America’s 250th birthday should have been a simple thing to celebrate. On July 4, 2026, the nation marked two and a half centuries since the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.

Flag-lined streets, fireworks, concerts, parades and patriotic ceremonies marked the occasion. Yet Americans approached the milestone with sharply different ideas about what the anniversary meant.

Writing in First Things, Susannah Seltzer saw renewed national pride in flag-waving families and patriotic crowds. “As the kids say,” she concluded, “it’s cool to love America again.”

Novelist Francine Prose viewed the anniversary differently. Writing in The Guardian, she pointed to serious concerns about America’s history and present condition. Yet she still urged readers to celebrate the birthday and hoped the nation would endure another 250 years.

Paige Alexander, CEO of the nonpartisan Carter Center, approached the divide from another angle in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She acknowledged growing polarization and a fractured national identity while arguing that disagreement itself can be “a good thing. Necessary even.” Her answer was not to give up on the country, but to “celebrate the messy, ongoing work of democracy.”

These writers all viewed the condition of the United States differently. Yet all three still found something worth appreciating in the national milestone.

So did millions of Americans.

Families gathered. Neighbors watched fireworks. Flags appeared on homes and businesses. People who disagree sharply about government, culture and morality applauded the same veterans, stood for the same anthem and watched the sky light up with fireworks.

For a day at least, profound differences did not prevent Americans from celebrating together.

But is learning to live with deep disagreement the best a nation can do?

Endurance Is Not Enough

Americans have disagreed from the beginning.

The Founding Fathers argued over government power, economics and the Constitution. Later generations were divided bitterly over slavery, immigration, war and civil rights. Even the bicentennial year of 1976 came just after Vietnam and Watergate and amid continuing social conflict.

There was no golden age when Americans agreed on everything.

A 2024 Pew Research Center report found a sharp ideological divide over what contributes to being “truly American.” For example, 90 percent of conservatives said speaking English was important to American identity, compared with 58 percent of liberals. The differences went well beyond language.

Conservatives were also substantially more likely than liberals to say sharing American customs and traditions, being born in the United States and being Christian were important to being truly American. Pew found gaps of at least 30 percentage points between conservatives and liberals on all four measures.

Yet people holding these very different views remain citizens of the same country. Clearly, a nation can continue even when its people disagree about aspects of national identity.

But simply keeping a society functioning is a limited kind of success.

Human beings have created laws, established institutions and solved countless practical problems. Yet no society has permanently eliminated the deeper issues that trouble human civilization—violence, injustice, corruption, hatred and war.

This is not just an American problem. It is a human one.

So the fact that people can continue living together despite disagreement leaves a difficult question unanswered: Why have human societies, for all their accomplishments, been unable to permanently solve these deeper problems?

Different Meanings

Part of the answer can be seen in something as simple as a baseball game.

Both teams may argue fiercely over whether a runner was safe, yet the game continues because they recognize the field, the rulebook and a process for making the call.

Things change when the two sides no longer agree on the rulebook—or on the authority used to make the call. Now the argument is no longer about one play. It concerns how the game itself is defined.

Society faces a more consequential version of the same problem. Addressing injustice, violence or other problems requires judgment about what ought to be done. And that judgment depends on what people understand to be right.

Consider the word freedom. Few people would argue against it as a concept, but what does it mean for the nation? Does it chiefly mean protection from government interference? Personal autonomy? Freedom of conscience? Equal opportunity? Does genuine freedom allow for moral limits, or are such limits themselves an infringement on freedom?

The same is true of justice. People may agree that society should be just while reaching sharply different conclusions about what justice requires in a particular situation.

Then there is truth. Here disagreement can run deeper still. People may dispute not only a conclusion, but which evidence, sources or authorities deserve to be trusted in reaching it.

So people can appeal to the same ideals—freedom, justice, truth—while advocating very different courses of action.

