I’ve been watching The Bible mini series on the History Channel this month and have been surprised by how Biblically accurate it is (for Hollywood, at least), but also how entertaining I’ve found it. And I like especially like the way the are portraying Jesus – loving , compassionate, very human but completely God.

But there are some things I’ve noticed they are leaving out – the hard things He said. If you read the Gospels, you will quickly see that not only could Jesus draw a crowd, He knew how to scatter one even quicker. He’d say things like “It’s harder for a rich man to go to heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle”. Really, Jesus? Is that any way to increase charitable donations? Telling the man who wants to bury his father (who actually probably wasn’t even dead yet) to ” let the dead bury their dead” – not many pastors would let that one fly to a potential church member on this Easter Sunday. And telling people that unless you “eat my flesh and drink my blood” you cannot be His disciple, before we had ever heard of communion or the Last Supper? What happened to the Jesus in those Sunday School illustrations – you know, the one looking anemic who always seemed to be holding sheep in His arms?

To be fair, a 10 hour mini series on the entire Bible cannot show every single episode in the recorded life of Christ. They are left with showing the highlights, and most of the statements I mentioned were minor dust-ups involving lesser characters. But it is clear that Jesus did not make it as easy to follow Him as we often do.

Truth with a little “t”
This completely flies in the face of our popular culture which says that being tolerant is to never offend anyone, and to never believe our faith is “the Truth”. We prefer to deal in “subjective truth” with a little “t”. In contrast, the Jesus of the Bible often seems like He is actually trying to offend us with many of His statements, but that’s because we are no longer comfortable with someone confident enough to demand commitment from us. We live in an era where to believe anything and be completely devoted to it is seen as extreme…even dangerous.

We are cautioned about religious extremism in what has been done by those who pursue hate, but ignore the good done by those whose complete devotion pursues self-sacrificing love. Sorry, but it is simply not the same thing to blow up people in the name of God and to give your life FOR people in His name. If someone insults Jesus, I’ll pray for them – but insult the icons of other religions and you may have a price on your head. Both are extreme, but one is extremely evil while the other is extremely good.

After Jesus made His most polarizing statements, He would often explain the true meaning for those who bothered to hang around afterwords. But He didn’t run after the ones who left. Perhaps His goal was to distance those who wouldn’t love Him enough to look past the initial statement to ask Him for a further explanation. Just like us today. When Jesus won’t sing the tune our current culture is playing, we don’t stick around long enough to find the Depth of His Truth. We bolt for the door, holding fast to our own more convenient truths.

Intolerant Tolerance
I really do believe we need more kindness in the world today, and I desire for people to become more tolerant of each other and our differences. But tolerance is now defined as rejecting Absolute Truth – it’s all a matter of subjective opinion. It is into this breakdown of common sense that we hear Jesus say, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life – no one comes to the Father but by me”. How incredibly intolerant of Him! Doesn’t He know all the people He’s offending?

Most people are fine with whatever you want to believe, as long as you don’t expect them to believe it too. It can be some truly ridiculous belief – “the moon is made of cheese” – as long as you make the caveat that it is “just your own belief system, and all other beliefs are just as valid.” But if beliefs conflict with each other, how can they all be really True? If A is true and is not equal to B, how can B then be true? This is the nature of truth – it is incredibly, offensively exclusive. And if Jesus says He is the only way to God, then He is either very wrong or else all conflicting beliefs are wrong.

If I came upon you lost in a forest with nightfall fast approaching, you would immediately be asking me for directions back to civilization. I then would assure you that while there are many paths winding deeper onto the forest, I knew the way out. Many other explorers had made their trek into the forest, only to die there and never return. But when you asked me, “Which one is the way out?”, what if I said to you, “Oh, don’t want to offend the memory of those who created the other paths! I’m sure one is just as good as the other.” You would probably threaten me until I pointed out the one true way out, right? Exactly.

