“Haunted and Hopeful”
We Are Not OK - Part 4
The language of violence, hate and fear permeate every level of our public conversation.
We cannot avoid it. We cannot tune it out. We cannot pretend it is OK.
If, as children, we had used the kind of insulting and degrading language flowing out of our highest public offices today, our parents and grandparents would have washed out mouths out with soap. (For those under 35 or 40, yes, that was a real thing). Now we consider such language normal. Racially charged insults have moved from the margins of low-bar comedy to the height of political discourse. Degrading the poor or disabled is no longer frowned upon. The so—called “locker-room talk” teenage boys were supposed to outgrow as they learned to respect women has now become a normal part of the workplace and the media.
I mentioned last week that much of our war-like mindset is tribal. Our culture has made it perfectly acceptable to diminish, put-down, or devalue anyone who is different than “us,’ whoever “us” may be. We have always been afraid of those who are different, but we have not always had to live in the same neighborhoods or work in the same places with those we identify as “other than us”.
Diversity of every kind is built into the fabric of our nation, at least on paper, but we have not learned to appreciate this gift. I recently heard a reporter doing a story about the increase of race-based crimes as the African American and Latino populations grew in a particular rural community. She said, “Minorities are moving into our communities. We didn’t ask them to come and we don’t want them here.” Presumably her “we” represented the white people who had farmed that land for generations. Her statement, however, reflects the undercurrent of fear that we cannot escape. We are afraid of change. We are afraid of difference. We are afraid of the unknown.
People long for the “good old days” when we supposedly lived at peace, but we fail to acknowledge that in those days, we only lived at peace with “people like us,” because everybody we knew was just like us. We never really understood what it meant to live in peace with everyone. We never learned how to love our neighbor when our neighbor didn’t look and sound and feel and believe like us. Rather than recognizing everyone as our neighbor, we began seeing enemies everywhere we turned. And just in case we’re not sure who our enemies are, we have our favorite news channels or social media threads to tell us exactly who we should hate and who supposedly hates us.
Loving our neighbor only works when we assume everyone is our neighbor, but when we start seeing people through a lens of suspicion, fear takes hold and everyone becomes an enemy.
Feelings of loneliness and isolation have reached epidemic proportions in large part because we don’t know who we can trust. I have seen close friendships and even families torn apart in recent years over how people choose to vote. I have watched lifetime friends turn on each other over petty disagreements that have probably always been there but were never spoken.
I sum up this reality below with the opening words to a song-in-progress called “Hiding.”
We’re all hiding here, heads buried in the sand
Fearing every word exposes where we stand
Our enemies are waiting, but we don’t know who they are
Their swords are at the ready to re-open every scar
We may like to think of ourselves as strong. We may shout loudly that we are not afraid and that other people should be afraid of us. We may puff ourselves up and pretend we are far greater than we are. But if we’re really honest, fear haunts us in the deepest corners of our minds and hearts. It slips into our dreams when we least expect it. It lurks in the silence, and so we find more things to distract us from being still for too long. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to admit it. But if we’re honest, we are all afraid of something or someone. Perhaps if we dig deep enough, we might find that we fear ourselves most of all.
This is why silence and stillness are such crucial spiritual disciplines. Only in the silence can we hear the voice of God whispering peace into those dark and hidden corners of our souls. As we acknowledge those places of darkness, fear and hate within us, we must not bury it deeper and run back to our superficial distractions. We must allow ourselves to be haunted by the darkness within. We must allow God’s spirit to convict us of our sin, not only in our outward actions or words, but in the deepest motives and desires of our hearts.
I recently met someone who has worked in the media most of his life and has seen the darkest parts of humanity, from walking with Holocaust survivors in Nazi death camps to dining with people on death row. He was asked whether he was more haunted or hopeful about the state of humanity and our world given all the evil, hate and suffering he encounters on a daily basis. For this week, I will leave us with his soul piercing answer:
“I’m hopeful because I’m haunted.”
If we are not haunted by the depth of our sin and darkness, by our fear and hate, by our pride and anger, by our bigotry and insults, and by all the things which keep us hiding from our true selves, there is no hope. But if we allow ourselves to be haunted by all of these things… If we admit that this is not OK, that we are not OK… then maybe, just maybe… hope can break through.
Reflections:
Reflect on your earliest memories of experiencing diversity. How did you feel when you began to interact with people who were very different than you?
What is your deepest fear… for yourself, your family, your church, your community, your nation, etc.? How might you re-frame those fears as hopeful possibilities?
Are you truly haunted by the darkness in our world, or have you come to accept it as “normal?” To whatever degree you have accepted it, consider what it might look like to face the darkness head on, to be haunted by it, and to allow it to move you toward a more hopeful future.
Bonus: If you have access to the original Twilight Zone Series on any of your streaming services, check out the episode: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”. I’ve included a link to the epilogue here. Perhaps all that we are talking about is not as new a phenomenon as we might think. It makes one wonder if we have ever really been OK.