WHO IS WILLING?

Some cheer. Some mourn. All of us sense that this is just the surface of things, as the flames of St. Louis ignite dry timbers everywhere. Anger, injustice, helplessness, and bewilderment fuel the fire from all directions, and the rising roar reveals gaping wounds in our nation.

Mesmerized by the flickering screens, courageous behind our usernames, we tweet our loud opinions. We choose sides, imagining ourselves as one of those with the nerve to act for glory or destruction. Semi-dormant revolutionaries awaken inside, and the cause feeds a hunger that’s been suppressed in our daily struggle for survival.

We are made for a mission.

And nature abhors a vacuum. In our post-modern reverence for the separation of church and state, we have marginalized faith. We have so carefully protected our children from any hint of “imposing our own beliefs” and so meticulously attempted to abolish any absolute truth that their souls starve for passion and purpose.

Youth crave a vision. While their physical strength peeks, their spirits yearn for a reason to use it, a conviction, a movement to match. We have let them down.

St. Louis indicts us.

While my pale skin color might disqualify me from fully grasping the African-American experience, I, too, am a daughter of racism. As a young boy with Jewish/Gypsy blood in his veins, my father escaped from Nazi-infested Prussia, surviving for years in a refugee camp. His scars of post-traumatic stress are part of my inheritance.

An incessant need to understand the psychology of both the oppressor and the oppressed was the gnawing hunger of my teen years, and it drove me to the sad realization that every soul possesses capacity for both. People on both sides were convinced of the righteousness of their cause, often willing to sacrifice their personal conscience on the altar of the “higher” calling.

I no longer believe the real problem is person-versus-person. “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone” (John 8:7)

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

Who is willing?
Who is willing to lay down the easy weapons of accusation and extend redemption instead? Who is willing to eliminate the hatred within and choose acts kindness instead?

Unless reborn by the breath of nail-scarred Love, the cry for justice breeds cruelty. Without awareness of our own capacity for prejudice, the righteousness we long for becomes corrupted by the rotting stench of self-righteousness. Resentment begets resentment.

Yet, the pain is real – the need is valid. So what do we do?

1. LOVE OUR ENEMIES.
CNN called it the “the picture we all needed.”
The top image image was taken at the beginning of the rally by Johnny Nguyen and shows Portland Police Sgt. Bret Barnum, a 21-year veteran, clutching 12-year-old Devonte Hart, who held a sign offering “FREE HUGS.”

Because it captures our basic core longing, the image went viral. Who comes to your mind when you hear the word “enemy?” How can you reach toward them with reconciliation? Are you willing?

2. FOCUS ON THE HIGHEST CALL
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)

Throughout history, we have experimented with societal systems that would achieve “utopia.” None have succeeded, but those that valued ideology before individual became by far the most barren. Visiting Romania just months after Nicolae Ceaușescu’s assassination was a chilling encounter with a people who spent decades attempting to erase any sense of individuality. The blank stares on the streets sank our hearts, as we felt their palpable, deeply engrained fear of being noticed.

In contrast, Jesus’ love is thawing generations of suspicion in a little paradise in the Ucayali jungle, and the resulting joy of the Peruvian children thriving there is contagious and invigorating.

3. ACCEPT THAT PERFECTION WILL ELUDE US HERE.
Too often, idealists become tyrants by allowing perfectionism to become a feverish ambition that isolates them further and further from reality. From macro-scenarios of empires to the micro-settings of one-on-one relationships, accepting the brokenness of well-intentioned imperfection frees us from incessant fault-finding so we can see and celebrate the good in each other.

The thirst for justice testifies of a reality that is unattainable here. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” ― C.S. Lewis

And the Voice from that world whispers into ours to reach higher – to not be consumed by the fiery hatred that won’t drive out the darkness, though its heat may warm us in the moment. Otherwise, we will wake up tomorrow surrounded by ashes, with the weapons we despise in our own hands.

The warnings of Dr. King, Gandhi, and Solzhenitsyn harmonize with the Holy Scriptures, urging us to “above all things have fervent love for one another, for ‘love will cover a multitude of sins.’” (1. Peter 4:8)

“By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16)

Who is willing?