Just Who Does He Think He Is?
To our opinions and preferences, Jesus boldly draws a line in the sand and says, “Make a choice”. If someone on the street made such a bold statement to us, we’d rightly ask him what right he has to make such an exclusive statement. To that question, Jesus only need point to an empty tomb and a cache of eye witnesses who went to their deaths all claiming that Jesus conquered the grave and rose on the third day. Of all the other explorers, He is the only One who knows the path out of the grave. All the rest died lost in the forest.

Religious re-imagineers may try to explain the resurrection away as a strictly “spiritual event” – that Jesus didn’t physically rise from the dead to prove His deity, but it was a symbolic resurrection. The only problem with this is that I am not interested in being only “symbolically resurrected” after I die and then going to a “symbolic heaven”! No, the Bible is a book set amidst a definitively historic backdrop, and Jesus was part of that history. He was not talking in the context of symbolism and religious double-speak. He was saying in effect, “I am God, and if you truly embrace all that I am and all that means, you will have eternal life”.

The resurrection of Easter Sunday is God’s line in the sand for humanity. It sets Jesus apart from all other prophets and priests, all whom still reside in their tombs. It says that He alone has the right to speak for the Father, because He was not just a man like the other prophets. His resurrections sets Him apart and renders invalid all other claims to Truth. While you may choose to believe it was some grand hoax, He does not give you the option of lumping His teaching with that of the other entombed prophets of the ages. He has drawn a line in the sand for all time. Love Him or leave Him, but never take Him for granted. In the coliseum of history, He truly stands alone – loving and self-sacrificing, yet demanding we make a choice.

It’s Easter Sunday, and 2000 years ago Jesus asked you to follow Him on the path toward eternal life. So which path will you follow?

But the point I’d like to make is that Jesus was trapped in a circumstance that did not have an easy way out. Of course He had free will to choice not to go forward with the crucifixion, but His love for us and obedience to His Father made that impossible. So God’s Son took the hard road, the road less traveled. And for those of us who follow Him, why should we expect anything different?

No Way Out
There is a prison that can trap the followers of God, though we don’t like to admit we’re really trapped. Its walls are reinforced by the responsibilities of family, income, & employment. They keep us trapped in circumstances that seem endless, torturous, and worst of all, purposeless. We pray repeatedly for deliverance from the circumstances, or at least for a hint at “why” God is choosing to trap us there. Because we know that in the end, it is God who has chosen to leave us in that cell – a place with no light, no escape, no evident hope.

And though for others there might be some easier way out, our commitment to God is part of what traps us there. Another wife with a loveless marriage would simply leave, another employee would just disobey his bullying boss and try to get away with it – as Jesus discovered, it’s only human to look for a short cut out of our prisons.

But then there’s the problem of God’s will, and the boundaries He’s clearly given us. These boundaries often seem petty and impersonal while we are in the midst of the prison. There are some “keys left in the cell door”, but they are ways out that would be displeasing to God and hurtful to ourselves and others. And the truth is there are lots of Christians who just go ahead and break out of those boundaries God set around us. Their reasoning seems to make sense: they say things like “surely God wants me to be happy”, and “I’ve got too much self-respect to put up with this kind of treatment”, etc.

So with those phrases on the tips of their tongues, they go ahead and take the easy way out of the cell – they break out using their own devices. And knowing that God offers grace and forgiveness, they don’t worry about the fact that they “got out of jail free” without waiting for God’s timing. They figure they can just ask forgiveness later for anything they need to, but now they only care about changing their immediate circumstances. I mean, if God’s not going to fix this, then I guess I need to handle it myself, right?

Murphy’s Law
That’s a stark contrast to the picture of Joseph from the Old Testament. As you read his story – betrayed and sold into slavery by his own brothers, falsely accuse of rape, wrongly imprisoned – it sounds like a terminal case of Murphy’s Law. However, even though Joseph never did anything to deserve the bad treatment he received, he never lost faith that God would make it right and he never resorted to methods that lacked integrity. And that’s because ultimately Joseph knew that it was God Himself who led him into that cell.

It proves Joseph trusted in God, but it also shows that he understood something about the value of integrity. He knew that in this world, you will be treated unfairly. In this world, liars will often win and the wicked will prosper. And despite all our attempts to guarantee our security, every single thing we have can be taken away from us and you may not be able to do anything to stop it. And often, even God won’t step in… at least, not when we want Him to.

