I wrote a response today to a great joke posted by my friend Dennis Cole. It tells how a lowly private stopped a car driven by a private that forgot the password. He was driving a general who also forgot the password. The General told the guard to let him through and the young man's response was a beautiful for us as Christians. He said, "General, I am new at this guarding thing. Who do I shoot, you or the driver?"
The country is more openly divided now than any time I remember. This makes it easy to get suckered into taking one side or the others of the pole. Everybody asks us, "Who do you think is right, Trump or Hillary"?
To make things worse, even playing sports is polarized. "Hey Gary, do you support the right on football players to stand, kneel, sing, sit, etc or do you support the flag, America, and apple pie?"
In other words, whom do I shoot?
Whomever I shoot, it will have a mob effect. A mob will be on my case, people will unfriend me and my fellow Christians will wonder if I have fallen from grace. (Except my Baptist relatives.)
Polarizing leads to destruction and makes peace almost impossible. Some of us remember the fantastic book and film, Peace Child. The author, Don Richardson, told how he and his family moved to share the gospel with some unreached people. When he was finally able to speak their language, he had to learn to also speak to their culture because when the people heard the story of Jesus they thought Judas was the hero.
Revenge was their greatest virtue meaning that wars could never cease because every tribal conflict had casualties that must be avenged. Until a way to reconcile the poles is found, the conflicts between identity groups will not cease and Postmodern ideals demand we place everyone into separate Identity Groups that can never be reconciled because it would mean the end of a group
Can we discover a way to reconcile the Postmodern situation? I think so.
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