As the 2020 election approaches, people seem to be wondering what Trump’s supporters will do if he’s not reelected. I wonder what’s going to happen if he is reelected. Either way, there’s going to be a lot of mad people.
Lately, I’ve seen some posts from my conservative friends talking about war. “Liberal politics are ruining this country” the argument goes, “When’s the revolution?”
It’s a good question, I can’t remember a time in my life when our country has seemed so divided, so angry with one another, so threatened by another’s beliefs, so unwilling to let people think and vote the way they want to.
The media isn’t helping, FOX News is spraying lighter fluid all over the idea that Liberals are the Death Eaters of politics. CNN seems to want me to believe the same about Conservatives. There’s money to be made here, and they know it. But for those of us who limit our news diet to red-stream- or blue-stream-only, we’re being played.
Either way, the argument against Liberals goes something like this: “First, this thing happens, then that leads to this thing, which makes this other thing happen, then we’re all slaves,” or, “then they take away our guns,” or, “then we’re killing more babies than we ever have.”
As a Liberal, I’ll pass on a defense. What’s the point? Nobody’s listening. We’re too busy pointing fingers at each other, which seems to quickly be morphing into downright hatred.
Liberals are guilty here, too. Me included. The more I write, the more convicted I am about communicating in ways that don’t fuel the fire. This division that we’re swimming in is our mess. If we don’t change our trajectory, the bigger the resulting mess will be on us – not Trump, or the “other” side of the hill.
I’d say that we need to do a better job of listening to each other, but we can’t. We’ve branded the other side “enemy,” and who wants to listen to an enemy? Asking a Liberal to listen to a Conservative is like asking someone to listen to Hitler unpack his ideas about Jewish people.
Will Liberal politics destroy our country? Are conservatives a bunch of gun-toting racist hillbillies?
If you believe anything akin to either one of those perspectives, you’re done listening. And if you’re done listening, nobody’s going to listen to you. In a culture where nobody’s using their ears, and everyone’s pissed off, things will get worse as our anger continues to move closer to the center of the way we do politics. Our country will become even more polarized, then this thing will blow up in our faces. Won’t that be fun.
And we’ve already had that party.
There are a few opinions about what caused us to go to war long ago. Many say we fought over the legality of slavery, some say it was about government reach and state’s rights. Regardless, you don’t have the Civil War without slavery. There was nothing else that the South was doing that the Federal government felt was worth going to war over.
But there was a spirit in America then, one that is alive and well in our current fight. The Federal government deemed slavery unconstitutional, but slavery was core to the Southern economy. Remove it and you might just destroy the Southern states. Many in the South came to believe that the North didn’t care about slavery, their actual endgame was Northern dominion, which could easily end in the “wrong” people becoming slaves.
Then there was the argument that the Bible condoned slavery.
Southerners didn’t just feel justified, they branded their political foes the enemy. Who wants to listen to someone who wants to destroy your world talk about the merits of abolition? “First, we’ll get rid of slavery,” the rationale goes, “then they’ll have the upper hand, then we’re screwed.”
In other words, “First, this thing happens, then that leads to this thing, which makes this other thing happen, then we’re all slaves.”
We went to war, reconstructed, and all that stuff that the South believed would happen to them, never did.
We didn’t go to war over slavery, we went to war over fear. If we go to war again, it’ll be the same scenario, the same stupidity. And when the dust clears, and we wipe the blood, shit, and bone fragments off of our faces, bury our dead, rebuild, let 20 years or so pass, etc., we’ll be far more objective about who’s right, who’s wrong, and when it’s time to call someone an “enemy…”
… until fear starts making its way back to the center of our politics, then we’ll get stupid again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
And wherever you find fear, you’ll find anger. We’re angry. You’d think all the judgments, finger-pointing, Facebook rants, and blowing each other off would cool things off a bit.
I’m angry, just as angry as anyone else. This country is not embracing the things that are most important to me, and I’m at a loss as to why they’re not important to non-Liberals, or why, when I talk about the mass incarceration issue, for example, people get so agitated, or treat me like I’m an idiot for being sickened by the way that non-whites are treated in this country.
I have a mountain of statistics to back me up, but I can’t get anyone who doesn’t think like I do to look at them. We don’t do that. Racial justice is a mindless Liberal agenda, and Liberals want to destroy our country. Who wants to listen to that crap.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Liberal politics will destroy us, and that Liberals have some indidious agenda, whether we know it or not, that has nothing to do with the betterment of our country. Let’s allow the idea that we are enemies of the state.
Most of my friends who believe that are in my Christian camp. We might not embrace similar political views, but we believe the same thing about the Bible, Jesus, God, etc.
