For some time now, I have labored to find my voice. No, that's not quite right. Labor implies a level of effort resulting in a visible outcome - a product if you will. It may be more accurate to say that I've been living in a stunned silence over the past many years, observing the increasing vitriol and Pharisee-ism on ready display in our ever-increasing modes of social interaction. To publicly offer an observation, even in the interest of true inquiry, is to unleash a flood of presupposition that quickly renders the attempt at dialogue unfruitful and unpalatable. This, even among "friends."
I remember many a spirited discussion, in a once blue-couched room in a building near a campus I love, where issues of politics and war, religion and theology, love and sin, scandal and football were hotly contested. And yet, in the aftermath, almost without fail we would walk out en masse for chicken fingers or a slice or two at a local pizza buffet, our fellowship and camaraderie never truly threatened. Perhaps that's too rosy a picture, but nevertheless it generally rings true to my recollection.
As a believer, as one who believes that Jesus Christ died for my sins and rose again to sit at the right hand of the Almighty, I find myself wrestling with the question of how to speak into this age - or if I even should. How does one go about being a "peacemaker" where even the most mundane of issues turns into a rhetorical battlefield and everyone nearby a self-styled knights-polemic? How does the Church speak into this age where few lend any credence to its once-perceived authority, especially given that its members wield the same weapons against one another daily, in full public display?
Here's what I know, and what I believe. You and I are not going to agree on every facet of policy or politics, nor on intricate matters of theology and denominational order, nor on a host of other issues. We're just not. Does that make us adversaries? Does that make us enemies? I submit that if we succumb to such an outcome, we thus succumb to the decadent spirit of the age, rather than the Spirit of the Living God.
There is a hymn from my childhood that begins, "Blest be the tie that binds / our hearts in Christian love; the fellowship of kindred minds / is like to that above." Would that we be less passive and more active in this. Can we not commit to being the agents of this blessing, caretakers of this holy bond without regard to whether our paths diverge for a time, or whether we find ourselves with opposite views of one or more issues of the day, the circumstances of which are bound to change tomorrow?
I harbor few illusions, but I still choose to hope. I know I am deeply flawed, but perhaps even a flawed messenger is capable of speaking truth. To borrow from a somewhat more contemporary verse, "Let it begin with me." Amen.
