For weeks, I have been trying to get my thoughts together to write a blog. But my head has been swirling. I can’t seem to keep up, even with voracious reading and podcast listening. I am in the middle of three books, a dozen podcasts I follow religiously, a daily review of news sites, and a Netflix documentary series. It’s exhausting and there is so much coming at us. Emotions are high all around us with the US Election, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, reproductive health, racial tensions, immigration, Christian Nationalism, and gun violence, just to name a few issues. All of these topics likely elicit a strong, immediate response in most of us. It is normal human behavior to distill our beliefs and feelings about each of these things into either/or, black/white. Pro-life/Pro-Choice. Pro-Israel/Pro-Palestine. Pro-Ukraine/Pro-Russia. Pro-2A/Anti-Gun. But I would challenge that is the easy, lazy way out.
I am convinced that our news and social media consumption are persuading us to become increasingly polarized, dug in, and indignant. We find energy and fire at the extremes that fuel us to defend whichever extreme position we claim. Did you ever notice how few times we are asked to come to the center, to find things we actually agree on, to appreciate the gray zone and the nuance required for compromise?
Group-think and tribal identification (religious, political, etc.) even lead us to abandon our rational minds and sign on to an agenda that may be irrational or incongruent—or at least require some degree of cognitive dissonance to make sense internally. Take for example a hard-line pro-life stance. No form of abortion should be legal, all life is sacred. IVF should be banned as inherent to the process is the loss of embryos that do not mature, implant, or cannot be used. Contraception may even be considered a type of abortion and should be banned because all life is precious and should be protected at all costs. Using this logic, how does that square with the lack of protection for life in schools from gun violence and humane treatment at the Southern border? How does that hold with capital punishment, where we have data to prove that at least some portion of people on death row have been wrongfully convicted and now face death, though they are innocent? What about the thousands of innocent children dying at the hands of the Israeli military in Gaza? Are their lives not precious, too?
I can’t seem to make it make sense.
The emotions that these extreme positions yield are fear, anger, and resentment. When I go there, I find anxiety. I find a fight. I find violence and defensiveness.
So what happens when I wade into the middle? What happens when I listen? What happens when I believe in compromise and finding common ground? What happens when there are real people behind the theoretical situations?
In the nuance, in actual stories from my own life recently, I find a woman who needs medical care for an ectopic pregnancy that is complicated, time consuming, expensive, and demoralizing because this woman lives in Missouri. I see a couple who desperately want to be parents and find the greatest joy of their lives in the baby they now hold thanks to IVF. I tell a mother that her son is never coming home because he was shot and despite all I tried to do to save him, with his blood still fresh on my shoes, I hold her and we cry together. I mourn with a family who lost their father to a tragic accident as they tell me about the story of their father’s immigration and his hard-fought struggles to finally open the restaurant he always dreamed of. In the nuance, I find that I am both staunchly pro-life and pro-choice. I want all life to be respected and protected, including women in duress and couples trying to start a family. All life means all life. Unborn babies and newborns; school-age children and teenagers; families living in poverty who need access to healthcare; immigrants fleeing from oppressive governments. Christians. Muslims. Hindus. Innocent and guilty. Black lives. White lives. Brown lives. Native lives. Women. Men. Gay. Lesbian. And all who are still trying to figure that part of themselves out. Conservative and liberal. All. Life. Period.
Nuance allows us to quiet the screams and lies of the caricatures of the extremes. Nuance pulls us to the middle where we can agree that, yes, we do want people to live safe and peaceful lives, where we feel loved and accepted and respected. So how do we do that? Compromise. Nuance.
While I have abandoned the organized church, (I guess a topic for another blog) I most definitely haven’t abandoned Jesus. What I find in the quieter, gauzier space of nuance is far more peace and love. And I think that’s what Jesus looks like. There is not a single instance where Jesus commands or models violence or overtake of earthly government power to promote his message. He chooses listening and love. Every. Single. Time. Jesus doesn’t take the easy way out…he chooses nuance.
Resources and Suggested Reading/Watching:
- Ben Cremer: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile
- Straight White American Jesus: https://www.straightwhiteamericanjesus.com/
- The New Evangelicals: https://www.thenewevangelicals.com/podcast/
- Throughline: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/throughline/id1451109634
- The Bible for Normal People: https://thebiblefornormalpeople.com/
- Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror: https://www.netflix.com/watch/81320087?trackId=255824129
- Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War: https://www.netflix.com/watch/81572214?trackId=255824129
- Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial: https://www.netflix.com/watch/81576218?trackId=14277281
- The Power Worshippers by Katherine Stewart
- American Idolatry by Andrew Whitehead
- American Crusade by Andrew Seidel
- Poverty, By America by Matthew Desmond
- I Think You’re Wrong (But I’m Listening): A Guide to Grace-Filled Political Conversations by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers
- Other things I have read (all genres): https://www.traumamom4.com/reading-list/
