Several people have pointed out that I seem to dislike our current president and I want to clear up a few things: I do not simply dislike him or merely think he has an unpleasant personality. As a survivor of sexual abuse, I hate that our president is an abuser and that this fact did not disqualify him in the minds of so many.

Regardless of what you may want to be true, someone who so willingly violates another person and shows no remorse, but rather brags about it, is not a fit leader. Such a person will willingly violate other moral standards and not lose any sleep over doing so. And when he does violate all manner of other principles of decency and ethics with impunity, the response should not be to fall back on conspiracies, but rather to deal with reality.

His administration’s cruel treatment of immigrant children, poor and homeless children, protesters, and families struggling due to the pandemic should show you that he does not care about your children or some hypothetical trafficked children or unborn babies. All he cares about are his own polls and ratings and advantage.

Regardless of what television shows tell you to trust him or what other public figures of questionable standards you invoke to support him, I will not betray myself by taking up his cause. If you support him, I will probably be able to find it in my heart to give you the benefit of the doubt and see you as someone whose conditioning and life experience have made it difficult for you to see him as he really is, but I will never willingly accept the authority of an abuser.

And as for his farcical attempt to convince evangelical Christians that he is one of them, I remind you that actions speak louder than words. A wise friend once told me that if I’m struggling to discern if something or someone is of God, I should look for the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. The president displays none of these.

I assure you that what you may perceive in me as partisan dislike for the man or an embrace of liberal media rhetoric, is nothing of the sort. It is anger that an abuser has been given such a platform and grief that so many people who identify as Christian have convinced themselves that he is someone they should support and follow. And, admittedly, I struggle with how many of his supporters would rather tell me “Fuck your feelings, libtard!” than care at all about the women he has abused and violated and what this says about the kind of person he really is. Comparing him to other people who have also done things that are wrong in no way absolves him of his own behavior.

I, too, hate the division politics are causing these days. I hate that I do not feel comfortable or safe engaging with many people who I consider friends. I hate that I have lost friends over expressing my views of the president or my support for people suffering injustice. But I spent too many years betraying myself by accepting abusive behavior in leaders because I was taught falsities about grace and forgiveness and my own worth as a woman. And I have put way too much time into unlearning and healing and dealing with what I survived. I cannot and will not go backward.

All or nothing.
Take it or leave.
Of course, only
all and take it
earn me keys.

It’s clear-cut,
cut and dried,
cutting, cutting crosswise
across my nature.
Close your eyes,
swallow ideology
wholesale.

Conform
and consume
and follow the lead.
Choke back questions.
Ignore contradictions.
Come as you are
if you’re like us.

Such slow exhaustion
living perpetually outside the fold.
Or in it,
but outside myself.

I once was trying,
but now I see

I would never be shaped
into that vessel
or any vessel
at all.
I am not clay,
it turns out.

I am wind
and sunlight

And leaves
budding
unfurling
changing
falling,
nourishing new roots.

I am space for unknowing
and uncertainty.

I am choosing nothing
and leaving
and astonishment at
what blooms.

I am myself and
my questions and
seeing all the contradictions.

I am other possibilities
beyond either/or.

Moored too long
in patrimonial shroud
to one-size-all,
monoculture wasteland.

Groping, gasping,
I caught a spark–
“Love is kind”–
and fanned it into flame.

Flame, turned roaring fire,
burned it all to ashes.

What is God?
Or who?
Can I still want God to be?
If God is love and love is kind,
perhaps.
If God is man’s image,
guns and flags,
domination,
subjugation,
exploitation,
then

No.

I cannot want that.

Now I wait,
lying fallow,
losing track of seasons.
Scorched foundation,
Nothing

nothing was mine to give.

Sifting ash through fingers,
asking

can sooty remnants grow something true?

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

Job 2:11-13, NRSV

I cannot read Job these days without wondering if white churchgoers are Job’s friends.
Becoming aware of suffering, setting out with good intentions to console and comfort.
Loss, injustice, brutality, disproportionately levied against our Black and Brown neighbors.
Unsure of what to do, our silent solidarity turns to silence. Or worse.

