Taking Sides

As I get older, something claiming to be wisdom keeps intruding into parts of my life where opinions are born black and white, demanding that the gray of discerning grace settle over outrage in a calming insistence that I wait.

So often, we hear of some horrible event, and it demands that we root for the victim and curse the perpetrator, as portrayed by the one relating the awful occurrence. We want to rush to seek out cause and blame, that punishment and retribution may be parsed out.

More often than I’d like to admit, the moment I close my mouth after its issuing of my ‘considered’ opinion, more information comes out that either reverses who was really the victim and perp or that both were one or the other. The egg on my face tastes vaguely of some monstrous prehistoric ostrich. My personal opinion is that it goes rather well with the boiled sock lint left over from having my foot in my mouth.

Wealth and Education

Yesterday, I gave a laundry list of issues affecting the justice of our education system as a whole. Some of them surprisingly are paradoxical. But the first one I gave was probably the most controversial, especially these days. I suggested that “money is the key resource that enables action in this world system. It is the most logical thing that more money should have the best opportunity for the best education, at least partly because the wealthy have the freedom of time and other resources to search out the best education for themselves or their children.”

Our culture has taken the Christian idea of charity and in many ways, perverted it. What is Biblically meant to be a duty of love toward God in voluntarily sharing one’s abundance with others has been twisted and yanked away from the giver. Now the recipient demands it on their terms and has partnered with the power of the State to enforce charity without accountability, even to the point of attempting to make those with means feel guilt for the fruits of their hard work and/or blessings.

Consistency

We humans are remarkable creatures in many ways, not all of them good. In particular, we have an amazing capacity to rationalize our morality, seeing others' shortcomings and ignoring our own. It is difficult to “judge rightly,” as the Bible calls it. (John 7:24)

Well targeted was Christ’s command to pull the log out of our own eyes so that we can see clearly the speck in our brother’s. We even judge each other on judging. We quote, “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” but fail to remember the rest of the quote that says we will be judged by the standard we use to judge others.

Polarization

When watching the news, it is increasingly easy to conclude that things are getting worse and doing so faster. This gives rise to a correlated increase in polarization in pretty much any area of life (politics, religion, education, the economy, sports, etc.) as people take sides on issues.

It becomes exceedingly easy therefore to develop an ‘us versus them’ mentality in each of these areas. We can even become so carried away that we start judging the status of someone’s salvation by their position, and concluding someone is lost because of decisions they have made.