Well, as we all know today is the US presidential election. Everyone in this nation and many around the world are watching with bated breath to see what will happen in this country both today and in the days to follow. Not only is there interest in who will win the popular vote, and the antiquated electoral college, but for the first time in American history there is a serious doubt question about a peaceful transfer of power if the incumbent President were to lose. Will citizens be mobilized to violence in response to election outcomes?
I was out of the country when the USA held its 2016 presidential election. Like many at the time, I trusted the polls. I more or less assumed Hillary Clinton would become the country’s first female president. One of my great sadnesses was not being home with my family, and community as those results were emerging. I woke up in Birmingham, England. I was there, participating in the New Parish Conference. And while I was there with Shane Claiborne, Martin Robinson, Debra Green, Tim Soerens, Alan Roxburgh, Imandeep Kaur, Paul Sparks, Jonny Baker, Kate Coleman, and others that didn’t make up for the fact that I missed being which my family in a moment of profound grief for us. Part of the country celebrated, while other parts of the same country grieved.
In a two party system that’s the way it goes down. Winners & Losers. Intrinsic to a two party system is a divide between us and them. Red versus blue. When the rhetoric leveraged to win devolves into to ad hominem digs, fear-mongering, and intentional misrepresentation, or even lies the loss feels more like a personal attack. While it’s taken some time for some of the flaws built into the American system to be seen and felt by white people, this isn’t news to many other Americans. This is the very place where Good News of creation imago Dei could inform our imagination for alternative ways of relating.
In most Christian tellings of its creational narratives, God creates all that is, in God’s own image and likeness. As you know within the Christian tradition the Divine is understood as Triune. Tri-unity. Three & One. Multiplicity & oneness. Part of this means is the there is real difference in God. Traditional theological language claims the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is not the Father; and yet God is one. God is difference, which clearly suggests that real difference is necessary to reflect God’s image and likeness. We are not supposed to think the same, believe the same, look the same, act the same, etc.
The dare to human beings through creation imago Dei is to embrace our real differences as God’s design and desire. And it doesn’t stop there. We also look to the imago Dei to imagine a way of loving difference, rather than colonizing it, fighting it, or being afraid of it. We look to God and the way the persons of the Godhead make space for each other as way of forming our imaginations for discovering a way of love which honors our differences. Yet I feel a deep tension with what I’m writing even as I’m writing it. I am in no way suggesting that embracing real difference is about being nice, or civil, or about denying your experience, or bowing to what you know is injustice. In the face of oppressive systems Jesus Christ took a moment to fashion a whip before turning over tables and driving the oppressors from the temple. Paradox!
The only language I have here is the language of faithful presence. What are you discerning the Spirit of God inviting of you given the particularity of who you are? What are you discerning the Spirit of God inviting of you given the particularity of where & when you are? I sense there can not be a technique or one answer for how to do this! This appears to be a relational mystery. It a tension which itself, invites an opening beyond the self, to listen, to faith, to courage. We are invited to stand against oppressive systems & we are invited to welcome the stranger. I wonder if this might be where the Christian theology of the hypostatic union (Jesus Christ understood as fully God and fully human) might shape our imagination for holding the impossible together.
I know that I can’t afford to become a hater. And I can’t stand by and let evil systems reign.
So it’s election day; and the USA appears to be pretty divided. And the country appears it be divided over assumptions of privilege that oppress. We have this odd challenge to discover a way of love while honoring difference, while simultaneously seeking God’s shalom for all and everything.
The call of the imago Dei is not a call to niceness of civility but to love…which can look like table turning and naming leaders of oppressive systems “white-washed tombs.” Love is never passive or cute, love is fierce, courageous and moves toward truth never away from it.
I want to leave you with a song that I was introduced to at the Inhabit Conference a couple of years ago. It’s written by farmer, musician, and renaissance person, Tom Wuest and performed & recorded with collaborating artist Pastah J, and published earlier this year. The sound isn’t great in this video, but it’s an anthem that is more than worth listening to, “Take us to the end of us vs them.” For a clean audio version check out the Parish Collective CD, or just click the link above.
BTW – The Icon of the Trinity was written by the brilliant Iconographer, Kelly Latimore.
Peace, dwight
