A year ago, we tried to say goodbye to 2020. We envisioned a relatively quick end to COVID-19. The Holy Grail of 2020 – a vaccine against COVID-19 – was found, only to be ignored by so many like an unwanted Christmas present. 2020 did not go away – it decided to reincarnate as 2021.
Of course, COVID remained the dominant issue this last year, but a capital riot, the Afghanistan exit, and ongoing supply chain issues were not far behind. Crime is on the rise, but it is primarily a wave of violence, not property crime. Lufkin saw 14 violent deaths in 2021.
Violence is rearing its ugly head in other ways. Airline passengers have been getting increasingly disruptive for years now, but pandemic restrictions seem to have made things even worse. Eighty five percent of flight attendants said they'd dealt with unruly passengers in 2021, and 17% said they'd been victim of a physical attack.
You’ve seen it around, haven’t you? This increase in anger and rage. People losing it in the checkout lane, at a restaurant, on a plane. There have always been mean people, of course. But those in customer service are seeing a new level of meanness. One employee remarked, “People are just — I hate to say it because there are a lot of really nice people — but when they’re mean, they’re a heck of a lot meaner.”
Verbal violence is all around us and the pandemic has only made it worse. Network and streaming talking heads demonstrate that the exchange of ideas must mean an exchange of barbs, and expressing a political opinion requires a personal attack. We end up raging against cancel culture out of one side of our mouth while simultaneously canceling those who don’t agree with us out of the other, and we argue about who is the bigger hypocrite. David French writes that the problem of cancel culture is just as much who it empowers as who it attempts to silence. Cruelty is becoming the norm in public discourse, at least for the loudest and most empowered voices. Nice guys tend to stay silent, afraid of getting hurt.
As a Christian, I read the Beatitudes – some of Jesus’ earliest teachings – as a guide for personal discipleship. Regardless of one’s faith, they can serve as a moral compass – a way to extend grace: Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. All Christians struggle with “walking the walk” – with practicing on Monday what we preach on Sunday.
As the Evangelical Right activists became increasingly drawn like a moth to the dangerous flame of politics, I believe they began to compartmentalize political morals from personal ones. Otherwise, how could they survive and operate in both worlds without the obvious hypocrisy tearing them apart? The fundamental question is whether or not political interactions should reflect personal moral beliefs. It’s a rhetorical question: they should and do. We cannot truly believe one thing on Sunday and behave differently in the political arena.
Yet some political figures want to sweep the Beatitudes and other teachings of Jesus under the rug, touting a much more strident message. Donald Trump Jr. recently told a conference of young conservative activists the turn-the-other-cheek principles of Jesus have “gotten us nothing.” As he fired up the group, he acknowledged that “this will be contrary to a lot of our beliefs… but we better be playing the same [cancel culture] game.” Peter Werner, describing the result of this new political ‘gospel’ in The Atlantic, noted, “If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go.”
Whether it is in the political arena, at the airport, or in the corner store, a Christian cannot embody anger and rage in the public arena and expect anything but disdain for the cross around their neck. We can’t chant “Let’s go, Brandon!” at a football game on Saturday and in good conscience sing Amazing Grace on Sunday. As the Christian rock band Casting Crowns asks in their provocative track "Start Right Here": “What if the church on Sunday / Was still the church on Monday too?” The song goes on to preach: “But church if we want to see a change in the world out there / It's got to start right here / It's got to start right now.”
That change – that move toward authenticity, civility and healing – must start with grace.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece following the death of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who against all odds led the historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission to unify and heal South Africa after more than 40 years of apartheid rule, it was lamented that “In our [United States] culture, reconciliation is often impossible because one side is hellbent on proving that it is right and the other side wrong.” Civility does not preclude having strong opinions or convictions. Forgiveness does not preclude justice. Love is not weakness.
A practical example: Sometimes all it takes to show grace is taking that extra second or two to think before responding to someone, whether verbally or on social media. (It seems like half of Proverbs is wisdom about taming your tongue.) Online hateful rhetoric doesn’t have to be “liked”, much less forwarded. It’s OK simply to ignore it. Beyond not diving in the social media or political mud pit, how about doing something practical to help out those in your community who are less fortunate? Tim Miller notes that “a culture that does not offer hope and comfort and uplift alongside suffering will not survive.”
We can make 2022 a year full of grace by loving more, hating less, taming our tongues, and extending grace. Practicing grace takes… well… practice – not just on Sunday, but every day. Let’s all start right here, right now.
