Reflection on Peace and Division

Originally published at Misfits Theology Club 

All I’ve been able to think about during this time are Jesus words in Matthew 10:

“Do not suppose I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law – a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”

The gospel of Jesus Christ does not make sense to everyone. It seems downright foolish – stupid and dangerous to many. The Kingdom of God is not well received by the majority of the world around us, maybe not by those who sit next to you in worship, maybe not by those who sit next to you at dinner.

Divisions are not really the issue. Jesus tells us the gospel is, by definition, divisive.

The issue is how we respond to that division. For some, they see Jesus’ talk of swords as allusions to violence. We plant our flag in the ground and defend it to the death, pushing away those who disagree and increasing the chasm that’s grown between us.

For others, the next few verses ring true:

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”

The other response, opposite, but equally problematic to violent self-defense, is denial. We pretend the divisions between us don’t exist. We avoid talking about them or looking at them. We carry on as if everything is fine, hoping it will be.

Neither of these responses reflect the gospel. We can’t pretend our divisions don’t exist. We must, indeed, plant our flag in the ground and hold firm to our beliefs. What we must not do, though, is allow those divisions to break the bonds of love that tie us together as people.

Yes, there is a chasm between you and me. It is a distance too far to cross and neither of us will give in. Our only recourse is to deal with it. Speak the ugly, difficult truth. Talk to one another. Listen!

It is only when we maintain these tricky lines of communication, these essential bonds of love, that we can begin to pull our two drifting sides back together. We can close the chasm that’s formed, not by violence, or belligerence, or denial, but through the hard work of love.

If we are committed to one another, to serving one another, to seeing and hearing each other as human beings – beloved children of God – then we can truly be about the business of making peace. Not a stalemate or a truce, but genuine community that’s won through the hard work of naming and facing our divisions.

Photo by Ian Cylkowski on Unsplash

Segregation

Throughout history "That's the way things are" has been the rationale - socially, religiously, politically - for all segregation at all times. It's been the watchword of conservative thought. I hesitate to use that term, because it has such modern political overtones, but I mean it simply as the perspective some have of maintaining status quo. It's the definition of "That's the way things are," expressing an essential right-ness in the construction of society.

It likely began earlier, but we see this come to the forefront most easily with the divine right of kings. The party line was simple: God wanted society to function in tiers, so that's why it does. Kings are at the top because God wants them at the top. The nobility, same thing. The poor are poor because that's where they belong. People are handicapped or troubled or blessed or in charge precisely because that's where they deserve to be. It's nature.

That's the way things are.

This is the notion of social stratification that the founders of the United States were so upset with. We look at class today as largely economic - rich vs poor - but in the past it was very much a social distinction. Some people were common, no matter how much money they were able to amass. George Washington and company just didn't like being treated as country cousins and did something about it.

That's why we don't see real egalitarianism in the Constitution or in early American practice. That was a fight for later generations. Early America was still find with the rich/poor dynamic, because, after all, people are rich because they're inherently better and people are poor because they're inherently inferior. "That's the way things are."

No matter how often or how many of us benefit from the dispelling of this dictum, no matter how often we prove that "the way things are" doesn't have to be, we always revert back to it once the argument benefits us. Those same poor men who fought to get the vote themselves shut out women and minorities once they had it. You even see these problems in modern rights movements - the LG don't always treat the BT as equal partners in the equality movement - because power and position is super attractive.

We've seen these challenges over and over again in history. Women are physically inferior, right? They weren't even allowed to run marathons until the 1970's, because people thought it would literally kill them, that their bodies couldn't handle the same physical strain as a man (and every woman who's ever given birth laughs condescendingly). There was all this pseudo science invented to prove that the poor had physical traits that lead to their station, that Africans possessed smaller brains and needed the "guidance" of slave owners and colonial masters.

I wrote on Tuesday about our inherent human desire for division. We love having two groups so we can show how the one to which we belong is superior. It's a part of who we are. This is how we justify it. We appeal to some overarching structure. Hey, those are the rules. I didn't make them. "That's just the way things are."

Not to bring too much God into this (although you had to know it was coming), but this is why the Christian faith consistently calls its adherents to identify with the outcast - if we are constantly viewing ourselves as the forgotten, oppressed, and despised, then we'll not fall victim to the lie of "that's just the way things are;" we'll always be fighting to include people more fully. This is the position of God's people - or at least it should be. Part of being a Christian means that "the way things are" is that all people are loved and valued for who they are, not for any sum of their characteristics. "The way things are" is that we're designed to love and care for others in self-sacrificial ways. We're not just called, but designed as humans to reject the notion of self-preservation and work for the good of the other. Always.

We should never be happy with "that's the way things are."

We've come up with lots of ways to explain it away, but the apostle Paul outlines it plainly in scripture with his notion that "There is now no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ." We've used even this to establish a status quo - saying our group, "Christians" is somehow superior to others. We can claim we're debating belief systems, but that's not really true - we're debating identities. You know why? Because Christians are just as likely to make the same claims to right and wrong about other Christian groups in the absence of a bigger "other."

