Melting Pot?

There is clearly a problem. Some people want to call it “racism,” but I also think that’s too small of a label to give it.

The country is falling apart, which is interesting because I’m not sure it ever was together. America was not built, like other places, on generations of tradition and culture. Instead, a native culture was almost entirely flushed out of this land by the incoming of every other culture on this planet—some involuntarily. The effect was massacre, hierarchy, class division, and, obviously, racism.

So now we have this “melting pot” but I’m not sure we can call it that or ever could have. Because to melt would require a give—a surrender of individual self into the whole. So we attempted the “co-exist pot”. Which is well and good enough in theory, but we are also flawed human beings who can’t quite shake the notion that whatever we hold individually is better than, or simply means more to us than, being part of the whole. We are a nation of all colors, all religions, Democrats, Republicans, and pretty much everything in between. And we are at each other’s throats.

People are scared. People are dying.

Why?

Because there is no “melting pot” and there is no “co-existing”.  There are scared, confused, and desperate people who have forgotten the one thing that makes us all exactly alike and equal.

We are all made in the image of God.

I honestly don’t know just how much change that truth can invoke. Most people like to leave God out of the conversation and there’s so much noise going on right now, I’m not sure if anyone can hear the truth if they tried.

It changes things for me, though.

The people who are dying and killing, insulting and taking offence, accusing and afraid, are all people God has designed and loved and intentionally placed within range of one another. If we all take half a second out of our struggles and conversations and complaints and arguments and battles to think, “God loves this person” maybe things could be a little different.

I’m pretty far removed from the battle-front. Maybe my position would be different if I or my children were in danger because of our race or my husband could likely go to work every day and not come home. I can say thought that even if those things could justifiably change my position, I don’t think that they should.

You see, what I have seen is the internet where people say a lot. From the heart the hands type. People are angry. People are terrified and people are fighting as fast as their little fingers can go. And I haven’t seen many, if any, who are taking a moment—or hell, you’re on your computer or your phone you can take longer than a moment—to think.

Sure they may take a while crafting their perfectly sharpened words, and honestly, I don’t blame them. What is social media for but sharing your opinion. But there lies the problem. Yours is an opinion. Wherever you come from, you have an opinion and perspective uniquely built on your experience and beliefs. This is mine.

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.”

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

“The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”

This is God’s world, and these are God’s people, and each of us is just a part. When one person or one group ignores these truths, it gives cause for others to do the same. The cycle, as cycles do, continues. We forget to have humility, to address the conversation in meekness. We think things are too far gone for forgiveness and we are too afraid to love.

Yes, for God’s image to be enough to hold our pot together, it would require the majority to believe in the Bible as a standard of truth.

I don’t know if we can expect everyone to believe that.

But I can believe that. And you can try. And we can all throw a little compassion into our facebook updates, our conversations, and our actions. And we can all quell a bit of fear by remembering our TRUE governing body now and again (after all, the people we were given as options to help us fix our crumbling society were like trying to choose between paddling your boat with a penny or a button and I am really glad to know that they are not the final authority, no matter what happens). We can remember that everyone is someone’s son or daughter, and more importantly, that they are GOD’S son or daughter.

They can take away your guns. God is in control.

They can elect an insect as president. God is in control.

They can never be brought to justice. God is in control.

They can take your life. God is in control and he commands that you love one another and that you not be afraid.

Yes, I am pissed off at all the crap that is going down around me, across the country, over-seas, in the government, and I want it all to stop. I begin to wonder what kind of twisted horrible world my kids are going to grow up in. I wonder what kind of men their world might influence them to be. I wonder who I may have been in different circumstances. My heart breaks for EVERY life that has been FOOLISHLY thrown away, taken, or corrupted.

And I try to remember who is in control. Who I can trust even when I don’t understand. And who loves all of those broken people and more than I ever could. Yes, he even loves Hillary, and Trump, the criminals, the politicians, the arrogant, the foolish, the racist, the hateful, and the scared.

He loves. He tells me to love. And he tells me to do so without fear, without condition, even at the loss of my own life to a terrorist, even in the face of disrespect on the internet. 

