Posted July 07, 2026
The US men’s national soccer team played Belgium in the World Cup last night, losing 4 to 1. The runup to the match was overshadowed, however, by the controversy regarding Folarin Balogun, a player for the US who received a red card in his previous game and was thus ineligible to play last night.
President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of Balogun, and the suspension was then lifted. The Belgian federation challenged the decision, but their appeal was then dismissed. Now every side has reason to protest what happened: Balogun, who believes the suspension was unwarranted (many observers agree); the US, who protested the decision; and Belgium, who protested the revision unsuccessfully.
There is something intrinsic in human nature that wants the world to be fair when we think we lose unfairly. We don’t feel the same indignation, however, when we win.
Therein lies my point today, a factor that relates not only to athletics but to every soul and nation on earth.
Historian Walter Isaacson calls the central affirmation of the Declaration of Independence “the greatest sentence ever crafted by human hand.” Within that sentence, we find five words that forever changed history: “all men are created equal.”
Why would the Founders believe this?
There is no biological sense in which we are equivalent to each other. No two of us possess the same DNA, fingerprints, or neural pathways. Even the way we walk is distinctive to us. None of us is exactly equivalent to anyone else in education, experience, or contributions to society.
Not only are we not all “equal”—I’m not sure we want to be. Our economic system is based on competition that rewards those who provide goods and services others want to buy. We are promoted in our careers based on our performance. Even more fundamentally, all fallen humans are possessed of the “will to power” that strives to be our own god (Genesis 3:5), to advance ourselves ahead of others in our quest for success and significance.
Nonetheless, the equality of all people is the essential foundation of social flourishing. Without it, our politics and geopolitics devolve into partisan “zero-sum” divisions that threaten our collective good. Our ethics devolve into crimes against others that threaten our peace and security. If Hamas believed that “all men are created equal,” they would not have invaded Israel in the belief that Jews are “apes and pigs” (Qur’an 5:60). If Hitler believed in the equality of all people, he would not have perpetuated the Holocaust. If Putin believed it, he would not have attacked Ukraine. And on it goes.
There’s more: When we reject the equality of all people and use them as means to our ends, we strive for success that does not succeed. We forfeit community for competition and people for possessions. We may be more prosperous, but we are also more lonely, anxious, and depressed.
Most of all, when we use people as means to our ends, we forfeit God’s best for us. Our Father “shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; cf. Ephesians 6:9) because he is love (1 John 4:8). He therefore calls us to love each other as he loves us (John 13:34), to seek the “good” of our neighbor (1 Corinthians 10:24) and to refuse partiality (James 2:1, 9; 1 Timothy 5:21).
As Jesus famously taught us, “Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
Our problem, of course, is that we do what we wish to others rather than what we wish they would do to us, then we blame them for doing the same. St. Augustine observed, “Men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others.”
But when Jesus becomes our Lord, we are “born again” with a “new heart” for God and everyone else (John 3:7; Ezekiel 36:26). Justin Martyr (c. AD 100–165) testified: “We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.”
There are two practical ways in which today’s conversation is vital to our lives and our nation.
One centers on the maxim that our character is measured by the way we treat people we don’t have to treat well. If we mistreat others whenever doing so advantages us, we will never “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, [or] insure domestic Tranquility” as our Constitution intends. Only by embracing the equality of all people can we heal the racial, social, economic, and political divisions that threaten our future.
The other centers in our personal lives. We were made in the image of a relational God (Genesis 1:27) and thus for community with him and each other (cf. Genesis 2:18; Matthew 22:37–39). When we love others as God loves us, we fill the “God-shaped emptiness” in our hearts and heal the ancient ache in our souls.
In a day when ways to destroy humanity through technology and warfare are more available than ever before, valuing humans is more urgent than ever before. And in a secularized society where the temporal and material trumps the eternal and spiritual, loving our neighbor as ourselves causes us to love ourselves as we love our neighbor.
God therefore instructs us, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14). Imagine how obeying this command would change your life and your world. Doing so seems impossible, but as Charles Spurgeon noted, “God never gives a command without supplying the power to fulfill it.”
Would you ask him for such power today?
“If God should have no more mercy on us than we have charity to one another, what would become of us?” —Thomas Fuller (1608–61)
The post US plays Belgium after Balogun’s suspension is overturned appeared first on Denison Forum.