But out of everything people can do to you and take from you, of all the various ways they can mistreat and abuse you, the one thing they cannot steal is your integrity and relationship with God. And that is the key to why we don’t take the short cuts or the easy way out. We must believe that God is ultimately in charge, and our present circumstances are in fact a set-up for a greater reward.

Waiting on Sunday Morning
Jesus also waited on His Father’s timing, until He had defeated the grave and held the keys to death and hell in His hands. And if we truly want victory – God’s perfect victory – we must wait as well. One day He Himself will come to our cell door, turn the key and set us truly free.

And don’t worry – He promises we won’t have to wait forever. Like the old song says, “He may not come when you want Him, but He’s always right on time!” So it may be Friday right now in your life, but just wait. Sunday’s coming…

I took my beautiful and charming wife out last night to see Les Mis at the movies. It was her first time, my second. So here’s the scorecard: she didn’t shed a tear…and I used up all the napkins from her popcorn! With every noble act done in God’s name on the screen, I wept like a little girl. If I ever go to see it again, I’ll just embrace my inner-Oprah and take a beach towel with which to wipe my face.

Not everything makes me blubber like a baby, but one thing that always does is seeing an elderly man helping his wife into a wheelchair. Living here in Florida, that’s not an uncommon scene. And for me it brings back memories of a painful but meaningful time in my marriage.

About 15 years ago, my wife had a bad car wreck. She was driving home from church on Sunday around noon, and lost control of the car. She over-corrected, careening off the rode and rammed full speed into a tree. She was driving my daughter who was around 5, and my son who was a few months old. Oh, and one other detail – she was pregnant.

I remember coming upon the scene and seeing my family laying in the grass of someone’s front yard, with paramedics working on them. I remember the chaos, the uncertainty of what to do. I remember the huge tree they hit, and the mark our car left on it. I remember our van, and how the middle from section had compacted in on my wife’s right leg. She didn’t even realize her ankle was crushed as she frantically tried to get to our kids, now laying a ways away in the grass.

I remember pacing outside the emergency room, as teams of people attended to my family. I really didn’t know what to think, and I didn’t want to stop long enough to feel anything. But I remember the face of my pastor when he walked down the hall toward me, and how I buried my head in his shoulder when he embraced me.

I remember spending the next week in the hospital, going from one floor to the next to check on my wife and kids, all in separate rooms. I remember holding my little daughter’s hand as she lay in children’s intensive care, her head wrapped and her face swollen. They said she had a hematoma on her brain, and there could be serious complications. My infant son was probably in the best condition, suffering only a broken foot.

But my wife was hooked up to machines in the maternity wing, as doctors tried to treat her while monitoring our unborn child in her womb. I spent the night there for the biggest part of a week, rubbing her limbs as they ached, calling for the nurse, hopping from floor to floor.

Thankfully, the hematoma on my daughter’s brain went away without surgery, my son was healing fine, and the doctors determined my unborn daughter was healthy and unaffected by the trauma. However, my wife’s leg would never be the same. We entered into a long and painful recovery process at home, with the extra burden of taking care of our kids. I wasn’t sure how I would meet their needs, care for my wife who couldn’t even make it to the bathroom on her own, not to mention hold down my ministry job.

Two wonderful things happened during this time. First, I learned the power of the church. People I hardly knew from our church started showing up to clean the house, mow the lawn and care for the kids…not to mention the tons of food that was brought to our home every day without fail for more than a month. After surviving several tough ministry experiences in the past, God used this painful circumstance to bring healing to our hearts because of the love of our church. Once again, we felt the love of God’s family joining their arms around us to meet every challenge. It was an experience that to this day defines for me what a real church should be.