Does God see Eliphas, Bildad, and Zophar in our initial distress turning to silent bystanding?
In our sitting for days and nights without speaking a word?
Without moving to ameliorate or defend?
In our thoughts turning from dismay to evasion and pontification?

In our blaming, “if they had not looked wrong, done wrong, moved wrong, this would not have happened,”
Does God hear Eliphaz telling Job, “Think now, who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? as I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.”
We soothe our own discomfort.
Our self-assured innocence will protect us while claiming their outcome imputes guilt.

In our justifying, “We also experience violence and hardship. Your suffering is not worse, not systemic, not disproportionate,”
Does God hear Bildad arrogantly claiming, “Does God pervert justice?
Or does the Almighty pervert the right?
If your children sinned against him,
he delivered them into the power of their transgression.
If you will seek God and make supplication to the Almighty,
if you are pure and upright,
surely then he will rouse himself for you and restore to you your rightful place.”
We convince ourselves that people get what they deserve, thus absolving us of responsibility to comfort and protect.
We claim only the first and last words of “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In our our appeals to higher authority, conflating man-made systems with God’s will, in our insisting “God is in control, things are as God wants,”
Does God hear Zophar telling Job,
“Know then that God exacts of you less than your guilt deserves.
Can you find out the deep things of God?
Can you find out the limit of the Almighty?
If he passes through, and imprisons,
and assembles for judgment, who can hinder him?
For he knows those who are worthless;
when he sees iniquity, will he not consider it?”
We refuse to question inherited beliefs, structures, lies.
Law and order is God’s design, right? Who are we to interfere?

Daily we hear the echo of Job’s words, “Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call aloud, but there is no justice.”
There is no safe walking,
no safe sleeping,
no safe driving,
no safe breathing.
Rage and grief spill over,
filling streets,
disturbing peace,
cars on fire,
voices raising.

What does God think when, with Eliphaz, we respond,
“What do you know that we do not know?
What do you understand that is not clear to us?
The gray-haired and the aged are on our side, those older than your father. Are the consolations of God too small for you?”
We look only at outlier symptoms, ignoring the roots of oppression and pain growing for generations.
What will we reap for our continued blaming, denying, justifying?

God had words for Eliphaz and his friends:
“My wrath is kindled against you and against your two friends;
for you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.
Now…my servant Job shall pray for you,
for I will accept his prayer not to deal with you according to your folly;
for you have not spoken of me what is right,
as my servant Job has done.”

Let us put aside this folly of blaming our neighbors for their suffering.
Let us see our own complicity.
Let us listen and learn and be humble.
Let us speak the words that are right.
Let us take the actions that are right.
Let us work for restoration and be a blessing to each other.

Note: all quotes from Job are NRSV

This isn’t a post for everyone. Anyone is certainly welcome to read it, but the intended audience is me now, my younger self, people out there like us, and any white Christian who has ever thought that a political party represented their faith. This is part lament, part permission slip*, part love letter.

It’s become impossible to ignore the evidence that we are all part of a system that is structured to the advantage of a few (those with wealth and power), the comfort of some (mainly Whites), and the oppression and death of many (mainly Black people and other People of Color). I am not blaming any of us that this is the system we were born into, I am just reminding us that this is the reality. We have been told many things about the government, political figures, history, and truth that downplayed this reality, but it is no longer possible deny the system exists unless we are being purposely dishonest with ourselves.

In light of this, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about what it means to be a follower of Jesus and what his life and message are telling us during this time. Jesus taught us we must resist corrupt power, the way he resisted the leaders of his day who used religious law against their own people. When corrupt power uses the system to increase its own power at the expense of others, we cannot allow it. When corrupt power excludes, harms, and brutalizes, we must see it, speak up, and act for change.

