Ive been thinking some lately. You know what that means: brace your bad self for another verbose, long-winded, not-so-coherent rant, courtesy of your Resident Dork: Experience, Saving Influence, Culture Wars, and What I Hope Christmas Means to Me It seems to me these days that its harder and harder for any real dialogue to take place. In politics, in religious discussion, on social issues: everywhere you look, theres someone spouting off as if they have an absolute corner on truth or rightness. Most everyone seems hellbent on being certain -- on hastily staking out a position and clinging to it with a white-knuckled desperation they call principle or standing up for whats right. Reflection and honest seeking is hardly valued. Amid all the clamor and glamour of the dramatics, it all comes down to who can take the most in-your-face posture or who can spin facts most effectively or who can speak the loudest and with the most self-righteous fervor. The worst part of it all is that if Im honest with myself, all too often I find that Im one of the most guilty of the pontificators. I know how hard it is to shut up sometimes. Thats why I find quiet, gentle, yet bold and sincere voices like George Handleys so refreshing and so needed: Truth does not have two sides. It has many dimensions. Truth tethers us to each other and to God and when we hold up our corner, in our zealous impatience to possess the whole of it, we risk ignoring the entire fabric as a result. This is why we have patriots who wish to shoot federal officers, fathers and mothers who will shun family members to protect their idea of family, champions of political or religious truth who will trample their own values (and the most vulnerable among us along the way) just for the sake of being right. Paul made it clear: you can have the truth but if you don’t have charity, you have nothing. And you don’t have charity, said Jesus, until you love your enemies. You might as well be in error because you are. There is something truer than truth and it is love. Read more of Handley: patheos/blogs/homewaters/2014/12/if-truth-were-a-child.html#ixzz3M0xEu5t2 Handley reminds me that its great to feel inspired and exuberant and to want to discuss and even debate. Its great to engage, and even stir the pot as Im often wont to do. What matters most, however, is the journey -- the process of thinking and feeling and sharing. When I’m able to look at things this way, I care less whether Im right or Im wrong, or whether what Im arguing is true or not, or how effectively Im pushing my point. I start to more fully realize what my old man once told me: You know whats truer than the Truth, Paul? Experience. Ive found this to be correct on many levels, but the one relevant here is this: The experience that we can have as we think and feel and share ideas and feelings is every bit as important -- if not more important -- than the truth we all claim to seek. This goes to the heart of what one of my other favorite writers, Catherine Thomas has said. I can’t find her book here so I cant quote her verbatim, but she more or less says that every interaction we have is an opportunity to exercise a saving influence on another, as well as to gratefully receive the same saving influence from them. When we engage others on a personal level, disregarding our own vanity and self-validative need to be right, or cool, or clever, or whatever other vain ambition, a true dialogue is possible and we participate in cultivating the ultimate virtue of charity. . . . which kinda brings me to Christmas. In light of what both Handley and Thomas say, is it remotely effective for me, as a religious person, to hop up on the perennial culture war hobby-horse and spout off about how the “rabid secularists are out to destroy Christmas? Aside from the heaping dose of self-congratulation that Id give myself for righteously standing up for the true meaning of happy holidays, what good would it do? Who would really even care about what I say besides the folks who agree with me? Does it really engage others and move the ongoing conversation forward? I dont think it does much. In fact, it seems to me a screaming example of culture warriors self-righteously trampling their own values just for the sake of being right, ignoring what Christ called the weightier matters, and missing an opportunity to exercise a saving influence. And if you couldnt tell, an element of self-righteousness even creeps into my own cynical heart when I write about it. So its ALL THEIR FAULT! We religious folks might do better to take some advice from a man who, as I remember, was always a voice for peace, charity, and goodness: This Christmas, mend a quarrel. Seek out a forgotten friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a letter. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in word and deed. Keep a promise. Forgo a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Apologize. Try to understand. Examine your demands on others. Think first of someone else. Be kind. Be gentle. Laugh a little more. Express your gratitude. Welcome a stranger. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love and then speak it again.” -- Howard W. Hunter Or, if you prefer, some advice from the man whose birth we celebrate this time of year: By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another (John 13:35). He didnt say, Let everyone know youre my disciples by loudly condemning the heathen. He asked us to identify ourselves through quiet, unassuming acts of love and selfless service. I stand condemned for the lack of love I express and the lack of service I give to others. Sometimes I wonder whether Christ, seeing all the opportunities to exercise a saving influence that I pass up, would call me one of his disciples. Even so, George Handley, Catherine Thomas, Howard Hunter, and ultimately Christ and his birth, inspire me to do better.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 23:45:19 +0000
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