America is in turmoil. What's new? The most recent cause of division is a shooting in Florida. Everyone knows about it. I am not going to talk about politics or gun rights or gun control, etc. What I want to discuss here, if anyone still reads this (I understand that I haven't been very active in the past few years), is ideology. Beliefs. There are those who want to blame things. Those who want to blame the people who promote those things. They desperately want to point fingers at anything but the actual problem, which is in the heart of man. The cause of this shooting is not some big corporation that has millions of people in membership. The cause is not a government who failed to act on much evidence (although that may have been a factor). The cause of horrific acts of violence like this is something that those who do not believe in a biblical worldview cannot account for. It is sin. Guns do not cause people to want to kill people. Knives do not cause people to want to kill people. Bombs do not cause people to want to kill people. The evil in the heart of man is what causes a human to want to the lives of other humans. The problem is not those who oppose our own viewpoints. For someone to have another viewpoint does not automatically make them a monster. It does not make them a murderer. We need to stop dehumanizing our political opposition, because in dehumanizing them- in reducing them to their opinion- we make them less than human. And (I am paraphrasing Ben Stuart) when we have reduced our thinking about someone to one of their opinions, we can treat them as an opinion. When we have dehumanized someone, we can treat them as less than human. This is the problem with our social media saturated culture. We have begun to see people as words on a screen and have ceased to see our humanity. We have divided into our groups and villified those who aren't in our own groups. We have fallen into an "us vs. them" mentality. Out of this comes the "those who disagree with me are nazis" mentality. This is baseness. This is stupidity. It shows the lack of education, the lack of knowledge we have about who nazis were, about what nazism really is. As a society, we need to focus more on those issues which unite us, rather than on those which divide us. This is not a time for division and divisiveness, but for unity and peace making. We must learn again how to disagree with civility. We must learn how to listen to each other and how to discuss our differences with respectful dignity and not with angered hostility. It is a spirit of division causing the problems not people who think differently. Diversity need not divide us.
In closing, when you come up against someone with whom you disagree, rather than becoming angry with them for that different opinion, take a moment and listen to them. Be respectful of them, hopefully they will be respectful of you, and let yourself be challenged. Formulate opinions. Don't be reactionary. Be thoughtful. Obviously, this is a good way to approach situations, but there are times when this won't work. In those moments, don't enter into the insults and derogatory behavior. Walk away. Not in an arrogant "I'm better than that" attitude, but in respectful humility. Treat others as human, even if they don't return that kindness. But don't belittle them by saying that you are doing that, though, because that defeats the point.
Don't forget that we are in this together. We all want what is best for OUR country, so let's work together to that end. Not against one another.
Simeon