The other wonderful thing was that my wife and I, though always in love and committed, became inseparably welded together by the experience. Caring for people’s physical needs has never been my forte, but I became devoted to her care during this ordeal. Let’s just say there’s a bond that comes from emptying someone’s Porto-Potty for a month that nothing can sever! To this day, her recovery period has been the defining moment of our marriage. If there was ever an chance we might drift apart, God drove a stake through its heart that month. My wife still deals with pain every day from that accident, and I grieve when I see her suffer. But in both our memories, that horrific accident is the most sacred, God- breathed experience of our lives.

The lesson we learned in all of this was the things that are meant to destroy you are also the greatest vehicles of God’s power in your life. But the difference is all in how you respond. When I see my wife suffering today, I suppose I could curse God for allowing it to happen. I could be bitter when I see the scars on her legs and the atrophy caused by an ankle that no longer bends. But instead, all I want to do is sing praise to a God at the top of my lungs for putting us through such a painful trial, knowing it caused Him great pain to watch us endure it. His fathering heart wanted to keep us from all pain, but He knew that pain is often the most effective teacher. So He allowed it, and our lives were forever marked…and forever blessed.

But I see people around me who have gone through painful things – some much worse than ours, and some not half as bad. And yet they respond to these trials with bitterness and anger, resenting their victimizer as well as the God who would put them through it. They demand answers, ask why them, and resent those who seem to have it easier. They pity themselves, yet refuse to acknowledge that the rest of the world has its own scars and wounds as well.

As a pastor, I’m occasionally on the receiving end of their anger, since some see me oddly enough as God’s earthly stand-in. Some of them write in with bitter or cynical responses to my articles, their anger oozing from their words like an infection. That’s OK though, because I can tell how deeply they’ve been hurt by someone or some thing in the past. I wish I could help them see how much they are hurting themselves – how their hateful responses to others don’t hurt people as much as it is destroying their own souls. In an attempt to lash out at life for revenge, they only self-inflict new wounds in their own hearts.

And I worry for them, because I wonder, “How much more pain must you endure before you learn the lessons of compassion, mercy, and forgiveness? How much more hurting before you lose your stomach for guile? When will you put down the verbal knives you use to strike at others, and learn to love again?”

When I watch the old men helping their wives in and out of the car or into the chair at the restaurant, I see fellow travelers who’ve learned beautiful things from some of life’s hardest lessons. There is rarely any bitterness or guile in those couples, but instead a treasuring of every moment they have left together. They are know how to live every day as if it were their last, because they know everything they have now is a gift and not “a given”.

As that worn out cliche goes, every moment we have is indeed a gift – that’s why we call it “the present”. While I’m handing out Hallmark Card epigrams, try on the one about choosing to let struggles make you “better instead of bitter”. It may sound trite, but it’s actually the truth. We all have a choice, and that choice makes all the difference.

Every time we’ve returned to that area of the accident, I’ve looked for the mark left on that huge tree. Then one year I noticed the tree looked like it was dying, and eventually someone had to cut it down. Seems like both my wife and the tree had received trauma, but one endured it to thrive while the other one died. Same blow – different response.

Through chaos, pain and struggle, our marriage received the greatest gifts life has to offer. Those gifts are waiting for you as well, if you will only decide to cash in your resentment. In exchange, you might just receive a wheelchair-full of gratefulness when you have learned to embrace the “better” over the “bitter”.

When I got up to preach this past Sunday, I was prepared and ready. This was in spite of the fact that my wife had inadvertently taken my notes when she left the platform to work in our childcare after the worship music was over. So after my daughter quickly retrieved the notes, I was ready to roll…I thought.

To lead into my message on the essentials of the Christian Faith, I had an introductory thought about how the church in America is declining. I had planned to point out the sad state of how attendance in churches is dropping and how our influence on the culture is waning. So I mentioned that, and was ready to move on to the rest of the sermon.

Then it happened…I suddenly began to feel an overwhelming sense of sadness and grief over where the church is today in our society. I became overwhelmed by not only our decline nationwide, but about the effect it is having on our country. And while people are screaming right now about our nation’s economy and how important the upcoming election is, I talked about how that problem is little more than just a symptom of the more central cause.

If our nation’s economy is a symptom, then the lack of spiritual commitment in the church is the disease.

