And of course the divided America is political in many respects, something I will not discuss here - politics being a power keg worth staying away from.
What I do want to discuss that we do no longer possess the same sense of goodness.
I am not discussing violations of the Ten Commandments here, I am not discussing strictly moral issues.
I saying that we lack that deeper case-by-case sense of how to respond to each other in conflict, that sense of what is proportional, that sense of what is expedient long term... and -- more than anything else --- that sense of a truly lasting, wise, compassionate Christian response to another person.
I remember being in a closed Christian Facebook group a while back, discussing adult children who strayed from the way they were raised, children who strayed in what was considered significant and troubling ways.
The group divided itself amongst those said, "it is my child, I love my child, I will respect my adult child's choices because my child is an adult - God understands and is compassionate even more than I am, and I don't want to push my child away".
Then there were those who said, "I live biblically and I will not violate God's ways, my child has done so, and I need to respond in a way that honor's God's wishes and let my child know that I have boundaries. And I will not tolerate what is clearly wrong."
I think both sides were searching for the lasting good, the right thing to do from every perspective -- with one group somehow fearing pushing away children more, and the other group some how "fearing God" more. The group was respectful of all, I think and hope all felt like that, but it was a difficult conversation.
That is one example, which is relatively positive and polite in its essence. In many places in America today that is more and more a thing of the past.
I cannot find the quote (I tried), but I do think that it was C. S. Lewis who said that a major criterion for friendship, is that the two persons have the same sense of goodness.
Time and again in literature, friends part ways because they do not agree on how to resolve a difficult situation they are facing together.
What one person considers a cruel and merciless solution, the other thinks a perfectly normal and reasonable way to solve the problem. What one person sees as a soft, spineless and weak response, the other sees as kind, compassionate, and patient answer.
Indeed, your attempt at reasonable self-preservation may by another be viewed as selfishly greedy. Or the converse, your generosity and sacrificial love may viewed by another translate to cowardice, fear, and lack of boundaries.
There is nothing new in that. We all render different judgments about situations based on our own experiences. What is new is that the gap is widening between people's senses of goodness.
As a dear friend of mine says, "we're not called to be right, we are called to love God and neighbor as the highest calling."
I wonder how much culture is directly embedded in this. As in, my culture tolerates NO shouting, but other cultures do tolerate some, some cultures tolerate a lot.
I discussed with a dear friend, a while back, a passage from Hillbilly Elegy where a set of grandparents get upset because their grandson was thrown out of a store for touching expensive wares that he should not be touching. According to the narrator, the grandparents threatened the owner with a gun, and then trashed the store in anger.
I found this unrealistic. But my friend shared with me that this she had seen first hand in some of her extended family, and that the account was not exaggerated. (I am clearly out of touch with a portion of America).
But, here again are competing senses of goodness.
For the grandparents the need to vindicate their grandson's right to be in a store, their need to show that store owner what they will NOT put up with, become those grandparents' chief sense of good -- their perceived sense of good for the grandson and for their standing in society.
My sense of good would be to remind my child not to touch, apologize to the store owner for my child's discretion and then I would have left... my CHIEF good being public peace, to keep the tone to low emotional output.
If I felt my child had done no wrong, I would make a mental note not to frequent that store again. Never, anywhere in my sense of good, would physical threats or intimidations be employed (reporting to Better Business Bureau, yes, but nothing that involves emotion or physical damage or violence. Nothing that could call the police, indeed!!)
I wonder if my reaction to the grandparents in that story also has to do with my lack of sympathy for them and their plight, my inability to see GOODNESS in their responses, my inability to understand why they reacted so strongly. Their culture was repugnant to me most of the way through my reading of the book, and their version of Christianity is one I could not relate to.
Then I remembered an incident on Facebook a while back where a friend was frustrated with a large group of people who were demonstrating (and getting WAY out of hand.)
I had sympathy for the group that demonstrated. I felt that they had nothing left to lose because they were never heard. I felt that they were super frustrated and therefore easily ignited to disproportionate expressions of anger. This angered my friend, who saw the demonstrators as disorderly, spoiled young persons who had nothing to complain about. -- She viewed the young demonstrators the way I viewed the grandparents in Hillbilly Elegy -- out of line, unnecessarily angry, needing to calm down.