We are not called to align ourselves with corrupt power and try to nudge it in the direction of our own pet moral victories. We are not called to be political party loyalists or single-issue voters. We are not called to look the other way when wrongs are being committed by those we supported. We are called to follow Jesus. And that means we see and listen to those who are being brutalized by injustice. It means that we see that the way of Jesus is not for the comfort of a few. It means we are compelled to call out injustice and work against it–even when that injustice is caused by people in power in our own institutions who we helped to gain that power.

We are called to see corrupt power for what it is and see everyone it hurts. In fact, we would do well to remember that Jesus was willing to die rather than align himself with corrupt power. There was no end-justifying-the-means in the way Jesus lived. He could have amassed enough support to claim worldly power for himself, but instead he went about talking to women and lepers and Samaritans about a love in which there was no dominance or exclusion or hierarchy. He healed the sick and taught his friends and loved so abundantly that it shocked everyone again and again. What Jesus taught us with his life was that the means are everything for those who follow him.

When we see people taking to the streets, turning over tables and burning down the halls of injustice because they cannot breathe, we should ask ourselves some very hard questions, rather than trying to impose our order on those gasping for air. We have to look at the leaders and institutions and officials we support and examine if our support of them made things worse for Black people and other minorities, even as we got some things we wanted. How do things continually get to the point that this becomes the only option left for so many? How have we allowed their pain and suffering to be ignored for so long?

I’m not attacking a side here. I am addressing every white Christian–myself included–who has turned a blind eye to the oppression, brutality, and suffering of our fellow humans, especially when it was caused by those we support and by the racist system we have refused to address. It’s on all of us who have idol-worshiped a candidate or cause, unquestioningly granting them our loyalty to get what we want, but never calling out when their decisions, words, or policies created or exacerbated conditions to the detriment of others. All of us need to look at the consequences of aligning with people who promise us political victories without ever examining how those leaders use their power against people who don’t look like us.

Fellow White Christians: this must stop. We must love better. We must examine how we have failed to hold ourselves and our leaders accountable. We must give ourselves permission to see this and to grieve and to do better. There is no shame in admitting that someone we thought deserved our support no longer does. There is courage in changing course when it is the right thing to do and we must allow ourselves to do it

Let’s not turn away and try to go back to the way things were. Let’s not push aside the doubts and questions that are bubbling up when we feel grief over what we have seen. Let’s give ourselves permission to follow the way of Jesus–not the way some other authority figure told us it had to be. Not the way that conflates our political affiliation with our faith. The way of Jesus. The way of resisting corrupt power, of a heart that breaks over injustice and lays down its very life for love of others.

This love is more wide and long and high and deep than we can even imagine. It will guide us if we open to it as we learn and change and grow. Let’s listen to those who are crying out for justice. Let’s learn from them and do our work to dismantle the unjust system–both inside our hearts and in the world. Let’s give ourselves permission to let the old be burned away like chaff and be made new.

*I love the way Brené Brown writes about writing permission slips for herself, and her work certainly inspired the thought of writing us all a permission slip. If you think you may find it helpful to write yourself some permission slips, you can find a little more about that practice here.

It’s nearly impossible to consume any news or social media these days without seeing how divided and reactionary we are. Protests and counter-protests. Ridicule and scathing rebuke. Fear-mongering. Anger. Unquestioning loyalty to a political figure or party or cause. There is also plenty if despair, apathy, nihilism, and disenfranchisement that intersperse it all.

I’m not attacking one group or another. As someone who grew up entrenched in one side, migrated to the other, and is currently disillusioned with most sides, I have a broad range of connections whose content I see daily. I don’t think it will come as any shock to anyone that things are not looking good on multiple fronts.

One of these fronts is values. Many of us don’t seem to take the time to discern if our thoughts, actions, and words are in alignment with the values we profess to hold. As a result, we are caught in a cycle of reacting to everything in the moment, without taking time to evaluate the kind of people we want to be and if our daily responses and choices are taking us closer to–or farther away from–that desired version of ourselves.