I'm right and you're wrong - because "that's the way things are."

It's the ultimate boogeyman. There's no real defense other than patience. Those people who disagree say, "no it's not," but they have to wait until people believe them. It always happens, too. History is the story of progress on this issue.

As much as "conservative" was a messy word in the first paragraph, so "progressive" is here at the end. Progress simply means change - a challenge to the "that's the way it is," mantra. Political conservatives and political progressives can certainly be both progressive and conservative depending on the situation, because the desire for power and control knows no bounds - and the lot of the left out has no political litmus test. For ever person who says, "It was better when..." there is another who can say, "not for me."

It is the call to sacrifice personal privilege and ease that is so important and so difficult. We must always be crossing that line of demarcation, moving over the place of the "other" and seeing the world through their eyes. It is the only way for us, who are always in a biases position, to truly understand whether "that's the way things are," is really true.

It's the only way we can conquer this cycle of segregation and begin to find some semblance of the world as it really is.

I Have Seen the Enemy...

We are a divided people. Not just the United States, or any other nation, but humanity itself. We like our divisions. We like to have an adversary. We like the competition. We like to win.

We like to win so much that we're often willing to risk everything, including our own future, to do it. Our economy is messed up because the whole field of economics was once built on the notion that people will act in their best interests. We're smarter than that now - at least our economists are. The rest of us, though, we just like to win. Honestly, though, it's almost as if we like seeing the other guy lose more than we like winning ourselves.

It's political season here again (when is it not, though, really?) - which means all sorts of crazy, wacky things going on - largely because of our love of winning and preternatural desire for division. In the US we've really just got two camps - Red and Blue. Despite the problems it creates for us, both in the present and the future, we've decided to stick with this failed dichotomy for better or worse. We've found ourselves in a situation where nobody really likes Red or Blue, but both sides are too stubborn to give up and start over.

There is no bigger picture. Just the next poll. The next primary. The next news cycle. The next election.

In NC, we've seen the legislature double down on this bathroom bill that will almost certainly cost them the Governorship. Why do they do it? Well, the individual legislators who pass such bills are representing gerrymandered districts that largely keep their party in power no matter what they do. The real danger for these guys is someone attacking them from the fringe during a primary. So the GOPers have to run right and the Dems have to run left and the rest of the country gets left alone in the middle.

You're seeing it on the national level, too. Paul Ryan is trying his darnedest to be a good legislator. Like or dislike his policies, the guy really takes his job seriously and he appreciates the responsibility of governance. He reluctantly became Speaker of the House because his party was imploding and he's working hard to be a national leader. He spoke his mind about Trump, echoing what a whole lot of people think - that they're just not sure of this guy (like, as a human being, let alone a Presidential candidate).

This is what we want our politicians to do - be rational, think long term and inclusively. But, of course, his House compatriots are already running from him; the party whips - who are supposed to use those proverbial whips on his behalf - have distanced themselves and thrown him under the bus (or the Trump Train, as it were). It's for the same reasons as the guys in NC - they have safe re-election battles, so long as they don't appear to moderate, conciliatory, or, you know, distinguished, in their ideas.*

You can look at all this politically. The two party system leads to Gerrymandering, which leads to dysfunction and a run to the extremes. I don't want to diminish the real value that ridding ourselves of entrenched parties (and all the special favors they give themselves in the Congressional rule book) would do for our governance and piece of mind as a nation.

At the same time, this is really a deeper symptom of our desire for division, categorization - for winning. We like the way we think. Sure, some of us seek out critique and challenge from time to time, but usually it's in the hope that we'll strengthen our resolve and improve our ability to defend out own ideas. We like having predictable opponents, too - we like a familiar enemy, one who's weapons we know and expect, an enemy we don't have to pay attention to, so much as flick away like a mosquito or a moth.

In the end, though, despite our disagreements and engagements and downright fights, the real problems stem from inside ourselves. We're creating enemies where they don't exist and living into the false enemy narratives people try to pin on us. Yes, we've got different perspectives on things and those can't always be bargained or compromised into workable solutions. But we also lack a world in which there can be a winner. Short of genocide, you're not getting rid of disagreement. We still have to live together. Wouldn't it make sense to live in communication with each other? To work out our different perspectives on their own merits, rather than attaching them to demonized generalizations like Red and Blue?

Life is not a zero-sum game, neither is politics or society or really anything at all. A win-win scenario is not a mutual disappointment, no matter how much our political game wants us to believe it is. The same goes for the fights we have in churches and families, with neighbors and our spouse. No one can get everything they want, but no one would be happy if they did (despite dreams to the contrary). We need each other. We need our differences. What we don't need is the use of those differences to divide us. It hurts everybody and nobody wins.


We're all just people - unique, valuable, and defying categorization. If we'd just treat each other this way, I think things would be a good bit easier on all of us.




*Sorry to not be fair and leave the Dems out of this, but they're just not in control of enough stuff to really make a great case. They got the smoking age in California raised to 21, which is odd and certainly a liberal base-pandering maneuver, but, really, outside of RJ Reynolds, who's going to complain much about that one? It's also not going to cost them anything.