We arrived in Florida a little differently this year. Jennifer drove. She left a day early with Harry and Evelyn. I flew. Madeline went with me. It’s better that I flew to Florida and didn’t drive. My back is terrible. More than three hours in the car equals a few days of vacation ruined. That’s how long it takes me to recover, and I need every day I’m away to be as vacationy as possible. Indeed, I need two unscathed weeks of palm trees and a pool.

Unfortunately, when we landed, our phones exploded with the news that President Trump had been shot. Some of you texted me. Others left voicemail. Thanks be to God he’s okay. Now we pray for the families of the casualties and injured. Usually, I’d suggest praying for the perpetrator, except he’s already been neutralized. Now, he answers to eternity. Had his life been spared, we might know more. It’ll be a lot harder to get to the bottom of things now that he’s dead.

The White House noted that the FBI would be running the investigation. I wonder how Trump’s folks feel about that given the agency’s relative weaponization against him. By the way, I don’t say that lightly. I was nominated and accepted into an eight-week citizen’s training with the FBI this past spring. I learned firsthand just how partisan the agency has become. Passing jabs at conservatives was common. So were the excuses for “mostly peaceful” groups like Antifa, Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ, Inc., and Pro-choice extremists. I’m by no means inclined to believe the FBI has President Trump’s well-being in mind. They answer to ideologues who rile crowds, comparing Trump to Hitler and labeling him a “threat to democracy” and “the end of America.” Their boss, Joe Biden, rasped at a recent fundraiser, “It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye.”

It appears someone may have been listening.

I hope I’m wrong about the FBI. I hope I’m wrong about Biden and his administration. I hope they’ll get to the bottom of this. I also hope their gabbling is nothing more than campaign rhetoric. I hope the Democrats’ continued stoking of the so-called tolerant left and the subsequent assassination attempt are only coincidental. Either way, the images of Trump covered in Secret Service agents—a man who’s been through so much, the American flag now billowing above his blood-smeared face, his breaking through the agents’ shielding to fist-pump the word “Fight!”—this image was seared into the hearts and minds of billions worldwide. It will unify many.

This has me thinking of something else.

I began by saying there aren’t too many things I like more than palm trees and a pool. That said, there’s almost nothing more entertaining than an hour in an airport terminal watching passersby. You never know what you’ll see. A woman dragging her angry child by a leash a short distance across the airport floor, his shoes squeaking like well-worn brakes as he tries to hinder her momentum—an oblivious tween wearing headphones two paces behind the struggling mother. A heftier man with bleach blonde hair and fishnet over a bright t-shirt doing all he can to be a woman but without an ounce of success. Two clerics in flowing cassocks pulling bags, and one has a cane that he doesn’t appear to need for walking. A beeping trolley with an elderly woman in its passenger seat. An eager crowd of Florida-bound travelers waiting and watching a bedraggled ensemble disembark an arriving plane, their vacation has come to an end. Atop all of it, a bird that somehow found its way inside and is now flittering from steel beam to steel beam above the unsuspecting bustle.

Like the bird, an inconspicuously observing man with his own past, present, and future sitting beside his oldest daughter and thinking, “I wonder what else there is to these people.”

For as weird as the theater of humanity might be, I appreciate individuality. Each person is gifted and uniquely valuable, no matter who they are or what they believe. If this were not true, Christ would not have told Nicodemus about God’s love extending itself to the extremities of death for the whole world (John 3:16). He would not have told His disciples, “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest” (John 4:35), which was to say that every person in this world is worth laboring to retrieve.

Still, the importance of uniqueness has become misapplied, reaching a fever pitch in society. We currently exist in a culture hellbent on amplifying individualism above everything else, the result being extreme division. The attempt on Trump’s life is proof. Perhaps just as worse, society has learned to praise and protect abnormality while shaming normalcy. A person who wants to get married, have children, go to church, and live a relatively normal life is considered the epitome of mindless conformity. But a man who disrupts the community of “family” and “friends” by quitting his job, divorcing his wife, and leaving his children to embrace his most authentic self as a six-year-old girl is heralded as courageous. Get in his way, and you’ll be sorry. Try to help his family, and you’re a bigot to be canceled.

