Truth or Love?

I've been off Facebook and Twitter for several months until very recently and have kept it at a minimum since returning. These longer breaks have been much needed for me and God is always faithful to teach me a lot during extended fasts. It is easy to get caught up in the dopamine rush that it can bring, especially if you have passionate opinions (which I do.) It is easy to ignore the emotions and thoughts I need to deal with when I can run to scrolling anytime I have a spare quiet moment. It also helps me to realize how much time I'm wasting there and get back to connecting in real life and getting things done in the real world. Stepping away for long enough that I recognize the ways I may be filling voids with something besides Christ is critical for my spiritual health. Stepping back in to social media space in the middle of a worldwide pandemic has been, umm... startling, to say the least.

I read a book last year, Love Over Fear. I have recommended it to so many people and I'll keep recommending it. It is incredibly timely for the day and age we're living in. Since then, I have been reassessing everything about how I interact with others, both on and offline, and this reassessment continued and deepened during my social media break. If we're going to be interacting with people we disagree with, we have to learn to do it in a way that reflects Jesus. (If we're not interacting with people different from us in positive, authentic, friendship-building ways then that is a whole other set of problems and another blog post entirely.)

As Christ followers, we should be known for our love for all people. We should be characterized as truth-tellers. No matter where we sit on the theological spectrum, these are (or at least should be) non-negotiables for people of faith. The balance of this post is mostly things I have learned about myself and how I need to monitor myself on social media as well as things I've observed since rejoining Facebook during such a volatile time.

If we share/post/say something that is inaccurate, or is an outright lie, even if it's someone else's words we're sharing, and even if we didn't know at the time we posted it, shared it or said it, we are responsible for spreading lies. I've lost count of how many times I've seen something along the lines of, "even if they didn't really say this, they easily could have, so I don't regret it and I'm not taking it down."  Every single person I've seen say something like this also openly confesses to be Christian. Somewhere along the way, we've decided it's okay to slander someone (though we'll not use that word) if we think their politics or theology is vile enough. I am so burdened by how lightly we will claim Christ out of one side of our mouth and justify slandering an "enemy" from the other side.

Honestly, as I've grappled with this tendency online, I have found such ugliness within my own heart. I may not call someone ugly names or slander them outwardly, but I've harbored deep, resentful feelings toward others. I've had to deal with a heart that was willing to hold on to deep-seated animosity. Rather than consistently praying for healing and hoping for the best for "the other," I found myself finding some pleasure in public failures. Rather than praying they would be delivered from the darkness that holds them, I simply settled into my feelings of complete disregard.

We have been tasked by the One who called us to be salt and light in this world. We should be adding goodness and grace. Above all other people, Christ-followers should be extraordinarily careful that what we say and share, as well as what we harbor in our hearts, bring truth AND love. If we think what we allow to simmer under the surface will not effect our actions and behaviors, we need to revisit the teaching of Jesus.

One of my commitments in online engagement is that if I don't have time to fact check a story or a meme, then it follows that I don't have time to post it. Far too many mistakes are made and people hurt in a rush to "be right". I also try to be thoughtful about any memes I post. Are they passive-aggressive ways of attacking someone else? If so, I want to commit to not adding to the ugliness. If I wouldn't say it sitting face-to-face with an actual person that I disagree with, then my prayer is I won't blast it in a meme.

If I'm posting or responding because I'm angry, I have found I need to wait at least 24 hours before I post it or say it. Anger should never be my motivation. Anger tempts me to blame, to name-call, to shame. This is not The Way. I cannot tell you how many things I've written, held onto for 24-hours and then either radically modified or chose to not post at all (or say, or mail - I try to apply this practice to all areas). My mental health, my spiritual health, my emotional health, are all much better for this practice.

If I find out later what I've posted or said was untrue or slanted to the point of being largely untrue and inflammatory, I need to step up, admit it, apologize for any problems I may have contributed to in my rush to speak and then make amends as best I can. (I can tell you, this commitment to myself has greatly increased my consistency to track my sources before I say anything.)

