If you haven’t noticed, our culture is
very polarized these days. The level of hateful anger is alarmingly high.
Historians tell us this is not the worst it’s ever been in U.S. history. For
example, back in 1968 our nation was almost ripped apart, with an unpopular war
in Vietnam, racial strife, assassinations, and riots in the streets. And of
course, many, many years ago, in the 1860s, the nation was truly ripped apart
by the Civil War, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and entire American cities
destroyed.
So, I guess it’s reassuring to know
things have been worse in the past. Well, actually, no, it’s not all that
reassuring, since it feels like another civil war could begin at any moment.
Nowadays, one of the most severe
accusations you can level at someone is to call him or her a “hater.” But
ironically, the people who most often fire out this accusation are themselves
consumed with hate. The attitude used to be, “You don’t think the way I do, so
I disagree with you.” Now the attitude is, “You don’t think the way I do, so I
hate you!” There’s just way too much hate in today’s culture.
The recent obsession with anti-social
media makes things worse. Yes, I know it’s called social media. When Internet
platforms such as Facebook and Twitter were first invented, they were indeed
social—for about nine minutes. But then people realized these high-tech communication
networks could be used to spew venom toward large groups of people at once, and
ever since they’ve really been mostly anti-social media.
In times such as these, when hatred and
polarization are spiraling out of control, there is only one person to turn to
for advice. (No, I don’t mean the Tweeter-in-Chief, who is high on the list of
notable venom-spewers.) The person I have in mind is Jesus Christ.
Now, it’s true that social media was a
bit more primitive in 33 A.D. For example, the apostles often had to go days at
a time without a decent wifi signal.
During His amazing Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus offered this important teaching: “I say to you, love your enemies, and
pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44).
On first glance, you might think that
this is very hard to do. And then on second glace, you might think this is absolutely
impossible to do. We’re supposed to love our enemies?! We’re supposed to pray
for those who persecute us?! OK, I guess we can pray that our enemies get
struck by lightning or hit by a bus. That would be following Jesus’ command,
right? No, not right. When you want something bad to happen to someone, that’s
not praying for them; that’s cursing them.
There is really only one way we can
follow Jesus’ command and truly love our enemies and pray for those who
persecute us. We must focus on the fact that every single person on earth was
created by God in His image, and is very much loved by God.
That’s right, even that annoying person
who posts all those hateful and infuriating comments on Facebook was created in
God’s image and is loved by God. Most likely God is not thrilled with his
behavior these days, but God still loves him. And we need to love him, too.
Obviously, loving someone whose behavior
is rather unlovable is not an easy thing to do. But whenever someone says or
does something that raises our blood pressure, instead of formulating a witty
and nasty reply—which only inflames the situation—we must remember that God
loves that person. Is it smart to hate a person who God loves?
There are two other things we need to
do. First, be ready to invoke another of Jesus’ famous sayings: “Father,
forgive them for they know not what they do.” Empathetic tenderness is always a
whole lot better than seething hatred.
Here’s the second thing that must be
done: delete your Facebook account. No, really. Do it today! It may be the best
thing that ever happened to your soul.
No comments:
Post a Comment