I’m reminded of something Rev. Henry Melville wrote. Unfortunately, his words are often misattributed to Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. Nevertheless, Rev. Melville insisted in a sermon he delivered in 1855, “Ye live not for yourselves; ye cannot live for yourselves; a thousand fibers connect you with your fellow men, and along those fibers, as along sympathetic threads, run your actions as causes, and return to you as effects.” This is sermonically reminiscent of Saint Paul’s warning, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21). And yet, society has grown to despise such a message, and now we have a mess of self-concerned, handless, and footless bodies. We have a mess of separate and nearly unnavigable identities, with more and more people inventing new ones every day, each highlighting its own supposed uniqueness. In short, it has become commendable to cut the fibers that bind us to community. It has become laudable to stand entirely apart.

Yes, we’re all unique, and our individuality is essential. But our sameness is, too. In fact, it’s individuality’s point. We have roles to play in something bigger. This is true in microscopic ways, such as individual talents and skillsets used to support an organization, but also in much grander ways. A man or woman is only one-half of the single most important society-perpetuating and stabilizing equation. Relative to the Church, it’s why Saint Paul wrote, “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Romans 12:4-6).

Use them for what? For the benefit of the community. This is a divine nod to something significant.

The more radically individualized and disconnected from community and its normalcy we become, the more our society seals its doom. We’re already seeing airplane crashes because a more qualified engineer was overlooked for another with lesser skill but with 7% more Cherokee DNA. Even now, people are losing the will and ability to communicate in fundamental ways, having become utterly incapable of engaging in honest conversation for fear of using incorrect pronouns and offending someone’s made-up uniqueness.

While I’m people-watching, I certainly do wonder about individual backstories. However, in the end, I’ve realized I can only really do this through the lens of sameness. I suppose therein lies one of life’s greatest ironies, which I’ve heard phrased, “Each of us is different, just like everybody else.” The adults before me were all children once. I wonder about the uniqueness of their upbringing. They all eat food. I imagine their favorite meal. I also wonder about their struggles. Everyone has sins that they wrestle to keep hidden from others and themselves. White or black, tall or short, we’re all members of the fellowship of sinful human dreadfulness. Rich or poor, well-known or societally invisible, God does not show partiality and cannot be bribed (Deuteronomy 10:17), and, therefore, none among us is above or below the other relative to the need for a savior.

But here’s the thing: even as God formed each of us as unique individuals, His greatest gift took aim at our sameness. He sent a Savior for all. By the person and work of Christ—His life, death, and resurrection—the whole world’s redemption was accomplished. He didn’t do it one way for Americans and another way for Somalis. We’re all the same in this. No one stands beyond the blast radius of the cross. Only according to this perspective does a genuine uniqueness come to light.

Those who believe this Gospel of redemption become the truly exceptional ones. They’re made holy. To be holy means to be set apart. Believers are set apart from a world intent on self-promoting shouts of uniqueness from the mountaintops. This world is set on having things its way—on doing, saying, and being anything it wants without consequence, all the while expecting commendation for the insanity. The Gospel for faith changes this. It’s the only thing that really sets a person apart, while at the same time drawing the one it inhabits to a better frame of reference. Suddenly, a person’s uniqueness becomes consequential to more than just the self. It becomes less about the spotlight and more about community. It’s moved to enact selfless love for the neighbor. And still, it knows more. Concerning the Church, suddenly, the community’s boundaries and preservation become paramount. That’s one reason why I appreciate tradition so much. It’s why the historic liturgy and the creeds are so valuable. They help bind and fortify the eternal community across time and location.

To wrap this up, I suppose I’ll close by acknowledging my appreciation to God for your uniqueness. I also give thanks for the more spectacular sameness of God’s love in Christ that binds us together in community. This sameness testifies to our value as individuals in the only way that truly matters.