The eCrozier

We wish our national debates were nutritious and substantive, but we have an insatiable craving for insults to the other side. As much as we know we should ignore the nasty columnist, turn off the TV loudmouth, and stop checking our Twitter feeds, we indulge our guilty urge to listen as our biases are confirmed that the other guys are not just wrong, but stupid and evil.
-Arthur Brooks’ in his book Love Your Enemies: How Decent People Can Save America From the Culture of Contempt.

I’m occasionally on the receiving end of what Mr. Brooks writes about. After all, I regularly write about what’s happening in the world and how current events relate to our moral and theological grounding in our Anglican tradition of the Christian faith. For doing so, some of my fellow Episcopalians have not stopped short of claiming I’m “not just wrong, but stupid and evil,” as Brooks writes. These emails usually begin with: “I’m appalled! How dare you!” The emails usually go downhill from there where the writer makes all sorts of assumptions about me. Their emails (and this is just my hunch) might display more about their own character than they do about mine.

Others accuse me of inappropriately mixing politics and the Christian faith. The two, of course, can never be separated. Our faith, if it’s grounded in the universal truth of the Gospel, must shape our political choices since those decisions have moral and human consequences. The central claim of our faith is the gift of grace and forgiveness from God imputed by Jesus and his cross, so operationalizing that claim requires us to make choices, individually and communally. So, we always should ask: “What does Jesus’ grace and forgiveness look like when applied to” and here we can fill in the blank of the latest event or context. Extending mercy and compassion to others is the way we, individually and as a society, make manifest God’s grace and forgiveness in the world. But the converse of that is dangerous. That is when our politics shape our Christian faith. When we take that route, we’ll most certainly turn practicing our faith into just another act of partisan hackery; where we hold a political position and then find a way to justify such a position somewhere in the words of Jesus. We’ll end up, as Brooks writes, looking and sounding no different than that Twitter or TV loudmouth.

Yes, we’ll sometimes disagree on how mercy and compassion should be extended to others, but Christians should never be against offering mercy and compassion. That would deny our core identity as Jesus’ disciples. As we disagree then, we should avoid ascribing motives to others. We get ourselves in trouble when we assume we know what’s motivating another person. Just because a fellow Christian disagrees with us on a matter of public policy doesn’t mean that person is in league with the Devil. They may be trying to operationalize mercy and compassion differently than we are, but that doesn’t mean they’re against mercy and compassion. Let’s show some restraint; not quickly jumping to conclusions about what’s motivating others. And let’s listen to one another. If we take the time to do that, we may just learn more deeply what’s motivating that other person. And we can hear them say it in their own words.

+Scott