The Problem

I think anyone who is still reading this was probably present for the faith-crisis/temper-tantrum I had a couple of years ago—you know, the one where I wasn’t sure God cared about anything at all and was ready to dissolve into a puddle of naturalism and self-pity? 

In those days, I noticed God telling me to, “Stop the cliché Christian crap and get down to the real questions!” 

And when I finally told him, “I’m not sure if you really love me,” it was like he laughed in a burst of triumph and said, “Now we’re getting somewhere.” 

In those days, I couldn’t reconcile the greatest problem that has ever faced Christianity and I was scared. Well, I’m also one of those wackos who really tend to run as fast as I can toward whatever is scarring me—not always for the better, but this time, it worked out.

So now I ask, “Why did that happen?” “How did you allow that?” and “What are you gonna do about it?”

More often, I ask God, “What do you care about?”

Is it human happiness? I really don’t think so, based on the vast majority of truly Christ-following people who, while content or joyful, have lead very difficult lives and live in very difficult circumstances. God feels our pain with us, but there is no denying that, at least some of it, he doesn’t act to stop.

Is it people doing the right thing? I can’t say so. Surely he WANTS us to do the right thing he TELLS us to do the right thing, but he doesn’t step in and control that all the time either, so I have to say it’s probably not the most important thing to him. 

To answer the question, I have to look at where God’s actions point to his priorities—the things he has done something about, even when he didn’t stop that little boy from being taken from his mother or that girl’s father from getting sick. This is what I got, whether it would or should comfort me in the face of the greatest personal tragedies imaginable, or if it comes across as insanely insensitive, I’m sharing it with you now. God cares about…

Justice. He says justice will always be done, that it belongs to him.

Redemption. It is the ultimate plan put in place, the reason the Book was written, the truest and most completely spelled out of God’s intentions. Everything will be redeemed—even when all we can see is a world run by evil men that will only be getting worse.

Love. It’s what he is, it’s eternal, it’s unconditional, no matter what horrible things happen. NOTHING can separate us from God’s love, even when our children go hungry and our homes are destroyed. That seems impossible to our minds. It seems sick and deranged to call this God love, yet he IS and the proof is in the two items above.

Not good enough? Could anything really be to the grieving heart? Can anything satisfy this broken world on a mission to blame and punish?

I believe any suffering, any pain, can be endured if only the sufferer were truly convinced of the realities of Justice, Redemption, and Love. That anything men or nature can do to us is a blink, a shiver, a hiccup that God has covered, because—here’s the reality—our lives were never about us. We were never MEANT to be comfortable. We were never MEANT to store treasures. We are meant to know our creator, to love the unlovable, to forgive the unforgivable, to thrive in the wasteland, and we CAN. And our God IS good ALL the time, not because he “blesses” or protects all the time, but because he establishes justice. He exists as love. And he generates redemption.

It’s easy to say, “That’s easy for you to say,” but I wasn’t the first to say it. Jesus did before he suffered and died for us out of love, to allow justice to exist alongside mercy, and to facilitate our redemption. The apostles said it too and they were all brutally murdered for it. Peter was crucified UPSIDE-DOWN. Christians and, before they existed, God’s people, for centuries gladly proclaimed the name of God knowing that happiness and comfort were never their purpose and weren’t the goal.

To live is Christ. To die is gain. How we have FORGOTTEN! How we blame our creator for the mess we made of the world. How we cringe away from the monsters when he tells us to love them and to remind them they are men. The legions are many. They prowl like roaring lions, and yet, we only see what is clear to our eyes­—that men are evil, that people do wrong, and we don’t often enough ask “WHY?” “Where was the evil that corrupted their hearts and how will it be defeated?” Those answers, God does provide.

Justice is already served. Redemption is already in the works. Love is already here. It’s hard to see when we’re thrashing around a screwed-up world and trying to survive. That’s why I’m very thankful for the moments when he brings me out of the muck to look into his eyes and says to me, “Take heart, I have overcome the world.”