In my last post I walked through the symptoms of our most pressing problems — but what are they, and how do we recover?
Let’s begin at the beginning: Our most pressing problem is us. You, me, we.
It’s wrong to argue that the natural world is perfect in every way, and human beings are the absolute worst thing for the planet, and everything in the universe would be ‘effin better if all the people were dead. Or at least, you know, THOSE people. That’s the basis for dissolution and disintegration. That is cynicism and wickedness which has only an appearance of wisdom.
It’s correct to argue that we are our own worst enemy when we behave like “sheep without a shepherd,” and “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” The historical and contemporary results of that experiment are plain.
How do we navigate this? I suggest there are two key ideas, one civic, the other a command from Above.
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The first words of the US Constitution are “We the people.” You and I must be mature, deep individuals who work as we. We can’t write off people who disagree over tactics and means when we have the same hopeful end desires. We should not break fellowship with other citizens over smaller matters. (There are, sadly, those who only want to destroy people and things, and they must be restrained and stopped. Being mature and deep does not mean being naïve. The Tao brings forward an important tension: avoid violence where you can, and do not be weak.) Our strength must come from sustaining commitment to one another and our governing principles as fellow citizens.
Let’s recover the spirit of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, spoken to an incredibly divided nation. We need the closing words: “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
The “win” comes if we will all sit on the same side of the table, looking at our challenges and opportunities together, and committing ourselves to work towards hope and a bigger future. Political parties and the news-tainment business in their default modes aren’t going to get us there because their incentive structures are built on angry divisions. You and I are unlikely to make sacrifices or even concessions to ‘enemies’ opposite to us, but we will for citizens on the same side of the table. We’ll know we’re making progress when we again speak about political opponents as “the loyal opposition.”
We must learn to dialogue and debate ideas again as a people, listening to learn and decide. This will be hard. We’ve lost the critical mass of citizens who know how to practice these things. The original Greek purpose of rhetoric was to enable communities to thrive. We must recapture the ability to wrestle with ideas and practices without violence. You and I must model the ability to differentiate criticisms of ideas and methods from criticisms of our fellow citizens.
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The second step to navigate forward is to obey the second most important commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (This is difficult to do if you don’t obey the most important commandment, but that’s for another newsletter.)
I brought this up in a conversation recently. Other voiced things I’ve also thought on occasion:
“It’s not possible to live with these people!”
“They’re hopeless morons.”
“Mr. Rogers didn’t prepare me for these neighbors.”
“He’s not my president, I didn’t vote for him.”
This is why the parable of the Good Samaritan is so helpful to us. The enmity between Jews and Samaritans, living under despised Roman occupation, feels contemporary to divisions and outright hatreds expressed today.
We like this parable in the abstract, but we want loopholes and exceptions in our day-to-day life. Read this slowly and prayerfully:
Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. “Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life?”
He answered, “What’s written in God’s Law? How do you interpret it?”
He said, “That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence—and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself.”
“Good answer!” said Jesus. “Do it and you’ll live.”
Looking for a loophole, he asked, “And just how would you define ‘neighbor’?”
Jesus answered by telling a story. “There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead. Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side. Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man.
“A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man’s condition, his heart went out to him. He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable. In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill—I’ll pay you on my way back.’
“What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?”
“The one who treated him kindly,” the religion scholar responded.
Jesus said, “Go and do the same.” (Luke 10:25-37, MSG)
It’s no accident that Jesus focused on neighbors, not abstract people groups or classes or nations. Neighbors. Neighbors are people living in and adjacent to our sphere of influence, even the ones who irritate us, ignore us, or are at least as selfish as we are. Also notice in Jesus’ parable: the Samaritan became a neighbor, even though he wasn’t one before.
It’s possible to get to know neighbors as glorious individuals, wondrous yet loaded with eccentric foibles and faults. It’s difficult to make flesh-and-blood neighbors into abstractions which cannot feel and think for themselves, and whose only purpose is to service your preferences.
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Practice the civic “We the People,” and love our neighbors. I treasure the blunt feedback I hear from one of my friends. “Glenn, I love ‘ya, but you’re so damn impractical.”
In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo wishes the One Ring had never come to him.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
The choice is ours.