Today was the first day in a long time that I spent more than an hour scrolling Twitter. Now I can't help but think about how everything is being politicized.
You can't have a thought or an idea that isn't turned into some kind of statement.
After that hour scrolling tweets, I started muting every one except those sharing jokes, light-hearted memes and animal pictures.
The tweet world is on fire with anger and indignation and allegiance to or protests about something. Anything. Everything.
What happened to giving attention to things of joy? Let's talk about gratitude. Why not focus every now and then on the good in people?
Have we forgotten to be kind to one group of people without attacking another group of people?
Have we lost the ability to protest without lying or exaggerating or being hateful?
Why can't I tell you that I am against something - and why - without you going ballistic or sarcastic or meme-hateful?
My late grandfather - who was born in 1897 or 1899 - disliked white people. He lived in West Texas. The whites in his town weren't crazy about him. My grandfather and these white people did business together. They bought, sold, and traded produce and cattle among themselves. They didn't like each other and some of them hated each other, but they had to co-exist.
I grew up an Air Force brat and had been raised among was exposed to a lot of racial diversity. This didn't mean there was no prejudice, racism, and ugliness. This just meant that my family learned to live in that environment. My father and mother were Southerners and had their own feelings about white people. But we lived in and had to co-exist with all types of people.
Somehow, I thought my grandfather's feelings about white people were different from my parent's feelings. As a young girl, I was fascinated by how open my grandfather was in his dislike and sometimes outright contempt of white people. He often made comments about white people - probably the same comments they made about him. He'd say things like "He's alright for a white man", "He hates negroes but he's fair", "That old cracker there...", and so on.
My grandfather and his white neighbors communicated civilly - for the most part. They coexisted fairly peacefully. It wasn't until I was older and wiser that I realized something. In my grandfather's mind, he and these white people didn't have to like each other but they had to somehow co-exist - he in his part of town and they in their part of town. He had goods and services they wanted and needed and they had goods and services he wanted and needed. Period.
Today, we have lost the ability to peacefully co-exist. I learned from my parents and grandparents that I don't have to like or agree with or approve of someone to co-exist with them. I will stay in my church, my beliefs, my morals, my politics, and my worldview and let them be in theirs. I will ride the bus with them and shop in stores with them without being uncivil.
If you ever read some of Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological stories of the "negro", you will see my parents and grandparents in them. My grandfather's childhood contemporaries probably thought of Heaven as segregated but they understood that Heaven was open to all who belonged there - regardless of race.
What we have to remember today is that, no matter how different we are, we all share this earth. I don't have to agree with you or like you to live peacefully with you. "As for me and my house" and as for you and yours. I won't support or uplift anything that is against my faith and beliefs but I won't be at constant war with you over our differences. I won't agree with you just to keep the peace but I won't go to war with you. Fighting with you won't bring you the Gospel. Agreeing with your sin won't benefit me. But we will co-exist because earth is all we have - until we don't.
When I say that we must co-exist, I don't mean that we must co-believe, co-agree, and co-sign each other. I mean that my only goal in life is to live for the Lord and let you decide who and what you want to live for.
I'm not going to let you force me to say that I am okay with your sin. Be gay, be polyamorous, be Satanic, be "moral" but Atheistic. Be whatever you will be but don't get mad that I am not cheering you on.
Let me be Christian. Hate me if you want but don't forget to look in the mirror when you cry "Hypocrite!" or call me close-minded or sheep-like.
If I call you a name for being ~fill in the blank~ gay, adulterous, non-binary, etc, it's a hate crime or considered shaming. If you mock me for being a follower of Christ, it's you simply "calling me out" or "canceling" me.
There is going to come a day when those who do not live for the Lord are going to go after those who do - even harder than they do now. I believe that the trend of politicizing everything and making small battles of everything is priming us for that big battle.
Anyway. I just wanted to speak on this while the thoughts were in my mind. Make of it what you will.
Peace
--Free
No comments:
Post a Comment