Tag Archives: Politics

To My Non-Christian Friends This Election Season

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To My Non-Christian Friends, dearfriends_black

This election season has been something else, huh? (Here is a video of puppies if you need something to cheer you up.) Take heart, it is almost over. We have at least until February before people start openly campaigning for 2020.

In the meantime, I’d like to say something to you. Specifically, I’d like to say sorry. I think you have seen us Christians at our worst lately and for that I apologize.

I’m sorry that you’ve seen so much fighting between us. We can be brutal to each other and we call ourselves family. We fire missiles from all sides of the aisle and don’t worry too much about collateral damage. It probably isn’t very inviting when we behave this way. I’m sorry if you are less likely to want to be around us after all this.

I’m sorry that you’ve probably gotten into a debate or two with one of us. I’m sorry that we don’t often fight very graciously. I’m sorry that we stoop to things like name calling and rapid dismissal.

I regret that we often want to be heard, rather than hear. That isn’t very kind of us.

I’m sorry if you were unfriended because of your political views. I’m sorry we value our opinions more than your friendship. I’m sorry that we let partisanship get in the way of relationship. There are things we will all never agree on, but that shouldn’t stop us from sharing meals and photos of our kids and life in general.

I’m sorry that you see us defending things that are indefensible. Things Jesus would oppose. Things we have routinely and loudly condemned. I’m sorry that we hold a double standard so that we can excuse our candidates and condemn someone else’s. That’s not consistent and its certainly not Christlike.

I’m sorry for all the false memes and bunk articles we have posted. We don’t think very highly of lying, but we are at times in such a rush to be right we fail to check our information. That isn’t very good of us.

I’m sorry if we have led you to believe that a person’s eternal destiny hinges on how they vote. We don’t actually believe that, though we sometimes act and preach like it. Sometimes we (rightly or wrongly) put a lot of hope and energy into these things, but if you give us a time to catch our breath we will remember it is grace, not ballots, that save us.

We sing a song that says our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus. I’m sorry we haven’t acted that way lately. While we want to have a say in government, ultimately our hope is not in presidents and senators and legislation.

I’m sorry if you’ve been hurt by the way we talk about the candidates and their supporters. Regardless of politics you and they are loved and cherished by God. We’ve failed to reflect that too often. That grieves me.

I apologize that regardless of which side we are on, we are often unable to understand where you are coming from. I’m sorry if we talk down to you or figure you couldn’t possibly know or have hurt you with our assumptions.

I know it is probably hard to see through all the nonsense, but Jesus is better than we represent. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m absolutely positive of that. I’m sorry if we have failed him and you this election season.

If we are honest we are just regular ole humans. We mess up, we don’t always do what we want. We can be too passionate, we can be misguided, we can be flat wrong. Please don’t hold that against Jesus.

I can’t speak for all of us, but I can speak for me. I would trade in all this election stuff if it meant people would be more likely to consider following Jesus. His ways are better. We have a saying that goes like this, “His grace is sufficient.” The grace of God is sufficient to cover our weakness and our mistakes. We greatly depend on that.

Now I’m asking for grace from you. Please forgive us for our actions and attitudes, our words and our compliance. Please forgive us for pointing you toward a political party more than Jesus. Please forgive us when we cross the line, wound others, or look no different than any other person you know.

We are supposed to do better than that. We have been wrong. Maybe not all of us, but some of us, including me. And I’m sorry.

When We Disagree.

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Photo Source: conferencecalling.com

One of the blessings and/or curses of social media is that everyone has a voice. You get a voice, I get a voice, your crazy uncle gets a voice. And since everyone has a voice, somewhere on the internet somebody is wrong right this second. They are going to vote for the wrong candidate or they don’t value your religious convictions or they think the Dallas Cowboys are a team worth supporting.

The chorus of voices is diverse and our opinions are many and yet it seems to me that we have lost the ability to disagree well. We insult and antagonize. We jump to conclusions and fight straw men. We even go ALL CAPS when feeling particularly saucy.

Every issue is now politicized and our ability to find common ground is stunted. We make enemies out of people who hold differing views or experiences. We dehumanize ourselves and others simply because we disagree. And amazingly, despite all the venom we spew and seemingly conclusive facts we vomit, we change not a single opinion.

We can (and should) debate and be passionate, but we need do it with decency and mutual respect. We don’t have to hate each other just because we don’t agree. We don’t have to make it our personal mission to correct or rebuke every wrong person we encounter.

It is time we recover some civility in the midst of disagreement.

Which means we need to hear the other side. Not just take in their words, but actually process what they are saying. Why do they hold the positions they hold? How did they come to that conclusion? What experiences have brought them to this point?

It is easier to just unfriend or unfollow people. It is easier to watch only the news channel that reports from our preferred angle. To dismiss alternate opinions and brush aside any information contrary to what we already believe.

The consequence is we end up living in an echo chamber where the only voices we hear are the ones that sound like ours. This makes us more polarized and deteriorates our capacity to understand people who think differently than we do. We are in trouble if we are so convinced we are right that we can’t even allow other opinions to show up in our newsfeed or on our cable news station. This is a weakness, not a strength.

If we are going to disagree well we will need to listen, actually listen, to what every side has to say. We will be better for it. Our own positions will be strengthened as we learn what others believe and perhaps our well-roundedness will gain us credibility.

