Politically Impatient

I am beginning to loathe the fall.  This is awful because it is traditionally one of my favorite times of the year.  I got married in September, I love to watch the leaves change, I adore the return of football, my sons loved marching band.  It's just full of all kinds of great activity, and it leads up to all those wonderful holidays.   Typically the weather cools off, but is still delightful.  It's the return to programming everywhere, I get to see people I missed all summer.  What is not to love about that?!

I will tell you!  It is the return to politics.  It is the billion political posts that drive me just about around the bend.  It is the right posting articles about the evil of the left, it is the left posting articles about the evil of the right.  Everyone finds the very thing that will bring enlightenment to everyone else, only it never does.  It simply provokes an article from the opposing party pointing out how unenlightened the first post was.  No one impacts anyone else, except to have them dig in deeper to the position they were already holding.  As to the undecided, they are deciding they don't want to be like either side, and they opt out. 

Already showing up in facebook the battle is launching, and this is not even a presidential election.  There are people I begin hiding because I can't bear to read their quote from one source or another.  You only need to read where it comes from to know what it says.  Can't anyone see this doesn't help anyone but the people who already think what you do?

I am sure I am the nut about this.  Others seem to enjoy the battle, working hard for ammunition to beat the other side.  Lord knows there are industries that thrive because of the on going war.  There has long been the belief that one party helps to hold the other party accountable, but I wonder how much this holds true.  So much in the world has changed, so much intolerance of intolerance, I wonder if we are ready to be people who reclaim some real core identity instead of people who are defined by opposition.

The Church is certainly experiencing a season where we are being called to reclaim our purpose and our heart.  We spent much too long fighting with the opposition on every topic from the way we baptize and who can serve where, to what color our carpet would be.  We were so opinionated and deeply entrenched that the world decided they could be spiritual without us.  In order to be the place that disciples are made, we must return to our first love.  The call Paul gave to the Philippians in Chapter 2 still stands:

 

Therefore, if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort in love, any sharing in the Spirit,

 any sympathy, ² complete my joy by thinking the same way, having the same love, being united, and agreeing with each other. ³ Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. ⁴ Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others.

 

While I am not suggesting that the world of politics pays all that much attention to Paul or the scripture, I do believe it would be a real blessing if the Church could show the world how much better it is to be for something instead of against something.  What if we stopped trying to compete and started complimenting?  What might happen if we made room for difference, and still stayed true to our own beliefs?  What if instead of becoming a big blob of nothing, we became people who are so comfortable with our identity, we didn't need to make others look the same to belong? 

 

Just a thought.  Until then, perhaps I better avoid social media under after election day.