what i really want to say, a lot these days, is how can you be a Christ-follower and talk that way, think that way, believe that way, act that way? but then those questions should really be asked of myself first, shouldn't they?
as angry as i get at what has become of the evangelical movement in our country; as confused and as frustrated and as sad as the facebook posts and comments about our president and about guns and about immigrants and about insurance and about the poor and about homosexuals and about marriage and about love make me, i can't bring myself to say much about any of it.
i drive an hour each day to work, and every day on the way in i think about all the things i'd like to say to the church in america in 2013, and every night on the way home i say something else. i do this every day, in an attempt to exorcise the demons of my frustration, to calm my jangled nerves, to at least make things right in my head.
i'm so angry sometimes that i want to argue, and in arguing i want to be right, but more than that, i want them all to be wrong. but then, quickly and quietly, the spirit of God tells me that being right and others being wrong isn't what i'm called to.
why do you call anyone good, why do we call anyone right?
what does being right do for the hungry and the cold and the naked and the oppressed and the attacked and the forgotten? how many bullets won't be fired because i was right on facebook?
yet aren't we called to speak truth to power, aren't we called to raise our voices for those that can't, or in the place of those that won't, or to be heard above the din of the voices raised out of fear or hate or confusion or a thirst for power or money or control?
i know less today than i did yesterday, and less more than i did one, two, five, twenty years ago.
but this i know, this i know still: we aren't called to bear arms so much as we are called to bear each other; we are not a people of rights and freedoms, we are a people who are bound to the law of love; we are not our own, we are not self-sufficient, and we are not as strong or right or wise or powerful or successful or happy or limitless as we think we are. we are people who were dead, lost and alone and (seemingly, anyway) irrevocably without hope. we have been brought to life, not by the amassed, deployed forces of heaven, but by the death of the only One who could have genuinely and literally and rightfully killed them all and let God sort them out. we are a people who have been called to forsake whatever rights man's government may seek to apportion and to instead bind ourselves to the simple notion that the other is more important than the self.
the best thing i know: he is right, and he is making all things right. it hurts, yes, and he is not working in this world the way i think he should, but he is right, and it will all be well.
all manner of things will be well...
I have these same thoughts! well said!
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