In a democratic republic, politics and politicians will always play an outsized role in our culture. For example, this morning’s announcement that former US Vice President Dick Cheney has died at the age of eighty-four is making headlines even though his term in office ended sixteen years ago.
Today’s political races are dominating the news as well, from the mayoral contest in New York City to gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to a redistricting vote in California. By my calculations, these elections will directly affect 80.3 million people, which is obviously a very significant number of people, but less than a quarter of our national population.
The larger story is what they mean for our own larger story.
- According to a new poll, 49 percent of Americans say our best times are behind us, while only 41 percent think they lie ahead. According to Politico, this underscores “a pervasive sense of unease about both individuals’ own futures and the national direction.”
- Only 39 percent of Americans believe the Republican Party governs in an “honest and ethical way”; only 42 percent say the same about the Democratic Party.
- Most Americans expect political violence to keep growing in the US.
We are not surprised by reports that Iranians are taught to hate America. But it is distressing that so many Americans are taught the same. In cultural commentator Andrew Sullivan’s latest blog, the Oxford and Harvard PhD graduate summarizes a new report on American higher education:
On race in American history, for example, only one viewpoint is actually taught: that the US is a white supremacist state that murders and imprisons black people as its core goal, that its real founding was 1619, its Constitution is a form of white tyranny, and racial “progress” is a lie designed to obscure this permanent reality.
Sullivan grieves for recent generations who have been indoctrinated in Critical Theory and its resultant anti-Americanism. Clearly, we live in a divided and divisive time in great need of a positive path toward a unified future.
The good news is that this path is as available and transforming as it has ever been.
“They are generally the same people”
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv thirty years ago today. I flew home from Israel that morning and heard the news upon landing in the US. In the years since, I have been many times to Rabin Square, the site that commemorates his tragic death. He was murdered not by an Islamic terrorist but by a Jewish extremist opposed to Mr. Rabin’s peace initiatives with Palestinians.
His death illustrates G. K. Chesterton’s maxim: “The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people.”
We are clearly to love both. Jesus insisted: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:44). His words can be translated literally from the Greek, “Continually and unconditionally love those who hate you and ask God for their best even as they are persecuting you.”
Our Lord went even further when he taught us, “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). To translate again, “To the exact same degree that I have loved you, you also are to continually love one another.”
Our Savior’s love was unconditional (Romans 8:35–39), sacrificial (1 John 3:16), and empathetic (John 11:35). Now we are commanded to love others, including those who hate us, in the same way.
Imagine the difference in America if every American Christian obeyed his command.
When I love my neighbor well
Of course, as we noted in discussing our love for God yesterday, such love for others is impossible in human agency. I cannot love my neighbor, much less my enemy, as Jesus loves me. I am a sinner, but God “is” love (1 John 4:8).
However, Jesus never intended me to do so. He wants to continue his earthly ministry through me as his “body” (1 Corinthians 12:27), which includes his ministry of love. He wants to forgive those who sin, comfort those who grieve, and heal those who hurt through me.
My part is to stay submitted to his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and then measure success by what Jesus does through me (John 15:5). When my words and deeds express his love for those I serve, I love my neighbor well. When they do not, I do not.
This works in every dimension of life. If you’re a teacher, Jesus loves your students and wants to love them through you. If you’re a doctor, lawyer, pastor, or business person, he wants to love your patients, clients, congregation, and customers through you. If you’re a parent, he wants to love your children through you. If you’ve been hurt by someone, he wants to love even your enemy through you.
And he wants such love to transform not only our divisive and discouraged culture but our hearts as well.
Forgiving a concentration camp guard
In her classic autobiography The Hiding Place, Holocaust survivor Corrie ten Boom told this remarkable story:
It was at a church service in Munich, Germany, that I saw him, the former SS man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbrück. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. Suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking guards, the heaps of clothing, [her sister] Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,” he said. “To think that, as you say, he has washed my sins away!”
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. “Lord Jesus,” I prayed, “forgive me and help me to forgive him.”
I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. Again, I breathed a silent prayer, “Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.”
As I took his hand, the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on his. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives, along with the command, the love itself.
Why do you need her discovery today?
Quote for the day:
“If God should have no more mercy on us than we have charity to one another, what would become of us?” —Thomas Fuller (1608–61)
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