I’ve been caught up in the news lately. It would be hard not to. National budget debates, tornadoes in the South, bin Laden’s death – I was just too overwhelmed to tune in to the big British wedding. But I confess that as a pastor I’m constantly trying to make Christian sense out of what goes on in the world, and trying to understand how I as a believer in Christ should put events in perspective, both for myself and for the congregation. As a faithful Baptist I don’t presume to think members of the congregation require my input, but if it’s helpful, that’s fine too.
Much of the news recently has revolved around national issues. I suppose it does in every country; were we living in Pretoria I don’t imagine Wisconsin politics or the destruction of Tuscaloosa would get much air play. But they do here, along with budget cuts, tax policies, and expense priorities. The latter issues have taken center stage since the last national election, and the size of the deficit caused one member of the congregation to express doubts about the financial viability of the country in two years, regardless of what Washington does. That may be correct; not being a financial whiz I have no idea what the implications are of going broke as a nation. Do we get repossessed, or what?
My concern for the country is partly financial, but it goes deeper than that. Because of an inability to communicate constructively with each other, we run the greater risk of civil dissolution. Many families are broke, but they remain families. Divorce is harder to recover from, and in many ways we seem headed in that direction. Even members of the Christian family, who of all people should be most suspicious of divisive communication, seem content to sever relationships by the way they converse. That isn’t the ideal. As Paul reminds us in Romans, “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:4-5). We’re to sever ties over – nothing.
Maintaining unity demands a certain approach to the way we talk with each other. And frequently our talk doesn’t get derailed over things like the exact date of the Second Coming. It flounders on which news station we watch or who we voted for in the last election. We tend to take two approaches to those matters. One is to avoid them all together. The other is to become adamant about our political persuasion. When we do the first, we’re left with a relationship that seems nice on the surface, but we know it can never intimate and fully trusting. When we do the second we push our Christian brothers and sisters aside. Animosity trumps fellowship.
Miroslav Volf points out that exclusion comes in two basic forms. It can entail moving oneself from interdependence to sovereign independence. “The other then emerges either as an enemy that must be pushed away from the self and driven out of its space or as a nonentity – a superfluous being – that can be disregarded and abandoned.” Or it can mean treating the other as someone who is not entitled to interdependence: “The other then emerges as an inferior being who must either be assimilated by being made like the self or be subjugated to the self”[1] Our treatment of others, including or excluding, is largely accomplished by how we speak.
One way out of the dilemma is to take our conversations seriously, knowing we can talk about anything if we do so in appropriate ways. Inappropriate ways invite exclusion. Appropriate ways invite the conversation to continue in a civil and loving manner. We might ask, “Does the way I respond in a difficult conversation invite a stronger relationship or a weaker one? Does it express a desire to learn more, or to be right?” James offers this: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires” (James 1:19-20).
Too often our models for discussion come from those who have questionable gifts: intractable opinions, the capacity to speak loudly and at length, and access to the broadcast media. And too often they hold our attention by fear-mongering, taking advantage of our anxieties and concerns about the future. Jesus invites us along a different path. It is to recognize that anxiety about the world isn’t going to go away. In the face of it we’re simply asked to respond with love and forgiveness, putting our trust and faith in God. Maybe “simply” is a misleading word. I often find it difficult not to panic in the face of health concerns, financial problems, the need for TSA to check and recheck me and my baggage before every flight … all the “what-if’s” that my fellow citizens can conjure up. Fear-mongers constantly solicit our support, and when we fail to give it, we are the ones who they subject to exclusion.
But in reality the way we respond to fear, or hatred, or the demonizing of others reflects our allegiance to the Gospel. Paul told his followers, “(My commitment to the Gospel) is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day” (2 Timothy 1:12). We come to our conversations about every subject – benign or disruptive – with a choice to make: taking stands on issues that are short-lived, or being “convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” What we say and the way we say it reveals which way we have chosen.
