Fighting over things that don’t matter

It seems as though our culture is oriented towards fighting over things that ultimately just don’t matter, are extremely short term, and are designed to make us angry just long enough to keep people distracted from the things that do matter.

A few weeks ago it was the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. Was it mocking the Last Supper or was it a representation of a feast in honor of a greek god? Remember the fights over whether the one Teletubby was gay or not? Or changing Mr. Potatohead? Did any of these things, or the plethora of so many others that have been fought over actually matter? We seem to have moved on quite quickly, and nothing changed which lends me to believe that they didn’t.

Our political climate is very oriented towards conflict. If one of the political parties takes a stand on an issue, you can be sure that the other one will oppose it and take a counter stand – because God forbid they agree on anything at all – especially something that might improve people’s lives.

In many ways we have a religious culture that takes its cue from politics too. That’s not surprising given that there are strains of Christianity that have tied their boats to partisan interests claiming that you can’t be a Christian unless you vote this way or that. It’s an old story of Christianity being used by political power to achieve power results. Nothing new there.

Write a serious comment on any post on social media, or an article, and you can be pretty certain that you’ll get a comment disagreeing with you.

We see this conflict culture in our entertainment, business, sports, and more. We see it in our communities. We see it in our relationships. Oriented towards conflict.

Our history is full of conflict – history is essentially one conflict after another. The American myth of the expanding frontier is this story of conflict, all in an effort to have elbow room – which is a nice way of saying that men (it was always primarily men) couldn’t handle being around other men because of the conflict – mostly because they didn’t like what they were being told to do, say, think, or believe. There’s a whole book on this that I’m reading right now – “A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America” by Richard Slotkin. (I’m sure I’ll have a book review at some point – stay tuned).

As a Christian, my focus is supposed to be on following Jesus and his way. Jesus dealt with conflict – it’s what killed him after all. He didn’t run away from it, or seek elbow room. Rather he dealt with it head on. He had a variety of strategies to deal with it, if you can call them strategies. Most often what I observe in reading these stories is that he changed the rules. He didn’t play by the rules that were thrust on him. He created an alternative to the conflict – offering a way out, often a way that those engaged in the conflict had never considered. It often left them speechless and dumbfounded. They didn’t know what to do with him or his alternative.

And that’s a good lesson for us. When in conflict, deal with it. Recognize what it is. Discern what the parties involved are trying to achieve. And chart a different course – one that disrupts the conflict. When the conflict is disrupted, then new possibilities emerge. People can’t be kept in pre-determined boxes and they break through the labels designed to control and simplify the arguments, all with a goal of defeating one’s enemies.

Don’t accept the premise of the conflict. Change the direction of the conflict and you might just end up with a better outcome than someone wins and someone loses.

The bigger issue though is that these conflicts are just distractions. They distract us from things that actually do have an impact on people’s lives. They distract us from the poverty people experience every day. How is it even possible that the richest nation in human history has a poverty/hunger/homelessness problem? That’s a conflict that matters.

They distract us from the violence that so many have experienced. How is it even possible that we have tens of thousands of people dying in this country by the use of a weapon (either on themselves or on others)? That’s a conflict that matters.

They distract us from the dehumanization that so many have experienced. How is it even possible that we have people who still go around marching and shouting racist chants waving flags of nations that were defeated and dissolved? Somehow the ideas, ideology, and theology that those flags represent continue to persist. That’s a conflict that matters.

I could go on with so many other conflicts that matter. But we seem to be content with the distraction of conflicts that don’t matter. Maybe it’s because we know they don’t matter. Maybe it’s because we know we aren’t called on to actually do anything in response, beyond just raise our voice in disagreement and see an other.

You want to change this narrative? At the heart of Jesus recognizing the conflict and offering an alternative, it starts with something much more fundamental – seeing the humanity in others and oneself. When Jesus says to love your enemy, this is what he’s talking about. We have to see the humanity of our enemies if we are going to see what the actual conflict is and to see an alternative. We have to see the humanity in ourselves as well.

Last weekend, a group called Blood Tribe came to Harrisburg and marched down the street yelling racists chants. They dressed in a way that dehumanized themselves. They covered their faces, they all wore the same thing, they shouted chants dehumanizing others they did not know. They drove to a location and got into the back of a U-Haul and were unloaded at the state capitol. Even their mode of transportation was dehumanizing to themselves. People aren’t transported in the back of a U-Haul, things are.

If you want to know how someone can get to the point of spreading dehumanizing hate, start by asking how the person has dehumanized themself.

We have to start by seeing their humanity. That’s not easy when we are talking about people spreading hatred and fear.

I’m not talking about excusing what they did. We should reject the hatred. We should make such hatred unwelcome.

I’m talking about offering an alternative to their narrative as well – an alternative that sets them free as well. We have to present something different from the hatred and fear they were spreading like manure around the city on Saturday. We have to see their humanity in its fullness. If we don’t, we move in a direction of what their ideology wants – dehumanizing everyone. These were fathers, sons, brothers, coworkers, and Lord knows who else. They are broken men who have clung onto something that gives them meaning and purpose. And they are enslaved to a dehumanizing belief. It’s the old theology of empire – create an enemy to blame for your problems, dehumanize that enemy (and yourself), so that you can become something more than human. Why would you want to do that? I’m guessing that these men look at their own lives and see the brokenness and failures. They have lost hope. They have lost meaning and purpose. And this group gives them identity. Or so they think it does. In reality, it strips away their identity. It strips away their humanity. It strips away their purpose and meaning. It discards all of that, just like it will discard them when they are no longer useful to the cause.

We fight over so many things that don’t matter. Change the narrative and you’ll change lives. You may not convince anyone to change course or believe differently – that’s not really what it is about anyway. Instead, you’ll have a clearer sense of your own humanity. Others will do what they do – we don’t have control over them. That’s part of seeing the humanity in ourselves and others. But we have a choice to see things differently, to present an alternative, and to offer hope.