I truly believe that the ineffectiveness of our nation’s churches is a great part of our struggle as a nation. I know it may sound a little self-important, but when one of the chief proponents of “doing good” starts circling the wagons, we’ve got a problem. And as the grief of that realization took hold of me, I lost most of my sermon and something else unscripted started gushing forth from my heart…

I look around at most of us who call ourselves Christians and I wonder if we really believe this level of mediocre Christianity is really what God expects of us. And I look at what most churches (including mine) spend the majority of our time doing (buffets, social gatherings, inward focused events with little impact the community around them), and frankly I wonder what we’ve been smoking!

How did we ever believe that this sad, anemic excuse for getting together each week was all that God meant His Church to be?

When did we become convinced of the absurd conclusion that Church should be all about simply providing us with a “social outlet”?

When did we ignore the life-changing ability we’ve always said God gave the Church, only to give up on that and put all our faith in political activism?

Tell me, did Jesus really die so that we can have spaghetti dinners and church softball leagues, while people around us are hurting? Really?

Did Jesus really die for our spaghetti dinners?

By the way, I have no problem with the occasional spaghetti dinner or softball game – churches need to have fun too. But as long as we keep the focus on ourselves and our entertaining diversions, we will miss out on the great mission for which God created the church – to radically change the world through the power of God’s love surging through the dynamic Gospel of Jesus Christ.

As long as we continue to waste our time on things that we were never called to do in the first place, we will not have time, energy or money left to do the things that are our true and noble mission.

I know Christians who are meeting together now to pray for the outcome of the election. Please don’t misunderstand me – there is nothing wrong with that and many things right with it. But the problem is that many of these Christians have put more faith in the power of one political candidate to change the course of our country than on the Spirit of God working through His churches.

Honestly, if our churches really tried living out the mission for which they were truly called, we wouldn’t be so worried about this election. If we were actually changing the world around us with the power of the Gospel, our society would be vastly different and better.

The Church as “Christian Fallout Shelter”

We have no excuse. God gave us the tools to transform our society – not through political action only (though we all need to be involved and vote), but through the supernatural, life-changing power of the Gospel. But instead, we have made the church into a “Christian country club” of sorts, much like the ones sitting in the middle of our gated communities. We have pretended that God’s main goal for the Church was to make us happy and fulfilled, not realizing that true happiness and fulfillment would only come through knowing God and doing the “good works” for which He originally commissioned us.

So we now act like we don’t understand why the church has lost most of its influence in society. Many Christians see the church as a “safe place” much like the old backyard fallout shelters of the 50s, to which we can retreat and hide with our families. And like a high school kid that blew off studying until the night before the final exam, we are scrambling now to hustle up some quick prayers asking God to have mercy on our nation.

Seriously, it’s all way too little, and I hope not too late…

Post Traumatic Sermon Syndrome

I’m afraid my sermon this past Sunday became a little more like a prophetic rant: something akin to Howard Beale’s rantings in the classic film NETWORK, where he tells everyone to run to the window and yell out “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” My congregation seems to have survived it OK, although they may have gone home to pray more for their pastor than for the country.

I got home after the service, my thoughts still brewing about what had happened to me. I wondered if I had made a fool of myself. Then after lunch, I remembered that my neighbor had just undergone open-heart surgery. I felt bad because I didn’t realize it until we noticed his grass getting a little higher, and my wife had talked to his wife and found out the scoop.

As I thought about the condition of the American Church and then the condition of my neighbor, I wondered what I was supposed to do about each of them. Then a thought hit me. So I walked to my garage, gassed up my lawn mower, and started mowing my neighbors grass.

However, I suddenly realized that mowing grass on Sunday was something I was always taught good church folks didn’t do. So I paused for a second to think that one over, as I released the automatic safety handle and let the mower engine die.

But that’s exactly what Jesus said the problem is, isn’t it? …that self-righteous people get more focused on keeping the rules than in helping others…that pastor’s too often ignore being “fishers of men” (outreach) and instead opt for simply being “keepers of the aquarium” (people-pleasing). As the Christian musician Keith Green said, “The world is sleeping in the dark, but the Church just can’t fight…’cause we’re asleep in the light!”