Society’s deepest problems cannot be addressed without deciding what ought to be done. And that requires more than agreement on terminology. It requires some way of judging between competing claims.

Legislatures can decide which law will govern. Courts can issue rulings. Elections can determine who holds office. Public opinion can influence all three.

But those processes determine which decision prevails. They do not, by themselves, establish whether that decision is right.

By what standard, then, should human decisions themselves be judged?

If the standard ultimately comes from human beings, it remains subject to the same limitations as the people and institutions it is meant to judge. A truly higher standard must come from outside human opinion.

One Standard

The Bible identifies that standard as coming from God Himself. In a prayer to His Father, Jesus Christ said, “Sanctify them through Your truth: Your word is truth” (John 17:17).

Scripture presents truth as something mankind receives from God—not something human beings create for themselves. What is right does not become right because a majority supports it, a court approves it or an influential institution endorses it.

God’s Word stands above those changing judgments and provides a fixed measure by which they can be evaluated.

That principle is easy to welcome when we expect it to prove someone else wrong. The harder test is whether we will accept God’s Word when it corrects our own thinking or conduct. An objective standard only helps if people are willing to submit to it.

Scripture has been available in America from its beginning. Biblical language appears throughout the nation’s history, churches preach from the Bible every week and millions of Americans have ready access to it. Yet human disagreement, injustice and conflict have persisted. Why has simply possessing that truth not solved the problem?

Clearly, just having knowledge of the Bible is not enough.

Knowing Is Not Enough

The biblical account of ancient Israel illustrates this well.

In the book of Judges, God had already given the nation His Law. The people did not lack instruction about right and wrong. And yet, the book describes a period when “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (21:25).

Truth was freely available, but that did not mean people submitted to it.

Jesus later described the same human tendency. Quoting Isaiah, He said, “This people draws near unto Me with their mouth, and honors Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me” (Matt. 15:8).

People can acknowledge God, possess His Word and even speak approvingly of it while still following their own judgment when God’s standard conflicts with what they want.

Proverbs 14:12 warns, “There is a way which seems right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”

Even a perfect rulebook cannot produce the right outcome if the players refuse to follow it.

Humanity’s problem runs deeper than ignorance. Mankind needs God’s truth—but knowing that truth is not enough. People must be willing to accept it, be taught to live by it and submit to the authority of the One who gave it.

The Bible’s prophets repeatedly describe a future in which God will do exactly that. He will not merely make His Law available. He will teach mankind His ways, judge according to His Law and govern the nations by it.

And the change will reach deeper still. God says through Jeremiah, “I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts” (31:33).

Humanity does not merely need a better standard. It needs the One who gave that standard to govern, as well as human beings whose hearts are being brought into harmony with His Way.

God’s Government

The prophet Isaiah describes what a divine soon-coming government—the Kingdom of God—will look like.

Chapter 2 of his book pictures a future when nations will say, “Come you, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord…and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths” (2:3).

At that time, God Himself will teach people how to live.

The verse continues, “for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

Society’s standards will no longer depend on changing human opinion. God’s Law will provide the same foundation for all nations: “And He [God] shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people” (vs. 4).

“They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks,” verse 4 continues. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

War, one of mankind’s oldest and most persistent problems, will finally disappear because people are being taught God’s Way and governed according to His truth.

This is far greater than human beings merely learning to coexist despite profound disagreement.

God will bring people into agreement with Him, and with each other. Everyone will learn the same way from the same Teacher, live under the same righteous standard and have that Law written in their hearts.

Isaiah provides only a small glimpse of this coming world. Throughout the other Old Testament books of the prophets, the Bible describes what the Kingdom of God will be like.

To see that coming world in much greater detail, read David C. Pack’s book Tomorrow’s Wonderful World – An Inside View!

America’s 250th birthday showed that people can celebrate despite their differences.

The Kingdom of God reveals something far greater: what becomes possible when mankind is taught God’s Way, brought under His government and brought into agreement with Him.