If we are going to disagree like adults we will need to stop villainizing people simply because we don’t see eye to eye. I may disagree with you but it doesn’t mean I hate puppies or sunshine or your children. We can do without that nonsense. We may not come to the same conclusions about how taxes should be spent, but I don’t think either of us is trying to destroy our country.

Disagreeing with me doesn’t make you a Neanderthal/jerk/heretic/Nazi/communist/whatever-your-scariest-insult-is. It just makes you wrong. Using blanket statements and hyperbolic terms will get us nowhere. A person is not an idiot just because they have the audacity to disagree with you or me. Sitting behind our keyboards and slinging mud and insults at people we don’t have to look in the face is the cheap way out.

This is not how the real world works. We have to cooperate and live and work and study and worship with people who may disagree with us on any number of issues. They are our friends and spouses and bosses and neighbors. If there is no one in our lives who disagrees with us, we are missing out on meaningful relationships while at the same time not having any influence on people who see the world differently.

If we are to disagree well, we need to be realistic. We need to understand we won’t change everyone’s mind and agreeing to disagree is okay in most situations. We are not likely to convince a person that the positions they’ve held for decades are ignorant and no thinking person would ever come to such conclusions. Some opinions are incredibly complex and have been formed over much time and thought.

Be heard, be prepared (and be kind for crying out loud), but don’t expect a pithy statement or even a heartfelt plea to change someone’s mind. When is the last time an argument in the comment section convinced you that you were wrong? People have been arguing about the things we argue about for a long time. There are smart and caring people on many sides of many issues.

We can do better.

We can be humble. We can sometimes keep our mouths closed and fingers still. We can remember that compromise and finding common ground is not caving. We can think critically. We can allow for others to freely share what they believe. We can learn. We can listen. We can avoid attacking the other person. We can respect and love and esteem each other as fellow human beings. And still disagree.

Disagreeing isn’t the problem. The way in which we disagree will determine much of what we contribute to the world. Are we adding to the discord and division that needlessly rules the internet? Or are we voices of reason and people of respect and decency? Do we sow peace and love or discord and hate?

Let’s be right and wrong with a heaping scoop of decency. Let’s disagree well. Or at least better than we have been recently. Can we at least all agree on that?

Our Political Gymnastics

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Image Source: Club Penguin

When George W. Bush was in office he was harshly condemned from the political left and loyally defended from the right for his response to Hurricane Katrina. Instead of visiting in the immediate aftermath, President Bush was photographed observing the destruction from the comfort of Air Force One as it flew over.The image would be used to supposedly show the president was disengaged from the storm’s victims.

bush flyover

Jim Watson/Getty Images

Later Bush reflected on how he would have been taken to task if he had landed instead. He imagined his critics would have said, “How could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”

Which happens to be the exact reasoning people are using to defend President Obama for golfing instead of going to assess the current flooding in Louisiana. The tables have turned and it is the lack of boots on the ground that is now ridiculed from the right and rationalized from the left.

I don’t pretend to know what the right response is for a president in times of crisis. I don’t know when one should abandon a needed vacation or when the magnitude of a disaster requires the president’s presence.

What I do know is that we are overly willing to bend and maneuver our opinions in order to line up with the politicians we support.

We have become Olympic level gymnasts in our ability to backflip and contort ourselves into whatever position will most serve our politics. We jump and twist and twirl, though without any of the elegance exhibited by the Simone Biles of the world.

Had it been Hillary who recently showed up to Louisiana with a truckload of supplies the folks at Fox News would have called it a publicity stunt and the people at MSNBC would have skewered Trump for not caring enough to respond. Instead it is the opposite. Our opinions change based on which side did what.

If our preferred politician does a thing, we defend or justify their actions. “Give them grace,” we say. If a politician we don’t support does the same or a similar thing, we condemn or vilify their behavior. We cry, “Crucify them!”

This is why Trump backers can talk about Bill Clinton’s infidelity with straight faces and Hillary supporters can claim that Trump is out of touch with ordinary citizens.

We are so devoted to our political positions that we’ve lost the ability to be objective, honest, and consistent. We reek of hypocrisy. Our flexibility exceeds that of the world’s elite gymnasts and we are probably going to hurt ourselves.

Somehow we have reached the point where we are afraid to call out the behavior of the people we support politically. We are unable to acknowledge that people from our political slant make mistakes or that at times we may strongly disagree with them.

It should not be hard for us to say, “Despite supporting this person on a large percentage of issues, this decision was wrong.” Or “I will probably vote for this person, but the way they responded to this was not okay.”

Sadly, it has become unfathomable to admire the response or policies or decency of a person from the other side of the aisle. Instead we end up awkwardly swinging back and forth as if we are on the uneven bars. Our moral position is summed up as, “Today it is okay when my side does it, next time it will be wrong when your side does.”

If our moral indignation is determined by the person, not the behavior or belief, we lack core values of much substance. If the party name behind a politician is what determines how we respond to what is said or done, we lack intellectual integrity. When we have selective outrage and relativistic convictions we lose our credibility. There no medals for this balance beam routine.

There are certainly times worth calling out politicians. Let’s just do it with integrity. Let’s not excuse or dismiss behavior we wouldn’t allow in a person from a different political persuasion. Or condone behavior we opposed yesterday. Let’s not condemn things we have previously applauded or applaud that which we have previously condemned.

Let’s be fair and honest in our political assessments. And consistent and principled in the things we believe and the standards we hold our leaders to. And let’s leave the backhand springs and gravity defying stunts to the professionals.