So with that thought, I revved the motor back up and started mowing. Because that’s the way the Church is really going to do it, whenever we actually decide to wake up – one life at a time, one good deed done without expectation to be repaid, multiplied a million times over.

Preach your own sermon!

True, it’s not that much by itself, but I believe that will be the way we save the world and our country. We’ve tried to do it with political movements before, with mixed results at best. Maybe one day we will get back to doing it the old fashioned way – kindness, goodness, service, compassion.

I ended up preaching two sermons that Sunday – one with my mouth, the better one with my lawn mower. So whatever tools you have, if you really want to be an agent of positive change in this world, pick them up, find the needs around you, and start preaching your sermon.

She blurts out, “Oh earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you! Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it…?”

The stage manager’s response is at first a plain spoken “no”…but then he adds, “…the saints and poets maybe – they do some.”

Well, I’m certainly no saint, and I’m a very poor poet. But in the wee hours of the night, when all is quiet and still, there are some rare moments of clarity. Those are the hours when I am usually unable to sleep, fretting over some newly discover problem or roadblock to my plans of happiness. Some barrier than seems insurmountable, some conflict that appears devastating and capable of destroying all that is important to me.

It’s then that I am occasionally hit upside my head by God and struck by this thought: “that sound you hear – that’s your own breath. And as long as you still hear it…as long as you’re alive, there’s still hope.”

It’s funny how melodramatically we look at some of the insignificant things that happen in our lives. Some perceived slight, some problem with our job, an as-of-yet unrealized goal for our lives…these are all the components that soon we will be barely able to even remember, much less understand what was so worrisome about them.

And yet, we sit in a room with our family…people who we understand will only be with us for a short while, and we ignore the gift we have of them simply being around us. Yes, we fret to the point of desperation about things of absolutely no value, all the while ignoring people who soon we will be missing for the rest of our lives. We toss friends out of our lives with ease for some slight, forgetting how blessed we are to have even known them.

We forget all the lonely people sitting alone at home each night with no one to talk to, and all the widows staring at a TV screen in assisted-living facilities…while we stare at out own TVs and ignore our loved ones sitting just a few feet away.

We sweat the small stuff and ignore the big stuff. Wonder happens all around us – we roll our eyes at the predictable beauty of a sunset, forgetting that its beauty is partly because of the melancholy that it will soon be gone.

What is this cruel trick that life plays, that we do not see the value in things until they are taken from us?

But remember, it is not yet too late. You still alive, you are reading this…

That sound you hear – that’s your own breath. And as long as you still hear it…as long as you’re alive, there’s still hope.

So…breathe. And live.

However, the thing that touched us about Mayberry was the love shared by the crazy characters who lived there. It was an idea that I’m afraid we have all but lost — “community.”

People in Mayberry seemed to really care about each other, in spite of their idiosyncrasies. Even the town drunk was a welcomed guest in Sheriff Andy’s jail, and was always treated with the utmost of respect.

Ah, that word “respect.” Aretha Franklin sang it, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.” That’s where I’d like to camp out for a while today.

Chicken Sandwich Wars

This past week our nation was divided over a seemingly innocent item: a chicken sandwich. A few weeks back, the head of the Chick-fil-A restaurant chain said in an interview that he believed in a traditional idea of marriage, as defined as “one man and one woman.” This was merely his opinion, and did not reflect any policies on hiring or service at the restaurant. If you’ve ever dined at a Chick-fil-a, you know you’d be lucky to find any company that treats all their customers with more respect. But in response to Dan Cathey’s statement, some have called for a nationwide boycott of the restaurant.

So let me see if I understand this properly: in America today, to simply disagree with someone else’s lifestyle or opinion is in effect discrimination, hatred and bigotry towards them personally, even if you treat those same people consistently with respect in daily life and business?