If I cannot call out wrong without broad stereotyping or name-calling, if I cannot make my political or theological point AND show love, it's not time for me to make my point. If I am not truly willing to engage in a way that is open-ended, willing to listen, willing even to be wrong, then it is not time for me to make my point. There is more than enough mud-slinging and one-sided opinion blasting to go around. It shouldn't be fueled by those that name the name of Christ. I told y'all a while back that my word for 2020 is Listen. I'm working hard on learning how to do that better. And I feel strongly that includes, maybe even especially, those I disagree with. I want to learn to ask earnest, honest questions and truly listen for answers. If I'm not ready to do that, I've determined to be quiet until I can.

Am I occasionally super frustrated that I'm remaining silent while all around me people are saying stupid, wrong-headed, unloving, sometimes completely immoral things? Yup. Have I ever regretted waiting? Not so far. There have been times, as I waited, I've learned my opinion was just flat wrong. There have been times I've learned from the person I was angry with. There have been times that I found wiser, less confrontational ways to engage. There have been times that remaining silent was the right answer. But I've never regretted waiting.

We must come to terms with the fact that a lie, even if we agree with it's premise, is still a lie. 

A lie that "puts THOSE people in their place" is still. a. lie. 

We are people of truth.

We are people of love.

Social media is an utter disaster, many days, a full-fledged dumpster fire. We can be known as people that bring love, light and grace into this space, even when the conversations may be hard, even when we disagree from deep core values. We can be known for love or for pettiness and judgement, for light or for conspiracy theories and stone throwing, for engaging with grace or for shaming "the enemy". I'll tell you honestly, I fear we're too often known for the latter and it is not a good look.

I commonly hear, I'm assuming as some sort of justification for being "honest" (and I put this in quotes because nine times out of ten, that is code for being a jerk), that Jesus often had harsh words for people, called them names, overturned tables, etc. This seems to justify being awful to people or saying awful things about politicians or teachers we disagree with. If they're offended, well, then the truth is offensive... Or so the story goes. We can scale amazing heights to justify being unloving, but that is what it is - justification. I'll go there. Jesus's harshest words and actions were exclusively for the religious elite. His words for those outside His faith tradition, for those in the margins, for the poor and the vulnerable, were words of healing, grace, forgiveness, love. 

Jesus endured great persecution, to the point of death, but never for a lack of love. A great deal of his critics, in fact, hated him FOR his love and friendship with "the other". 

If I'm going to be maligned, let it be for loving too much.

Musings and COVID-19

Are any of the rest of you tired of thinking about viruses and germs?

I am not a germaphobe by any stretch of the imagination. I rarely think about the material things of this world that we cannot see with the naked eye, but this whole pandemic has caused me to think about things I have never spent any significant time musing on. I think about every. single. thing. I touch. Especially if I have to leave the house. Every. Single. Thing. And y'all? I never once before thought about how many times a day I touch my face! (It's a lot.) All this thinking on the "unseen" has me thinking about spiritually unseen things as well, so I thought I'd spend a little of my shelter-at-home time sharing a couple of random thoughts.

1. Our unseen enemy. It is so easy for us to find people to blame for all our problems in this world. Shaming and casting blame are among the easiest things for us to do when we begin to feel like life has been unfair or unjust. Let me find a person or a people group to blame for this bad thing that's happened and scream that out to the world. That'll fix it! In Ephesians, Paul tells us, "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms". To be sure, those spiritual forces work in and through people at times, but the people are the symptom, not the disease. But gosh, it's so much easier to blame a person, isn't it? Battling a person rarely brings any lasting, systemic change. If we don't get to the root, we're just constantly putting out fires, without stopping to figure out why the fires keep raging.

