Fair warning: if you tuned in to today’s post with hopes of finding the answer to why COVID-19 exists or who’s received a divine endorsement in the upcoming presidential election, many thanks, but you’d best find another resource. The Intramuralist has no idea, and we will not begin to exert any opinion veiled as truth.
I’m more taking a pulse of how we navigate through truculent times. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (nor even a college graduate) to discern that 2020 has been a tough year. It’s been full of challenge, friction, and uncertainty.
So what’s God got to do with it?
Allow me to immediately assert that I’m a pretty imperfect follower. So I will humbly rephrase… what’s God got to do with me? … or how we each individually handle it.
In these crazy, contentious times, in America’s melting pot, what’s God got to do with me right here and now?
The vast majority of Americans believe in God or in some higher power, accepting such faith makes far more sense than to believe we somehow accidentally, unintentionally came into human existence.
According, therefore, to Judeo-Christian ethics, God sets the standard for justice, righteousness, love, law and order. He sets the standard for kindness, goodness, gentleness and truth.
That then should affect how we treat each other.
When we demonize or denigrate the different — when we mock or marginalize the one who experiences life differently — who looks, loves, or votes in a way unlike us — we are implementing some other standard. When we suggest that there is only one right way to look, love, or vote, we are implementing some other standard. Even when it’s hard.
Let’s, though, make it a little harder…
Maybe we don’t demonize or denigrate. Maybe we’d never mock or marginalize, especially on social media. But inside, we just think they’re stupid.
Ok… maybe not stupid… let’s go with totally misguided.
… erroneous, ignorant, confused…
If I believe that only Democrats or Republicans are full of integrity…
If I believe that only black people or white people have something to learn or do…
If I believe only Trump-lovers or Trump-haters are imperious…
If I believe only someone else…
It’s always easier to enact “the only’s,”especially when it applies to someone other than me. That’s where as an imperfect person of faith, I must honestly ask how I’m treating another.
And the simplest, most convicting answer is a basic, universal teaching…
“Why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye?”
So what’s God got to do with me now?
It means I focus more on me than you. It means I wrestle with the logs in my own eyes rather than on the specks in another. It means I deal with the ways I am not loving, I am not extending kindness, and how I justify withholding justice, honor and respect from some people.
In other words, it means I don’t denounce the inconsistencies in anyone other than me.
Because if I’m honest, I recognize inconsistencies in me exist.
Respectfully…
AR