Hungering for Humanity

We are living in a very odd and disturbing time.

I suppose there have been unsettled folk in every “time” who have felt that way, but seriously.  This is an odd time, indeed.  In recent days the press has served up stories suggesting that the U.S. President was placed in office by God Almighty, and that his orange skin is a sign of the Holy Spirit's movement within him.   These are the serious matters with which we are consumed.  Never mind the degradation of the environment.  Pay no attention to the generalized decline of healthfulness in favor of a managed, somewhat mitigated state of illness.  Ignore as irrelevant the violence become epidemic in neighborhoods, houses of worship, dance halls, concert venues and schools.  We’ve got the President’s unnatural skin color to talk about.

Whatever. Never mind my hunch that God isn't registered to vote in our elections, I have larger concerns than political/theological dermatology. I'm too puzzled by — and sleepless over — our culture’s ineluctable and passionate adulterous affair with fear that drives us to belittle and demean each other...

• like the generously hospitable Muslim Imam and his community who have welcomed us to their prayers, their hearts and their table; 
• like the differently gendered campus minister — one of the the most faithfully compelling and spiritually rich Christians I know — who is constantly — constantly — facing charges from her denomination that devalue her humanity and jeopardize her ministry; 
• like the precious Burmese refugee children whose Sunday School Lori and I are privileged to teach on Sunday mornings; 
• like the various hard working immigrants we routinely come into contact with from "suspect" countries whose paperwork is a constant source of anxiety and frenetic maintenance.

We are so afraid; fearful in ways that are robbing us of our heart, paralyzing our souls, suffocating our basic humanity, imprisoning us behind our gated fencelines and blinding us to our neighbors.  It would be one thing if the roof was actually caving in or the infidels were actually clamoring at the gate.  But despite what the politicians are shouting, and the media outlets are repeating, and the social media channels are reposting, the facts don’t support the paranoia toward those unlike us that has become our national pastime.

I know we all don't see these differently raised, differently religious, differently colored, differently oriented people through the same lens, but do we have to be so brutally carnivorous in our disagreements?  Before we became so angry and frightened we tethered ourselves to some fundamental, core beliefs about the value of human beings.  We still pretend to in our pitched battles over abortion and capital punishment, but our behaviors defy our rhetoric.  We may love “humanity” as long as they are kept at some safe, philosophical distance, but we expend a lot of time and heated energy vilifying actual people.

I say let the President dye himself whatever color makes him happy.  While I don’t think it has anything to do with the pigmentational effects of the Holy Spirit, it is certainly his own prerogative.  Meanwhile, I intend to do my best to feed my aching hunger for a little basic humanity.