This month has been a crazy one. For most of us, I think.
Between election results and backlash and strange swinging weather in the Mid Atlantic, Thanksgiving celebrations and a seemingly slower Black Friday weekend (Cyber Week, yes?), this November has rushed by, pushing us closer to 2017 than I can comprehend.
I can’t help but pray for unity in this season. There’s been so much division, so many soapboxes with so much ranting this year.
But you know what? We’re all trying. There’s unity in that we care. In our activism and quest for justice. We may not see eye to eye, and we might be on opposing sides of the proverbial coin, but we care. We love. We screw up. We maybe talk too much, but we try again. And we’re called to forgive. To converse. To keep loving.
So please, dear ones, stop pointing fingers at the people around you. Don’t vilify your neighbor for checking a box, or label them some derogatory term that simplifies the entirety of their being into a single word. Just don’t.
We’re not Democrat or Republican. Nasty women or deplorables. We can’t be boxed in by our gender, our nationality, our religion. We’re not contained within a noun for sexuality. We’re not just our location, our economic state, or our education. We’re human. In all of our glorious infinite and infinitesimal diversity, complexity and potential. And most of us are trying our damnedest to do this human thing right.
We’re all just a step away. A step away from being an entirely different person in an entirely different scenario.
Our culture pushes us to take pride in “creating ourselves.” But control is an illusion– think about all the factors you didn’t choose for yourself. Your birthplace, the color of your skin, your gender, your parents. Your family. The socio-economic status you were born into. The public school you attended. Or the private one that your parents decided on for you. To think that we did anything on our own for our own is unmerited pride. There are just too many factors in our lives that were written.
But for the grace of God go I.
If you’re angry or agitated with the world around you, first take a look in the mirror and examine yourself. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23 NIV) We’ve all hated, and spoken untruth. In this age of internet and social media, we’ve helped propagate division and probably told a few jokes at another’s expense. Or laughed at one. Or been spiteful behind some screen that makes us more confrontational than ever before with someone we disagree with at an ideological level.
We accept and join along in the media circus. With the bashing and the division. We allow and join in on the smack talk, and don’t seek answers on policy or push for resolution on some of the biggest issues facing the whole of the American people today: a mountain of national debt, dangerous overspending, an aging population, whose safety net is quickly disappearing, and this strange obsession with the poor and marginalized, either vilifying them for the “choices” they make or elevating their interests to predominate over the common good.
And we let the media distract us. We listen to what we want to hear, don’t fact check and re-peat and re-post without a thought for unity. We allow division and untruth into our homes. We talk about it at our water coolers and over our dinner tables. We unveil and flaunt our most base selves, before our coworkers, our families. Our children.
We embrace the division. Revel in it, even. And talk about how different the “other” is.
Tell that to your babies.
Tell them we need Jesus. That as a society, we dig up dirt and like to point fingers when the problem is in us. That sin is rampant in this fallen world. That politics are supposed to be about policy and philanthropy about loving people. Period. And then. Speak with respect. Listen deeply. Educate yourself. Those little eyes are watching.
Most people aren’t left or right. We’re right here, in the middle. And our states are some blend of purple in these election years. Most of us try hard to treat the person in front of us with dignity and respect, despite our standings and our platforms. We really aren’t all that different.
The answer to our division and brokenness? It has never been outside of us-in a government, or legislation or policy. The answer lies within us. Micah wrote more than 2,500 years ago, “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (6:8 NIV) We must embrace Emmanuel, God with us, and move forward, walking humbly and understanding His story. We’re all just a step away.
In All Seasons 