Competing visions of goodness, excusing one group, blaming another, .... I guess both of us would were hypocritical and partisan, excusing the behavior of the group we sympathize with, while condemning the very same behavior in the group we do not sympathize with.
Wrong is wrong, the principled person would say, and it is wrong because it is wrong, not wrong because of who did it.
Our narrow-minded lack of understanding resulted in lack of compassion for the frustrations of people that did not align with our views.
Then....
... more recently, I had a discussion with a person that I know face-to-face (not an Internet friend). Our discussion was about Dante's circles of hell. The person got frustrated after a significant amount of discussion, and then suddenly alleged that -- because of my view of Dante's Inferno --I was not fit to teach college students.
How can a discussion of Dante become a question of my fitness to execute my job responsibly?
This was a combination "slippery slope" - "ad hominem" argument.
And while I can somewhat lend credence to a touch of "slippery slope", though it is not a rigorous or conclusive argument... Is an ad hominem attack ever appropriate?
When a conversational partner deviates to attack the character of the opponent instead of engaging with the topic, this person has lost his or her sense of goodness. Now it is all about winning the argument emotionally, not about exploration, understanding, or mutual respect.
Everyone loses. Friendship may be lost. ... and for what? Are we ever satisfied when we "win" (if such it can be called) an emotional argument?
And do not assume that this was an issue of a person of higher verbal skills and experience arguing with a person of lesser verbal skills and experience. We were equally matched educationally and experientially.
Nonetheless, there was emergent anger on one side, anger so intense that once it was released there was no room for goodness.
For my part (in that particular situation) I had no awareness that my meager understanding of Dante, clashed with a conviction so dearly held, that destroying friendship was not too small a price for my friend to pay to vindicate cherished theological positions.
Such encounters are frequent... in families and in friendships these days -- these past few years. WAY too common.
Move on from there, to my last point....
Our current climate in America seems more tense, more powder-keggy than in prior years.
The Internet puts us in little echo-chambers where we are fed words we like to hear, watch Youtube clips with stuff we agree with. It tickles our ears.
2Tim 4:3
For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
If we "Youtube" a topic and listen and watch the resultant videos, when we are done with one video, Youtube suggests another video, slightly more extreme, and if we keep just listening to the feed we are given, more and more outrageous and angering material will be fed our way.
Eventually we are watching whacked out conspiracy theories. The sheer plethora of material available makes it almost seem like everyone agrees with this ever more extreme point of view.
The Internet and its big platforms thrive on our anger and discontent. As long as we are unhappy, suspicious, and fearful we will keep coming back, obsessively reading more and more, which translates to more ad money for them.
Contented, quiet citizens are more likely to go on their merry way, tending gardens, knitting and exercising, checking on news at most once a day or perhaps even once a week.
So long as we are continuously outraged, our trigger points are lowered, and we get hooked on the adrenalin rush of outrage and return back again and again to watch whatever terribly unjust unconstitutional horrible, mean thing our chief public enemy has committed.
Our local relationships with family and friends are deeply at risk. --- Everything unknown or different becomes a threat, everyone who does not agree with us loses his or her humanity in our eyes. Any ideas, theologies, or methods that do not align with ours (especially those imparted to us by Youtube's and Facebook's... etc... increasingly more extremists suggestions) infuriate us.
When our senses of goodness diverge, your sense of goodness and my sense of goodness become irreconcilable. We no longer mean the same thing about what is good. We have nothing in common. We cannot talk.
As a result goodness -- plain ordinary daily human goodness -- becomes impossible. When we each intertwine our senses of goodness with our competing irreconcilable political ideologies -- goodness is lost.
Is it possible for us to get out of our echo-chambers to move back and see good in people?
Even in people who do not vote like we do? Or in people who do not go to our church? Or perhaps even in people who do not go to church?
NOT that ALL will seem good, perhaps, but can we see some good, or at least see an attempt at good intentions...
...OR perhaps we cannot see good but can we at least NOT see EVIL in our fellow human beings?
x
