Our national conversation has left me exhausted!

For some time, I’ve had this growing sense of news and social media fatigue. In recent weeks, that feeling has come on like a steamroller.

Dare I catch the news? Open my Facebook? Read the various writers landing in my inbox? Talk with anyone beyond merely polite speech?

I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted.

My goal in blogging is to produce a weekly post. So far, I’ve written two for September 24th and this is the third. The other two may never see the light of day. I’m not struggling with writer’s block, but with how to communicate in this time fraught with tension.

The national conversation morphs daily. The rhetoric flows like murmurations – hundreds of birds flowing through the sky as if one huge object. You have no idea where it’s headed, but it is as beautiful to behold as it is intimidating to would-be predators.

Except that with our national conversation, these murmurations are anything but beautiful. And we are preying on each other. The discourse darts this way and that, everyone chasing everyone else’s tail. Perhaps it is more like wildfire than swallows in flight, the way this darting and chasing threatens to burn the whole place down.

Meanwhile, even as the heat escalates, it emits little light. As with a black dwarf in outer space, can anything beneficial come of it?

I find myself wanting to open meaningful conversation through my weekly posts but worry I will unleash a fresh torrent of angry crossfirings instead. These firings often come from both sides, though I’m not sure I’m always on either side or even somewhere in the middle.

At times, I am reminded of what it was like to be a scrawny, all-thumbs teenager playing in the church softball league. Was I put in right field to be kept out of harm’s way or to be where I could do the least harm? Either way, I’d find myself observing the teams playing as if from afar – watching team members, who were all one in Christ Jesus in church, get mad as hornets at each other on the ball field.

Regardless of where I stand on today’s issues, the missiles come in from all sides. They may be aimed at the “other” side, but I wonder, Will I become collateral damage?

Or worse, will people only hear what they want to hear and miss my point altogether? A lot of talking is going on these days, far less listening. It’s point and counterpoint all over the battlefield. Forget parsing of nuances and extending the benefit of the doubt; winner-takes-all at all costs is the aim in this do-or-die game.

I fear for our nation, on the cusp, as we are, of our 250^th anniversary. Will our constitutional order hold? Will our moral fiber endure? Will our e pluribus unum survive? As is often speculated, perhaps the greatest danger we face is from within. Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Just maybe, the only enemy who will defeat us is ourselves.

I don’t mean I fear that our fellow citizens on the other side of the political spectrum will destroy us. No, I fear accusations about “the other side” are what are destroying us. Instead of collectively engaging and drawing in, we are tribally pushing and shoving ourselves right over the edge.

Contrary to what some people are saying, however, this is not the most polarizing time our nation has found itself in. We’ve been to this cesspool of nonengagement more than once, most notably during the mid-19^th century when we almost did fall off the edge. Seventy years before that, President George Washington had feared partisanship as the nation’s greatest enemy, even as other founders stirred the passions of partisanship.

And yet, expressing differing opinions is good, including wildly differing ones. Even opinions that risk bringing us to blows. The founders recognized this. Thus, they gave us the First Amendment for our guardrail. The founders knew that putting the brakes on speech – along with religion, assembly, the press, and political activism – would be antithetical to the health of the nation.

Let 100 flowers bloom, they said – well actually, it was Chairman Mao who said that. Still a noble idea in line with our founders’ vision. Just don’t trample those blooming flowers as Mao did.

Our nation’s founders didn’t get everything right, but they did open the door for future generations to try. Including our own, if only we have the courage to heed their lead. That Pogo quote above? It was, in fact, a play on words uttered by American Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry during the War of 1812. Perry’s more famous quote? “Don’t give up the ship” – another wise word for our time.

As much as I am concerned about our nation, I fear more for the church, specifically the church in the USA. I am confident that the church worldwide will survive and move forward. It always has. It may get off track from time to time. It may die out at certain points and specific places. As it did in China in the 14^th century and Japan in the 17^th. As it did in Turkey in the 20^th. As it is threatening to do in parts of Europe in the 21st.

But somehow the church survives and marches forward, continuing to fill the globe. Currently the church is strongest – and thriving – in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.

Meanwhile, as goes our nation, so goes the world, both good and bad, in far too many cases. We have a track record of exporting great products – like freedom – as well as awful ones – like greed and pornography. Will we also export our own religious temptations?

The church here in the US suffers from two great temptations. One is the urge to turn on our own. Mirroring the worst in our culture, we produce litmus tests galore in efforts to exclude fellow followers of Jesus from entering the pearly gates – or at least our church doors. We allow culture wars, politics, and race to separate us from each other. We balk at who else is trying to sit at our table. We live in religious ghettos, rarely venturing out to listen to our spiritual kin.

The other great temptation the church in the US faces is depending on political power to achieve spiritual victory. Political power has long been an attraction for the church throughout its history, no less the American church.

Colonial Puritans in New England imitated what the Anglicans had done to them in the Old World, seizing political control and persecuting and banishing dissenters. Over time, mainline Protestants and Catholics have had their share of falling for this worldly entrapment. Now in recent years, evangelicals and Pentecostals have been in the news for succumbing to the lure of political power. 

Some evangelicals and Pentecostals have been influenced by the teaching that Christians have a mandate to establish control over various areas of human life and endeavor, including the government. While I do believe Christians are called to engage in politics, government, and civic affairs, attempts to blur the line between faith and politics distort the church’s God-given mission, turning the church into yet another partisan movement with a poorly disguised political agenda.

As I said, various faith groups have struggled with this temptation. But I am most concerned with how this temptation has infected my own camp.

Born and raised Pentecostal, I know Zechariah 4:6 by heart. For years, my own denomination, the Assemblies of God, had it emblazoned on the cover of its magazine, the Pentecostal Evangel: “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.” As we used to sing, quoting Psalm 20:7, some trust in chariots and others in horses – the weapons of human power – but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.

That is how we believers are to set out and win the minds and hearts of people and, in turn, transform nations. Not with political or military might, but with the power of God’s Spirit.

Instead, we resort to seizing the reins of political power to wield our influence and control. We engage in dirty politics and fight fire with human fire. In the most childish of ways, we excuse our own carnal actions and cry, “But they do it!”

And our God, who we confess is far above all earthly principalities and powers, looks down, and asks, “Seriously?”

I hear God raise that question of rebuke with the most compassionate of smiles and am reminded that we were made for a higher calling. We, who serve this God who transcends all, need not resort to carnal weapons. We can take the high road, lower the heat, and let our light shine. We do so as we humbly engage our fellow human beings, confident we require no pretense, no end game of entrapment or “othering” others.

So, responding to God’s invitation in Isaiah 1:18 to engage in dialog and reconciliation, let us come and reason together. The verse calls us to engage with God – that is the start. But it also speaks of us coming together collectively as “we” God’s people. We dialog and reconcile together.

The next time someone says something that sets you off, pause, take a breath, and seek God’s face. Then, as you have opportunity, ask them to explain what’s got them stirred up – and why.

May I start? What’s got you stirred up, my friend? And why?

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