This whole debate has put me in a particularly uncomfortable position for two reasons. First, my wife works as a marketing director at a local Chik-fil-A restaurant. I know how honorably CFA has treated my wife, and in turn I know how honorably she has treated every customer, regardless of their lifestyle or beliefs. The second reason this has been tough is, to put it bluntly, there are people who are protesting CFA now whom I consider my friends — people I love and care about dearly. And as a pastor, I minister to people who are on both sides of this issue.

Switzerland

Please don’t misunderstand: I am not suggesting that we should all act like a cultural Switzerland, trying to remain neutral fear of hurting feelings. I actually have strong opinions — on politics and on standing up for what’s right.

I believe Dan Cathey has a right to his opinion, and it is also the defintion of marriage to which I hold. It has been the position of many cultures for centuries now. So to express shock and surprise when we show support for this very basic idea seems to me rather disingenuous.

Every one of us has the right to support causes in which we believe. But too often both sides have thought that “taking a stand” meant being rude and disrespectful to the other side. Remember Ephesians 6:12 tells Christians that our war is “not with flesh and blood,” but is with spiritual forces working behind the scenes to wreak havoc. But by attacking people instead of ideas, we have arrived at the current cultural stalemate where no one can even express an opinion without being personally attached and targeted. Unfortunately, through Facebook and the media, I have seen some Christian brothers occasionally doing this along those on the other side of the issue as well.

“If you think this is bad, just wait ’till November!”

With the upcoming election, the rhetoric on both sides is getting more and more extreme. Some conservatives refer to any liberal as a “communist” and some liberals are calling anyone expressing conservative views a “Nazi.” So I’m wondering … if we are throwing out terms as polarizing as these even before the first gavel of the conventions has sounded, where do we have left to go from here?

So here is the most pivotal question: Is it impossible for us as neighbors to “agree to disagree”? Are we so completely intolerant of other’s beliefs that we must make everyone who disagrees with us our enemy? From all appearances this week, that is the case … but I don’t believe it has to be that way.

If we keep pushing away those with whom we disagree, we will never see the likes of a Mayberry again. Because in Mayberry, people knew how to “disagree agreeably”.

Agree to Disagree?

This is a social grace we have all but lost. It is a concept for which our children have few examples left. But for Christians, I believe showing respect toward those with whom we disagree is our duty. The Apostle Peter put it simply: “Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the King.” (1 Peter 2:17)

I believe we need to invoke what I like to call the “Thanksgiving Dinner principle.” Every year when your relatives came together for Thanksgiving, there were several family members who had a wide array of opposing opinions on various issues. But for the sake of the event, there were some subjects you just didn’t discuss. You may think that suppressed our individuality, but for us the reason was clear–our relationships were more important than our personal views or political leanings.

Let me put it simply: people > opinions and politics < people.

We need to remember something that Mayberry tried to teach us — that all people have value. People don’t always agree, but isn’t that what we’ve said makes America great — our “diversity” and “freedom of speech”? Or do we only support speech that agrees with ours? Are we only for cultural diversity as long as it’s not too diverse from our own?”It’s a Wonderul Life” — or at least it could be

When I think of how America could be, I go back to another classic about an idealized town: Frank Capra’s film “It’s A Wonderful Life.”

That great scene at the end where everyone comes to George Bailey’s rescue, that is what we are missing — “community.” Those people were all of different religious backgrounds, nationalities, and probably different political parties as well. But they all respected each other, partly because George Bailey had shown them respect.

But George’s nightmare vision of a Pottersville where he’d never been born is exactly where I think our country is quickly moving. We are becoming coarse and hardened toward our neighbors–most of us don’t even know the people who live next door. We are hiding behind our house walls and often our church walls as well, trying to keep this frightening world from getting in. We are scared, suspicious and jaded toward those with whom we refuse to seek “common ground.”

Perhaps we all need to take a step back from our political rhetoric. Maybe we should take our stand more in the voting booth and a little less on Facebook. Perhaps we should focus more on where we agree than disagree. And maybe we should embrace people more strongly than we embrace our opinions.

If we would do these thing, our country might just start to look a lot more like Mayberry and Bedford Falls again … and a lot less like Pottersville.

“…when it stops doing that for which God created it.”