Own Your Violence

But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. (Matt 5:44-45)

We are all full of contradictions, and maybe that's good news.

Consider the energy we spend on self-protection and the inevitable exhaustion that comes from such careful curation. We repost injustices and decry inequity but leave little room for self-examination -- the quiet culpabilities hiding in our hearts. Now, before I move on, let me be clear. I am not encouraging silence on the urgent issues of our day. Nor am I asking you to ignore injustice and instead obsess over all your sins. I'm asking you to consider the ways (however small they may be) you contribute to the division.

"But, wait!!! I care about Palestine or Israel or democracy or poverty or racism or LGBTQ issues or abortion or healthcare or the division of church and state or the wealth gap or being a republican or being a democrat, MAGA, Never Trump!" and so on....

Again, here, I am not asking you to stop caring about those things -- please do not hear what I am not saying! But, perhaps our quickness to defend ourselves reveals a deeper resistance to the inadequacies residing in our own hearts. We prefer this kind of impulsivity over slowing down to ask the harder questions about ourselves. We weaponize our convictions to shield ourselves from the illusion of humiliation.

If we fill our lives with the noise of endless news cycles, we are prone to the very divisiveness the algorithm champions. But when we turn off the tv and silence our phones, we leave space to think, to consider, to examine, to pray. It can be terrifying what we find in the quiet spaces, but these are the discoveries that liberate us from the pressure to maintain a certain image, to resist our humanity in favor of an unsustainable self-righteousness.

Now....you may think I am being idealistic or naive, but I'd rather be naive than cynical. I'd rather find in the self-examination a greater sensitivity to our shared humanity, but even more, the shared weight of being God's image bearers.

We are all a work-in-progress, and perhaps the work makes more sense when we confess our sins. When we begin to bring the hidden things to the light. When we choose to be known, to be loved. But we have to let people love us as we are, not as we should be. C.S. Lewis wrote, “We are to lay before God what is in us, not what ought to be in us.”

The things in us: anger, greed, unforgiveness, envy, comparison, resentment, lust, hatred, arrogance, perversion, discontentment, selfishness, self-hatred, violence, and on and on. If we are unwilling to own these things, we are unable to love fully. We will continue to distract ourselves with the sins of others.

Consider the command to love your enemies. Such a call does not assume that the "lover" is without fault. This is not a chance to prove our goodness but to reveal our need. This kind of love is disarming. It confronts us with the possibility that we are also the enemy.

The late author, Leeann Payne, wrote that we either contemplate or we exploit.  Exploitation asks, "What can this thing or person do for me?" Contemplation asks, "Who or what am I beholding without regard for their usefulness to me?" These days contemplation seems scarce. Exploitation feels powerful, even righteous, because when we control the narrative, we control our image. We waste countless hours proving ourselves as if we owe that to our followers. This is exhausting.

What about this?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Blessed are the humble, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

The blessed life is strange. It promises abundance through poverty, humility, mercy, and peace-making. It invites us to surrender our unbearable burdens for the easier yoke of self-sacrifice, for the lighter burden of kingdom-come. Confess your contradictions. Own your violence. Submit your messy heart to those who will love you anyway.

Here, love is awkward and clumsy, but it is full of joy and rest.