Deep Breath

If you think Sean Hannity is the only media person who speaks the truth, please stop watching him for the next four weeks.  If you think Rachel Maddow is a genius, please stop watching her between now and the mid-term elections.  The chasm between political sides is killing us – spiritually, emotionally, and perhaps even physically.  I’ve heard of people literally getting sick because … Kavanaugh/Ford/Collins/Booker/Graham/Feinstein.  Many Americans have simply stopped watching the news according to my unscientific/random surveys among friends and colleagues.

At the risk of people thinking I’m saying that I appreciate Nazis (“very fine people on both sides”) what I’m actually saying is that we have got to breathe and stop demonizing each other.  Among the comments I’ve read/re-read in the past week:

• Senators who don’t oppose President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh are “complicit in the evil.”  Cory Booker
• “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry left-wing mob.” Donald Trump
• “Republicans are the Taliban of the USA.”  James Hodgkinson who shot Republican Whip Steve Scalise in 2017
• “Trump that bitch!” T-shirt vendor who sold out of shirts with this saying in Cleveland before the 2016 election.
• “The time for endless delay and obstruction has come to a close.”  Mitch McConnell on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination
• “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.” Mitch McConnell on Merrick Garland’s nomination

Both sides have demonized political enemies.  Both sides have seemingly lost our minds and our perspectives.  We need to step back and take a deep breath and …

• Stop expecting the worst of each other.
• Try to listen to another perspective.
• Seriously do. not. watch. Fox News or MSNBC.
• Read opposing views to supplement reading what we already believe.
• Try to see – and this is really a hard one – the face of Jesus in every person we meet.

What’s especially hard is that trying to see someone with the eyes of Christ (or the face of Christ) makes no difference if we are in heated conversation with someone who mocks/denigrates/bullies people.  How do we see the face of Jesus when someone is openly shaming people?

I frankly don’t know.  How do we forgive those who shame us over and over again no matter how disrespectful we might be?  Again, I don’t know.

This will take divine and miraculous intervention.  But we must try to take the high road.

Image of that high road.