I'm seeing this dynamic played out in the COVID crisis. We cannot see our enemy. It's microscopic. For sure, the battle must be waged on a macro scale - stay home, wash your hands, don't touch anything you don't have to when you do have to go out, etc., but the real battle is against this unseen enemy. We're not staying home from work or school, we're not rearranging our lives, we're not forsaking in-person time with people we love because of anything we can see. We must always keep at the forefront who the enemy in this battle is, or we'll be tempted to have big gatherings, or skip sanitizing surfaces, or washing hands diligently - after all, we look clean - we feel clean - we don't feel sick or we're not in the high risk groups. Doing it this way is no fun, we're losing money, we're bored, we're lonely. It would be easier to think that we can just go about our everyday, normal lives and just treat the sick as they come up -- but that scenario will quickly bring about more destruction than any of us want to imagine. Who is the enemy here? We can't see this enemy without looking deeply - at least not it until it's too late. We have to choose tactics that go to war with the actual enemy, not the perceived one, or we. will. lose.

So if we can learn something from this season that will last after this crisis is gone, may one of those things be that we need remember who the actual enemy is and choose strategies that work against that enemy, rather than choosing the easy way of lobbing shame and blame at each other. May it be that when we see problems, when we see people hurting, dying, treated unjustly, that rather than choosing to simply take on each individual instance (which is still important - just as treating the sick in this crisis is), we need to back up and look at what's happening under the surface that's causing the hate and injustice to spread and deal with THAT. Strategies that deal with the root may take longer, may require more of us, may be inconvenient, but this is where real, lasting change will take place.

2. We're all in this together - whether we like it or not. One of our favorite ways to describe the Church is as a Body - how all the parts are interconnected, that losing any of those parts will hurt all the parts. Sometimes I don't think we really believe it though. Even with our own physical bodies, we definitely value some parts as better than others, some parts as more worthy, some parts as easier to live without. 

When I look at how this virus grows and spreads and the drastic steps that we are being asked to take to stop it - it paints such a clear picture to me of how the Church might actually work. As medical and scientific experts have tried to explain to us in laymen's terms how to "flatten the curve" and get this virus under control, it becomes increasingly more clear how important it is that EVERYONE MATTERS. If most of us stay home, if most of us wash our hands, if most of us stop going everywhere we normally would - it will help, yes. But when one person decides they're above the laws of nature and they don't have to - they hurt the rest of us. All of us are hurt when one person decides they don't need to be careful, don't need to watch what they touch or where they go or who they're around. We don't have the luxury of "every man is an island" in this scenario. We are interconnected whether we like it or not, whether we want it or not. For the whole to be healthy, every single individual part matters. We can opt out - but we are hurting potentially thousands of others when we do.

Let's find a way to transfer this new way of life to the spiritual: For sure and certain, there is disease in the Church. We need to face that fact and get serious about rooting it out. If you're in a Church that is harmful or abusive, speak out about it - be a part of cutting out the disease, leave and find a healthy place to be. But please don't let that be the reason you give up. The rest of us need you. And you need us. Every single one of us matter.

When I wash my hands for 20 seconds so many times a day, it feels like no one else benefits, but in truth, potentially hundreds do. If I could see my value within the Body of Christ with the same weight that I assign to washing my hands during this crisis, what kind of difference would it make? If I saw the value of my small investments in my faith community as being as valuable as I see choosing to stay home rather than going to that party down the street, what impact could I have? How much healthier would our church communities be? How much healthier would the worldwide church be? If I can stop thinking of Church as all the different ways it asks things of me that are sometimes hard, or interruptions to my routine or keeping me from watching all my shows on Netflix or asking me to give up something I'm used to and comfortable with, and instead think of the value that my investment gives others and the value that another person's investment is giving to me - what kind of difference would that make? When we continue to think we can Lone Ranger our Christian journey, we are hurting others - others that need the interconnectedness of this Body to thrive. Whether we want to admit it or not, whether we like it or not - we are connected to other another. Your choices effect me. My choices effect you.

When I can grasp that the small things I'm willing to sacrifice for the good of the other can actually change the world, the world will actually change, right?

So --

Wash your hands.

Stay home.

Fight the actual enemy, rather than the easy target.

Invest in what benefits the whole.

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What are you learning during this season?