I, Too, Have Climbed into a Dumpster

Angela Rubino and I have this in common.

I was retrieving a wedding cake topper that I’d accidentally tossed before a wedding reception in Northern Virginia. Angela Rubino dove into a dumpster in Rome, Georgia looking for evidence of voter fraud.

I easily found the cake topper which I unboxed and placed on the cake. And Angela drove home with two sacks of shredded paper which she stored in her garage hoping to find evidence of election fraud. She would need help taping them back together to uncover The Steal.

Please read this article by Stephanie McKrummen about one woman’s political journey which has led her to join an organization called Domestically Terrorized Mothers – among other things.

Suspicious of almost everything, trusting of almost nothing, believing in almost no one other than those who share her unease, she has in many ways become a citizen of a parallel America — not just red America, but another America entirely, one she believes to be awash in domestic enemies, stolen elections, immigrant invaders, sexual predators, the machinations of a global elite and other fresh nightmares revealed by the minute on her social media scrolls. 

As I write this, our nation is beyond culturally divided. We demonize each other, mock each other, accuse each other, and cancel each other. Some of us turn to God, including Angela Rubino:

“Sometimes I’m like, what if I’m wrong? It crosses my mind. Then I ask God: If I’m doing something wrong, please give me the strength to figure it out. Because I really want to understand what the point is. This can’t be what life is, that you get up and go to work and come home. That as humans, we’re nothing.”

After attending the first days of my denomination’s General Assembly last weekend, I heard other people express the same thoughts: “I ask God to help us. We’ve forgotten that we are created for more than work and worry.”

How can people of such different understandings of the world come together?

Part of the answer seems to be to lower the volume and calm the drama. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is quoted at the end of this article as saying that the establishment “hates us.” The author Andrew Klaven says “Leftists hate freedom.” Historian Miles Culpepper says “Conservatives hate democracy.” Normally soft-spoken adults spew hate for Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.

Hating each other is not the answer.

Seeing each other as human beings created in the image of God is the answer.

I don’t hate Angela Rubino. We have both jumped into dumpsters with purpose.

I want to understand her and show her what the love of God looks like. I hope she would show me what the love of God looks like, because I often get it wrong.

Do I believe there is evil in the world. Yes. Do I believe the love of God can conquer that evil? Definitely.