Thursday, July 29, 2010

Nixing my blanket antipathy

So lets say there is a God.  And this God knows you...knows what makes you tick, your weakness, your strengths.

And lets say that this God tugs at your heart and brain in an effort to make you fit the mold you have set for yourself.  This God is relentless in planting the seed and weeding the garden called one's soul.

Now the soul has many dimensions, many attributes, many ways of manifesting itself as one journeys through life.  The soul is the you you want to be but can't, the part of you that is closest to the concept of the idea of a God.  It knows true right from wrong, even when you are smack dab in denial or ignorance.

Right now this God is telling me I am wrong to think a particular way.  Even if there is no God, the evidence before me leads me to no other conclusion; one should not paint everyone with the same brush.

I have been outspoken on Evangelicals. Despised them, criticized them, laughed at them, ridiculed them.  I did this because I attached some to the all.  Today on the way to my work assignment I was listening to Fresh air on Public Radio.  Terry Gross was interviewing Richard Cizik, who had been fired as vice president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a position he had held for 10 years.  His crime?  He said on Terry's show in 2008 that he supported gay civil unions.

You would never know that there were thoughtful, introspective, compassionate folks in a lot of groups deemed hostel to humanity (tea party, christian radio, "conservationism")....but there are.  Here is what Rev  Cizik said that really got me thinking about how I label people in groups I can't come close to associating with:
And these are all people who are leading a new movement of evangelicals just like me, and I'm really proud to have them, and we're called the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good.  And there's a reason why we say that, that is the common good, but we all believe that we are the future. That alienates some, irritates them, but frankly, we are the future of evangelicalism in America.  
And we stand for a presence in public life that's, as we say, loving rather than angry, holistic rather than narrow, healing rather than divisive, and most importantly even of all, independent of sort of partisanship and ideology, rather than subservient to party or ideology.
And evangelicalism has, well, it's become so subservient to an ideology and to a political party that it needs, as I say, to be born again.
I too have been subservient to an ideology.  Today it changes.  My "blanket antipathy" towards all people in groups I can't relate to ends today.

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