EDITOR'S NOTE: Since becoming the clergy leader at Faith Lutheran Church in Wolverton, Minn., in November 2017, I've written a monthly column for our church newsletter. This column originally published in the November 2018 FLC Newsletter.
A couple of weeks ago, while scrolling through Facebook, I ran across a post on which a group of friends from my younger years were debating politics. The post grew hostile in a quick hurry, and you could see that the discussion was no longer a debate, but had become a virtual shouting match, with each person ramping up the vitriol with each comment.
My first reaction was to jump into the dialogue and offer up a statement that called for peace among this group of people who at one time in our younger days wouldn’t have even know the difference between the two political parties. The horror of witnessing the rants being thrown down made me sad, and I had an inexplicable visceral reaction to it all.
Part of me wanted to offer up some sage advice that would make them all think about what they were doing, and end the siege of words. … And part of me was too horrified to act. Paralyzed into nonaction, you might say. And ultimately I didn’t do anything. ... I figured my best course of action was just to leave the post alone, and kick some dirt over it, much like a dog does with his “business.” … That was some important advice that someone who is very important to me once gave me. And I think in this case, it served me well.
But then the news about the anonymous pipe bombs being mailed to political leaders and entertainers broke this week, and this Facebook post came rushing back into memory as a very specific example of how in this overheated national climate this type of terroristic act could happen. Pipe bombs? Over political differences? … Is this really what we’ve become, I’ve wondered this week?
I pray that it is not.
However, I admittedly do not know where we go from here other than to focus back on Jesus. I don’t see the answer in either political party, as the political process is fundamentally designed to create winners and losers, and as soon as you have one set of people who have “lost,” how can you possibly find peace or agreement or compromise? … If this were ever possible -- and, I wonder if we just didn’t previously romanticize the past in Washington -- I don’t think the answers were found in the political process.
And so I go back to the two great commandments that Jesus reminds us about: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind," and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." … You may have determined in the time that we’ve known each other that my pastoral call is based on this scripture. And you’d be correct. In fact, I’ve described to many that this scripture sums up my pastoral call.
And during this most derisive time, I hearken back to Jesus’ commandments, because if we are truly listening to his words, we can’t possibly be trying to shout down all of those whom we politically disagree. After all, if we truly love the other, that love can’t possibly be displayed by throwing vitriolic language at the other, regardless of how “right” you think you are.
I ran across this saying this week, and I think it is very appropriate: “We all make errors in our theology; you and me both. So my recommendation is to error on the side of love. Why? … Because … God is not doctrine. God is not denomination. God is not war. God is not law. God is not hate. God is not hell. … God is love.”
And this saying represents the only way I see out of our current national state. Until those on all sides of the political divide, start obsessing about Jesus’ commandment to love thy neighbor as much as they obsess about their political party being “right” and/or “winning,” we are just going to have more of the same. … Election after election we are going to find ourselves in this very same predicament, regardless of who is in office.
But this effort to spread God’s love can’t just stop at politics, either, because the political spectrum is not the only place where we’ve dug in our heels and decided that being right is more important than simply just being love. … We do it in debates about the church or in arguments at home or in our relationships with coworkers and colleagues. These are just some of the place where we try to shout down the other. … In fact, it seems that we’ve lost the ability to first love thy neighbor -- whomever it may be, including those of a different political persuasion -- before we allow what they believe in or who they are color our thoughts about them.
There’s no doubt about it: We have our work cut out for us to find that common ground again. National relations are strained to the point that political activists are willing to mail pipe bombs to the people with whom they disagree! And so the initiative can’t start soon enough. The healing must begin; we must focus on Jesus’ two great commandments; and come to the determination that if we are truly practicing them, then the current national mode cannot continue to exist at this state of hypertension.
This month I encourage you to go and love. Love with all of your heart. Love the Lord God. Love Jesus. … And love the neighbor.
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