The Truth Will Set You Free (Part Three)
The Truth Will Set You Free (Part Three)
John 8:31-32
In my preaching time this month (with one Sunday off for work trip), I have addressed two issues that I think are timely: first, the question of the relationship between church and state and second, the focal concerns for people of conscience (in the church and well beyond) in preserving our democracy. In short, we are not a Christian nation, either in our design or in our lived behavior. The best relationship between the church and the state is marked by separation and a constructive, creative, prophetic tension. The state needs a conscience and, collectively, people of all faiths and people with no faith but a deep sense of justice and compassion and concern for the common good can hold the state accountable. Finally, no matter where we fall in our partisan views, we should be able to work together to preserve and protect the constitution, to honor the rule of law, and to follow the will of the people in our elections.
The truth is that if you want to weaken or even kill the church, then make it seemlessly connected to the state. Both the church and the state will be corrupted. The truth is that if we want to destroy our democratic rebublic all we have to do is make the constituion optional, or bend the rule of law so that it only applies to some and not to others, or just hammer away at the election process every time our side loses. If we don’t agree to the rules and we cirumvent those rules and we never concede defeat, then we put our democracy in direct peril. Good people kept this from happening in our recent history. Many of those good people paid a heavy price. Many more have been replaced.
What I want to do this morning is close this loop and come full circle back to here and now, in the Union Church, as part of the Village of Lake Bluff. The things that we’ve talked about all matter. The question for this morning is how they will come up here in our day to day lives. We can and should advocate for consitutional, legal, and election concerns on a state and national level. (Trust me, I’ve written my fair share of letters!). We can and should study the issues of our day and take a stand, too. (I’ve written those letters, as well.) However, I think the most important choices we will make in the next four months and beyond will be our daily choices. We should be asking ourselves, “How do the choices that I make every day embody my core values and strengthen my community?”
I was taught to think about a social contract that we all maintain. Though we never sit down and sign a physical paper, we agree implicitly and explicitly to abide by the rules, some of which are laws but most of which are just agreements to treat each other in certain ways. There are things we do and don’t do and things we say and don’t say because life is better that way. Individually, we think about character. Collectively, we think about civility.
In my experience, there has been a long, slow deterioration in this social contract. It’s easy to point to national examples. Presidents had always violated “norms” but they hid the sordid parts of their lives and responded with shame when they were caught becuase we all expected better. Years ago, though, when the news about Bill Clinton’s affair with a white house intern came out, supporters faced a choice. Should he be held accountable for what he had done and for the lies that he had used to cover his tracks? The answer for a lot of people was, “No…who cares?” “We don’t care” is an entirely different response than, “We expect better than that.”
It’s not really a Bill Clinton point I’m making here. My point is that something shifted. Society decided that what mattered wasn’t one’s character but one’s ideology. If you’re on our side, then we’re going to give you a pass. Over time, we expect less from our leaders and grow jaded about “the truth.” At one point, George W. Bush, talking about education in America, spoke of the “subtle bigotry of low expectations.” Nationally, we’ve been experiencing the not so subtle decay in our expectations not just of our leaders but of each other and of ourselves.
At the same time, some of the most powerful engineering minds and marketing skills have been honed on creating public forums that have no accountability. What keeps people engaged is a good fight. So, in the world of social media, you will be presented with things that bother you and opportunities to bond with those who are equally bothered. But, “best of all” you will be given the chance to say the most exteme things that you can think to say all under the veil of relative anonymity. If you said such things to an actual person, you would temper your words because you know you would see that person again. On social media, though, you are absolutely, 100% licensed to rage.
The rage is wasted though because it does not lead to change. You cared enough to post something. You might even inspire someone. Good! If I’m going to work for change, though, we would have to focus and be persistent and get to work. In other words, we would have to turn off our computer and do something. For the most part, social media, by design, is not about affecting change. Rather, it is all about distracting us and moving us to the next enticing thing. Remember after 9/11 when you were watching the news and all of a sudden other news items were steaming across the screen at the same time? Social media is that same kind of attention deficit disorder, only on steroids.
