Revolution

Value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but to interests of others. Philippians 2:3-4 

More than 125,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19 over a four-month period in the United States alone. Medical research supports that wearing a mask reduces transmission. Reducing transmission saves lives. Wearing a face mask poses zero health consequences for the majority of people and only minor problems for the minority of people. Why is this a debate?  

Absentee ballots have been an accepted and reliable form of voting for decades. Our military has voted by mail for years. Many of our current politicians protesting the use of mail-in ballots today, have, in fact, mailed in their votes. In the midst of a pandemic, mail-in ballots provide a much safer voting option for our neighbor. Why is this a debate?  

With the advent of social media grandstanding, We the People have given ourselves over to We the Party. We have attached ourselves to political camps and lost sight of the people and principles behind the issues we originally joined those political camps to help. We have bought hook, line, and sinker into the Us versus Them narrative, so much so that we have sacrificed individual ideals for a collective agenda.  

We blame the news media for manipulating information, but we react to it. We point to social media for distributing bad information, but we share it. We denounce politicians for driving negative campaigns, but we reward them with our vote. At some point we must acknowledge that the real problem is not the news media, social media, or even the politicians. The problem is the people feeding those institutions. The problem is us.  

Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you have a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity. Colossians 3:13-14 

How do we find our way back to We the People in a society that is being told 24/7 it is us against them? Instead of attacking each other, we need to listen to each other. Instead of judging each other, we need to start asking what we can do to help each other. Jesus did not start a revolution by dividing people; he started it by inviting people – inviting people to change, inviting people to put their neighbors before themselves, inviting people to a communal table where the least of us is equal to the best of us in God’s eyes. God asks us to be revolutionary in defense of our neighbors, but he has shown us revolution does not always have to look like war.