You don’t have to be a devotee of the man to embrace the message.
Redemption was our message to begin with.
Healing, unity, and peace in the face of pain, division and chaos is and always was our Christian calling.
The embodiment of this message has little to do with January 20th. This has been our fight all along, but some of us lost our way.
Demonizing Democrats, dismissing Republicans, every divisive word refusing redemption.
The responsibility for the division doesn’t lie with one man.
Blame isn’t a healing force, but responsibility is.
The responsibility is ours to embody the redemption of relationships, of justice, and of truth moving forward.
Relationships. They’ve been strained, some ended, in the name of politics. Our job is peacemaking over policy preferences—always.
Justice. If a group of people is experiencing oppression, listen to their stories. Dismissing another’s lived experience is dehumanization.
Truth. Drop the news networks that profit from your outrage and fear. Listen to stories from friends and family to form opinions on deeply personal issues. Seek trustworthy, nonpartisan data.
Recognize the bias in your own heart so that you can defuse those around you and offer calm to their fears and connection in their loneliness.
It’s been lonely around here, hasn’t it? So much ripe to be redeemed.
Today he said:
On this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation.
If your first reaction is the judgement of his heart, that is a mirror of your own.
You can believe him without agreeing with his policies, without being a proponent of big government.
You lose nothing by believing this man wants what he says he wants.
When you choose to believe him rather than judge him, you honor his humanity in the same way that your humanity deserves to be honored.
We can embrace the fight for redemption because this was our message to begin with, and today, it was spoken from the inaugural stage, a win for Christians on every side of the aisle.
I’m more sad than angry with the people that I love for being on the wrong side of loving and valuing human beings that are different than them. I’m hurt that we were taught to love and connect through empathy, but I’ve seen such an absence over the last 5 years.
I was thinking about this division after reading this post.
I’m not sure where the healing starts or if everyone deserves it, but reading your post and thinking back to a few recent convos with friends, just made me painfully aware of how sad this all is. Like internally aware… beyond the anger and frustration.
I really don’t want to lose any more people over dumb shit. I can’t. I’m not sure where it starts, but I agreed that it has to.