I see people lash out at others for doing precisely what they were doing four years ago: either ridiculing and dehumanizing the person in the Oval Office or idolizing and unquestioningly supporting the person in the Oval Office. I find people claim one set of values on one issue and then demonstrate the exact opposite values on another, without any seeming cognition of their own contradiction. Many of us have resorted to withdrawing or shutting down because it is all too much. I am hard-pressed to find thoughtful, holistic approaches to current events, and when I do, they are not shared or promoted nearly so much as the cringe-worthy, heart-breaking, biased content (or the scathing take-downs of said content) that seems to churn endlessly through news feeds.

When we align ourselves so completely with an ideology, institution, or organization–be it a religion, a cause, or a political party–that we see it as above questioning, we are at risk. When we unquestioningly follow and support, without stopping to examine if what we are following or supporting is truly in alignment with our values, we have given our personal power away. And when we engage in an endless cycle of reaction, ridicule, and ranting, there is no time for mindful, meaningful action.

None of the above are a way that anything gets less terrible.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t speak up about what we see as wrong and unjust. I’m not suggesting that we turn a blind eye to suffering and harm. I am saying that when we focus on the calling out and the ridicule and the outrage and direct them continuously at “the other side,” we are allowing our time and energy to be misfocused. When our time and energy are misfocused and we aren’t living in alignment with our values, we are contributing to our shared misery.

For some time, I’ve been trying to find just the right words, hoping I might inspire a change in people and maybe start feeling a little less hopeless. But then I remembered something: we cannot change each other. I could write for all my waking hours, I could pour my heart and soul into paragraph after paragraph for weeks on end, and we would still be where we are. People would think what they think and share what they share and no words from me would make one bit of difference.

I can’t change your mind. I can’t change you. We can’t change each other. But what is desperately needed right now is for us to do some soul searching and see where we need to change ourselves. Change for the better. Not to all align our politics. Not to all believe the same things. Not to act like we all agree. But rather, to hold our own deepest truths and values up and examine them in the light of our hearts. To be honest about the kind of people we are and the kind of people we truly want to be. We need to untangle from the rhetoric, the ideology, the cycles of reaction, and the expected behaviors of “our side.” It is time for us to move past “How dare they!?” and ask instead “How dare I?”

How dare I minimize another person’s suffering because I am not suffering in the same way? How dare I ridicule a fellow human and say degrading things about them because I do not like what they have said or who they support or what they believe? What am I accomplishing by shaming someone rather than showing them by my words and actions that we can treat each other better? Disgust and anger and frustration will certainly be among our initial emotional responses to things that go against our sense of decency, but that does not mean that we must put decency aside and react in ways that dehumanize ourselves and other people.

Perhaps if more of us were willing to pause and think and examine ourselves, we would learn there is truth in the adage that how we treat others reveals much more out us than it does about them. We just might discover that even if we are angry, sad, disappointed, disgusted, frustrated, or overwhelmed by what others do and say, we can respond in ways that are life-giving for us. We don’t have to resort to ways that lead to more hurt and to unhealthy discharge of our emotions. It is possible that spending less time caught in the churn of self-righteous reaction would free up more of our energy to actually do something productive and meaningful to make our own lives and the lives of those around us better. It might even begin to open space in our lives for a glimmer of understanding and mutuality to take hold.

I can’t convince you or anyone else to do any of what I’m suggesting. I can’t even tell you where to start if you decide to try. I don’t know for sure what practices would be the most helpful to keep you on track if you determined for yourself to take up the challenge.

What I can do is decide for myself that this self-examination is something I believe is important and will commit to cultivate more regularly. I will do this work so I can be better aware and call myself out when I start judging other people by a different standard than I judge myself. I’m going to try to think about the person behind what is upsetting me, what circumstances I may not understand about their motivation, before I mindlessly react in ways I will be ashamed of later. And I can return to a practice of daily contemplation to support myself in these intentions.

I know there are a lot of problems in the world right now and I know that what I’m suggesting isn’t going to fix them. But maybe if enough of us choose to disengage from the reactionary mindset and make changes to the ways we interact with others, some things will get less terrible.

And I think any amount of less terrible is something we could all use right now. I can’t change you. You can’t change me. But we can change ourselves and I hope we do.