The founder of our religion found himself in the middle of a similar bru-ha-ha where people were scared, angry, and under the thumb of a political machine far more gruesome than any Liberal agenda. They weren’t slaves, but seemed to be quickly heading in that direction.
Some of Jesus’ Jewish audience had decided to take a stand, or believed that protecting their world with lethal force was the only way to move forward.
Clearly, the Romans were the enemy. Many wanted to fight.
Jesus said, “Don’t,” not because it was morally wrong, or because His disciples might get hurt (Jesus seemed to be OK with a religion that might end in death), or start a war.
He tried to convince them that there was something else going on – something better, something much bigger. Us white Western Christians have a hard time understanding what that thing is, but Jesus’ audience didn’t, they were hoping beyond hope that it would come in their lifetime.
They referred to it as the “Kingdom of Heaven.”
Jesus said, “Turn from your anti-Roman agenda, because the Kingdom of Heaven, the thing you’ve been waiting for, is here, like, right here, close enough for you to touch.”
His followers were like, “Where?”
From their perspective, there was nothing to see. They were expecting a powerful king, a political machine that would consider the Roman empire a light snack.
Jesus said, “It’s like a mustard seed; doesn’t look like much now, but just you wait, it’s bigger and better than the idea of you beating the Romans out of Israel.”
His disciples spent the rest of their lives trying to figure out why they needed to give up everything for this “Kingdom” that didn’t seem to be worth much.
So do we.
And because we don’t see the value of it, we don’t make the transactions that God really wants us to make. We get side-tracked by things we’re convinced God wants us to, and those things become everything, and if they’re not everything to everyone else, we get angry.
Do you hate abortion? Do something about it besides judging people and acting like it’s the only injustice that you’re supposed to care about. Do your homework, please. Abortion numbers for Liberal administrations are just as good as those for Conservative presidents.
Most of the anti-abortion rants I field on Facebook come from people who won’t do anything more than type something about it on social media.
Do you hate gay marriage? Do you believe that homosexuality will destroy America? Do you have any gay friends? Do you love them? Have you read the Bible correctly here? Would you be interested in hearing from a Liberal, seminary trained evangelical on the matter? I have sound, Biblical observations that few would argue, but I’ll bet you haven’t heard them.
Do you hate mass incarceration? Do you believe that racial justice is just as much a part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as anything else? Me too. Are you doing anything about it? I’m not. For most of us, it’s worth getting angry about, but not any further expenditure. And I don’t think the black men unjustly rotting in prison appreciate our sentiments. They want, and need, change.
Anger doesn’t bring change. Finger-pointing doesn’t bring change. Branding our fellow Americans “enemy” doesn’t bring change – not good change anyway.
Jesus seemed to believe that if we could “seek first” this Kingdom of His, then everything else would fall into place. At the least, He thought that living and dying for this thing, making it our highest priority, would make sense of everything.
As Christians, how do we do that?
Not sure I can be of much help here as I’ve spent most of my life, even my Christian life, trying to build my own “Kingdom,” politics included.
I can say this however, with great certainty: people who get Jesus on this issue are well aware of humanity’s propensity to ignore what God’s doing, and build their own, much crappier kingdom, at the expense of everything else. As such, there’s a common prayer among these folks, extremely rare among the rest of us, that goes something like this:
God, show me my error. Take my eyes off of everyone else’s. Then give me the courage to do something about it. Tell me what to do; how high to jump, how much to give, when to fight, when to listen. The success or failure of our country falls on your whim. You control this, not us. Forgive us for the belief that politics are everything and heal our land.
My role in squaring off with our broken racial systems begins with God, asking Him what my role is, asking for the courage to step into it, not judging you for failing to see the importance of advocating for the poor, the marginalized, etc., like the Bible tells us to.
Your role in squaring off with the brokenness of marriage in our country and our propensity to discard humans who don’t matter begins with God, not judging me for failing to see the importance of advocating for righteousness and the rights of people who can’t help themselves, like the Bible tells us to.
Praying like this is difficult. I like feeling like I’m more right than you, and I have to forfiet all of that to pray this with any integrity. And I know that If I do, God will slap me off my high horse faster than Grant took Richmond.
Fun.
But that’s what we need. Our anger, fear, and labels are not a product of righteousness. We’re not fighting the good fight, we’re fighting the other one. We’re clueless about how broken and arrogant we’ve become, how sovereign God is, and how inept we are at truth.
Instead of asking difficult questions of ourselves, and the repentant prayers that follow, we’ve turned our eyes on everyone else’s sin, called them wrong, labelled them “enemy,” and taken big baby steps towards a war that we’ll all regret.