What then shall we do? I think the challenge for all of us is not to become jaded but to take responsbility, ourselves, once again. Let me offer a few examples…
Let’s look at where and how we uphold standards of civility and behavior. First, consider the little things that uphold the social contract every day. The big picture questions may be about how we get along and how we respect each other and how we cultivate a sense of connection with each other. Those questions, though, boil down to what we do in specific moments.
So, you pull up to a stop sign and no one is there. Do you bother stopping? An awful lot of people roll right through the stop sign. And if you get caught? A lot of people blame the police officer for the ticket. What if following the rules in all sorts of situations is one of the primary ways that we express our consent and support for the social contract? We live in a world in which following the rules is increasingly optional. We live in a world in which bending the rules or brazenly breaking them is just fine—as long as you don’t get caught. And the mostly unspoken justification is…everyone else is doing it, too. People who follow the rules are suckers, right? We profess to be a part of a tradition in which we do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. But even beyond our particular faith foundation, as a society, every time we make the rules optional, we eat away at the trust we have for one another: “I literally thought I could trust that when the sign says, “Stop” people would stop. If I can’t trust that, then what else can’t I trust?”
Go back to the stop sign. It’s a four way stop and two cars pull up at relatively the same moment. In a civil society, in which the social contract is in tact, it would be more important for me to connect with the other driver than to go first: “You go first!” I can’t be a respectful member of society and walk around making choices that shout, “I matter more than anyone else!” It costs us no time to do and say things that communicate something very different. It’s stopping for pedestrians. It’s stopping for the school bus. It’s allowing someone to merge and thanking someone when they let you do the same. It’s treating the people we encounter along the way as fellow human beings instead of objects or impediments or annoyances, whether they are sitting in the car in front of us or they are checking our groceries. Making “You matter!” our message rather than “Get out of my way” is a pretty solid goal.
When people feel like we can’t trust one another, when we feel like we are getting disrespected all day long, we’re in trouble. Still, though, the biggest damage to the social contract may happen when folks no longer take personal responsibility for their choices. About once a month, I take a big trash bag out into Open Lands and pick up trash as I walk. It’s cigarette butts and tons of beer cans and a lot of coffee cups and, for some reason, an inordinate number of Kleenex, just randomly dropped along the way. I like the feeling of making a place that I love better. However, I can’t help thinking, “Who thinks this is okay?” Of course, in the bigger picture, whole industries our based on making a profit by not really caring about the impact on our environment, unless they get caught. Still, the last time I checked, we all have to live here, right?
Personal responsibility is what drives us, when we realize that we don’t get to make everyone else’s choices, to double-down on making our own. Part of the meaning of doing this is trying to set an example: “Maybe if I do things differently, someone else will join me.” When I take responsibility for my choices, maybe someone else will, too. The other part, though, is a little bit prophetic. If someone sees me picking up the garbage maybe they’ll think twice before they toss their trash in Open Lands next time? Maybe when people start taking responsibility for their choices, someone else might notice and feel regret and change their choices?
One of the really distinctive things that marks this moment in time is our unwillingness to own our mistakes and express regret and even (gasp) to seek forgiveness. If we walk through life always feeling that we are the victims, always pointing out someone else’s flaws, always flipping to denial and outrage in a moment when the honest truth is that we are wrong, then we have failed both our faith and our obligation as people in a social world. We don’t have to be perfect—as individuals, as a community, or as a nation. We do have to have the capacity to tell the truth, to own our mistakes, to commit to doing better, and to ask to be held accountable.
We can believe that the cause and the answer to all of our problems is the one person who would be president. Here’s the truth, they are only a reflection of us all and of our frayed social contract. We so want someone else to solve our problems for us that what we get candidates who are deluded enough to think that they, alone, can solve them. We will listen to them making promises as if they are being elected “king” but they do that because that’s what we demand. The process, itself, will further fray the ties that bind us to one another, as the lines are drawn ever bolder on who is “us” and who is “them.”
The question that matters most, though, is not what they will do but what we will do. How will we choose to talk to one another? How will be choose to respect each other, every day? How will we take responsibility for doing the right thing, not because it is convenient but because it is right and true? How will we own our mistakes and seek forgiveness? Integrity matters. Community matters. What if we remind ourselves and each other, every day, that we have to live with one another and share this earth?