Recently name
calling has gone to new heights over social media and on TV. Politicians,
actors, actresses, journalists, and celebrities have all joined to spew their
hateful anger toward someone or something they perceive as contrary to ‘their
way’ of thinking. We, the rank ‘n file of society are similarly guilty as we respond with similar words that crush the soul. It seems everyone desires to
claim a level of ‘righteous indignation.’ This is presumption… and presumption
is a sin!
Violating
our interactions with hateful slurs and rhetoric is not something for which you
can just say, “I am sorry.” Being ‘Sorry’ does not compensate all parties. It
does not compensate the person the words are directed towards or their loved ones.
These words have now been placed in a ‘digital eternity!’
It is cowardly
no matter if a conservative, moderate or liberal says them. It is cowardly if anybody
says them regardless of political, social, economic or religious views. It is
cowardly because you are not addressing that person face-to-face. You have left
the world of debate over content… to a world in which you stand as a small ‘g’
god in judgement of one another. Tolerance is traded for the ‘scorched-earth’
policy of affirmation. ‘Scorched-earth’ because we have left the world of tolerance
to now demand the total affirmation of a given view. ‘Nothing else will do!’
cries the ideologue.
In any
event, this behavior is cowardly because the person transgressed has loved ones
and friends that will read those remarks and F-E-E-L those remarks for
eternity. To think otherwise is to assign a certain level of ‘inhumanity’ to
one of God’s creation. It is naïve to think someone of a given status, age and
experience should have a ‘thick-skin.’ Indeed,
they very well might. However, that person is connected to many other persons…
and when one suffers… many suffer. How shameful it is to use social media to
slur one another. Knowingly and self-righteously contributing to the ‘thick
skin’ of a perceived foe, while realizing we are KNOWINGLY contributing to the
callousness of that self-same soul… FOR WHICH THE OFFENDER IS NOW PARTLY
RESPONSIBLE.
So ‘sorry’
is not enough. “Sorry’ means the offender wants their job back. ‘Sorry’ means the
offender wishes their words had not become public. ‘Sorry’ may mean the
offender just realized that their careless words have affected lives they did
not intend to affect.
Therefore,
‘sorry’ does not necessarily include repentance. To repent means you take care
of the vertical relationship (God) and your horizontal relationship, meaning the
people you have wronged. Interestingly, in Jesus’ teaching, He puts the
horizontal BEFORE the vertical (see Matthew 5:24). In any event, the offender
should go before GOD and the person(s) offended and say… “I have sinned.” This
should be done without any qualification of the offender ‘being wrong in their
anger,’ but right in their view. That is not the point!
Views
taken out of the theater of tolerance and discussion, become a fundamentalism never
to be refined. Fundamentalism in all forms, liberal or conservative is ugly in
the sight of God.
We all
need to understand our condition. Our condition is a naturally rebellious heart.
Our condition is our desire to usurp power in all our relationships, both God
and human. God calls this sin! This was the great re-revelation to Karl Barth
and Reinhold Niebuhr in creating a theology called neo-orthodoxy. It was a
return to the fact that all of humankind is in a fallen state. This is a
concept not well received today. It took World War I for Karl Barth to believe
it and World War II for Reinhold Niebuhr.
People desperately
want to believe they have a ‘divine spark’ which can grow through some sort of
mystical ‘special knowledge’ leading them into becoming small ‘g’ gods. The offenders,
in being self-proclaimed pillars for their given view, prefer to believe this
rather than the fact we are a lost humanity.
Remember
this… in understanding who and what we are… we can then understand who and what
we need. The grace of a forgiving Lord and Savior.
