewing discourse disguised as correction. Those who literally argue for the sake of trying to prove they know more Bible or history than the next. Yall are trying to cast each other out, and in the process causing The Kingdom of God to look bad and lose its traction and legitimacy. The world is watching, and right now we look bad. We are literally unraveling like S.H.I.E.L.D did in the movie. And the worst part is it’s no outside entity that’s causing it. We give the enemy (Satan, Lucifer, The Adversary or whatever you want to call him), too much credit. He’s literally chilling. It’s you so called believers, doing the kingdoms of darkness’s work for them.

Yet a day of reckoning will come soon. There will be a day where the collaboration of Churches both White and Black, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Traditional, Brothers, Sisters, all those who call them selves believers will be paramount. If COVID taught us anything, it’s that disunity and lack of community is your demise. Another day like COVID will come. It may not be to that magnitude or seriousness, but it will cause those who are disconnected and unwilling to embrace their neighbor TRULY to become waste and fall and wither away. I so believe that people who are natural mediators will be brought to the forefront. Those who have no partiality, but hold themselves accountable to the word of God as they become bridges between churches and leaders. Bridging the gap.