I don’t want to talk about the President. It’s not that I don’t care about the office
or have no opinion of its current occupant.
It’s simply that in these ham-handed, binary times during which subtlety
and nuance have become casualties of public discourse where reason and
reasonable objectivity once felt comfortably at home, I’ll express my political
thoughts in the ballot box. Besides, I
try to keep in mind that nausea and diarrhea are not the real problems when I’m
suffering such maladies, but the outward expression of something deeper.
So no, I’m less concerned about the President than I am
about the rest of us. This is surely not
the first time in history that a people have lost their way, but we seem
hell-bent on elevating our particular manifestation of lostness to epic
heights. Or perhaps we should be
speaking, instead, of depths. Wiser
social observers than me will better understand what brought us to this
morass. Stolen opportunity. Economic frustration. An increasingly crowded and diverse public
and philosophical space. Instant and
constant communication of both news and opinion with no rubrics to
differentiate the two. All of the above. And more.
But whatever the drivers, they have brought us to a very loud,
aggressive, intolerant and unforgiving place.
And it’s frightening. I wish that
the shameful clash of people and ideologies last weekend in Virginia – fueled
by prejudiced hatred – was the exception, but alas it is paradigmatic.
Only two descriptors present themselves in what remains of
the conduct of our public life: “me”,
and everyone else. Every now and then
multiple “me’s” seem able to make common cause, but they are marriages of
convenience rather than sacred vows, as fragile as the egos that beat their
chests behind them.
But of all the battling contestants in this Roman Coliseum
called “America” I am perhaps most
disappointed in my own lifelong community:
the church. Our most visible
representatives have become “hater apologists” – or, in the words of our biblical
forebears, “Court Prophets.” And our
congregations, once ideologically royal purple, have segregated into Reds and
Blues. More partisan than confessional,
more defensive than invitational, more condemning than caring, it’s hard to
find much residue in our worship and our “discipleship” of the one we profess
to follow.
As long as we view ourselves as “supreme” – racially,
politically, patriotically, morally -- we are missing the point, and are well
along the way to losing our soul.
The fact is we simply cannot love by hating. We cannot welcome through exclusion. We cannot heal by brutalizing. We cannot grow deeper by becoming more and
more shallow. We have a better story
than that. We have a better message than
that. We have a nobler mission than
that. And we have a more powerful example than that.
