Polarized
A few days ago a friend sent me the horrific video of Jacob Blake being shot in the back by a police officer. I watched in horror as the gun fired seven times and changed multiple lives in the process.
I will not tell the story here. We have arrived at a national moment where any attempt to tell the story is fraught with peril, and the version of the story told reveals which side of the larger narrative you align yourself with. Either Jacob Blake was an innocent victim, trying to bring peace to a situation before being unjustly shot, or he was a terrible man, potentially reaching for a weapon, and the actions the officer took in that moment were justified.
This is America in 2020. There is no room for nuance, layers of complexity, or even time to grieve, and mourn. There are reactions, inflamed passions, confirmed narratives, and clearly divided and irreconcilable sides. We are polarized. To speak is to decide which group’s anger and pain you are willing to live with in order to say what you feel is the right thing to say.
It is a moment unlike any that I have ever seen. It is possible that the national mood and conversation has never been as charged and tense as it is right now. America in the middle of the 19th century comes to mind, as “Bleeding Kansas” was a flashpoint of the anger, fear, and contempt men felt for one another related to the argument over slave and free states in an expanding union and growing America. What would our economy be built upon, and at what cost to our humanity? The passions and bloodshed a decade before the American Civil War marked an internal national conflict the likes of which went far beyond the Whiskey Rebellion of the late 18th century and the dawning of a new American government.
That one must to go back 170 years to cite pre-Civil War conflicts and tensions to find a point of comparison should indicate the perilous moment we find ourselves facing together. How will we face the day? What choices will we make to endure what the future may hold - and how will those choices reflect the heart and tenderness of Christ? We are in something beyond a polarized moment. We seem to be in a time of an intractible fracturing of a nation into irreconcilable sides, neither of which seems to be interested in compromise or peace on the other side’s terms. There are two versions of our future (neither version biblical), and the sides that represent the alternative futures are willing to go uncomfortably far to assure that their version is the one that emerges victorious in the days ahead.
This is hour for the Church to refuse to represent either side, but to take Her place - not as the voice in the “middle”, but as the prophetic voice calling both sides to repent. The Church is not to find Herself in the center between two sides. The Church is not the “third way”. When the early Church found herself in the eye of the storm of Rome and Jewish rage against the Empire in the first century, “The Way” extracted themselves from the conflicts and arguments and worked to fulfill the Great Commission. The Church had other business to attend to apart from participating in the tragic conflict between Israel and Rome. To find our prophetic voice is to refuse to wed ourselves to a politicized narrative and to refuse to be more informed by liberal or conservative commentators than we are the Sermon on the Mount.
A polarized world does not need a Christianized articulation of a political narrative. A hopelessly polarized world needs a prophetic Church, a people who will represent and speak the heart of Jesus, regardless of the cost. We are not trying to find the “moderate way” - we are seeking to be unreasonably prophetic when the Spirit leads, kindly pastoral whenever possible, and immersed in the heart of Christ at all times. There is so much more for us to lay hold of together than the narratives we settle for in fear, or lust, or outrage. We must spur one another on to the things that matter eternally, far beyond the shortsighted manner in which we are focused on what matters over the next few months, and four years beyond.
There is another kingdom coming. His kingdom is far more troubling and terrifying to the nations than the next President of the United States.