Catharsis

The older I get the more tired I get of excuses. My own particularly. Many of them cognitive strategies of those around me that somehow I adopted so that I did not look too naive and foolish. I am tired of those. If we shed all of our vulnerability, I believe we are shedding our humanity. It has made me question how I engage with people. I try to be vulnerable and honest. And often get called a sheep for such things or naive. But as I said before, if you are going to call me a sheep, please remember that as a follower of Jesus Christ, I think being a sheep is a good thing as long as Christ is my shepherd.

Jesus Christ taught that believers should be wise as serpents, yet harmless as doves. He taught this knowing we would be sheep among wolves. (Matthew 10:16)

We learn that we will be judged for our anger with one another and our name calling. (Matthew 5:22)

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we also learn that contention is not of God, but is of the devil.  (3 Nephi 11:29)

I dissociate myself often when I am debating political and social topics on my page. I think that there is room for healthy debate without anger or belittling others, however, even I have to watch my frustration level. I have had to step back a little lately. I don't mind people challenging my points at all. There are plenty of things that are up for debate and worthy of reasoning supported by those things which serve as proofs in our shared reality. Can those proofs change? Yes they can when new knowledge is available and I am open to that too.

What I am far less open to entertaining in my brain are theories that claim some understanding of how things work "secretly". Let me be clear, I believe that there are many in our government who seek for power above all else and some are even willing to resort to murder for it. My fellow Christian believers, need only look to the beginnings of our holy narrative where murder for gain showed up in the first generation and has been around almost as long as a God has made covenants with humanity. It is why when I trust, it is often a gesture I extend rather than a feeling I have. People are human and as such cannot be trusted overall. Even with the people I trust most in the world, I hold space for their mortal imperfections. I have learned over the years that even though I cannot completely trust, I can have faith that people are trying. I can trust that most people are working to do their best in a world that is difficult to navigate at best. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Christ did as much.  

My political beliefs have long been pragmatic and were mostly in harmony with the Republican ideals I found in the party platform of 1995 when I turned 18 years old and officially joined. But even then, I was always a Republican more in the vein of Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight D Eisenhower. Or the stated ideals of Ronald Reagan, although watching the Iran-Contra Hearings when I was 10 years old had me a little confused about some of those ideals. I didn’t think that Democrats were pragmatic enough in accounting for human frailty in their programs, but I felt that they were trying to do the right thing as they saw it. Over the years, I have seen how Republican programs have failed as well. I don’t think socialism works because people are often greedy and lazy, but trickle-down economics also doesn’t work because people are often greedy and lazy too.

However, as I want curse Herbert Spencer at the top of my lungs, I will note that people are often poor, not because they are lazy, but because there are cultural differences in the poor and the middle class and we have set up a society where we adopted the values of the industrialists and capitalists rather than the humanists or even the transcendentalists. Honestly, my personal philosophies fall more in line with the humanists and the transcendentalists, but I learned that to be self-sufficient in our society it is best to at least mimic the values of the capitalist. Again, there is that pragmatism. I think capitalism married to humanism is probably our best bet in the long run, but that can be a tough marriage, because historically capitalism mostly works on a grand scale by ensuring there are people who will work for low to no wages, unless you are willing to start off doing all the work yourself and growing your business SLOWLY enough to pay your employees a living wage. This is one of the places where as I got older and learned more about the reality of history, rather than those cognitive strategies I mentioned earlier, the more I saw that while there is opportunity, it is often dependent on your ability to code switch economically, socially, and sometimes ethnically, if you were born in a situation where you were not in the middle class or above. And here is where I have gotten tired a lot trying to act like I agree more with the Conservative philosophy I hear along these lines, because I don’t. I agree with being pragmatic and there will always be a budget to balance where we have to be responsible. But if I am honest about that world I want to build, if follows these guidelines:

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world. (James 1:27)

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? (Matthew 5:43-47)

And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them. (Moses 7:18)

The biggest issues in this country are not the plans that the democrats have planned and not the plans that the republicans have planned. It is the belief that those plans can never find common ground. If I thought it would work, I would welcome the implementation of socialism in the United States. It’s most basic tenets are that the fruits of our labors should benefit the people laboring and not those exploiting that labor. It is not some horrible evil. It has been used to do evil things, but so has capitalism.

All other things being equal, I want a world where everybody is taken care of and loved and nurtured. My skepticism of people’s ability to do that is held at bay by my optimism in the human spirit and the belief that there will come a day when Christ returns and implements a government of consecration where there are no poor among us. But I don’t want to wait either. Why should we not try for those things now? 

No, I am not suggesting we force such things, but if we can show that living does not have to be a zero sum game and we can lift others by being patient and loving and non-judgemental. Why would we not want to eradicate poverty and drug use and ensure all people have access to the things they need. Not that they are forced to use it, but that they HAVE ACCESS. Real access, not access that exacerbates their poverty. I am not saying it has to be a single-payer system, but we certainly need to be honest about the good of our current system AND the ugliness of it.

If we can put away the ugly names we have for one another. We have to put away the ugly names! We have to see each other as country men. We have to love our neighbors as ourselves and want for them what we want for us and our families. We have to own our own privilege and resilience and our own brokenness and see beyond our own experience. And learn how to love people in a way that THEY UNDERSTAND. Not just in a way we want to give love.

For those who want to claim we are a Christian nation then let us be one.

Of course, I am good with a separation of Church and State. I believe it protects us all. And I lean toward more separation rather than less. Again, because people are human and our laws take such things into account. That does not mean that I don't think there should be prayer in school, it means I don't think it should be forced. Prayer has always been allowed in school as long as I have been alive, but I do not remember a teacher leading the class in prayer. I grew up in California and there was often a diversity of beliefs. I knew Agnostics and Atheists and Christians and Buddhists and Sikh's and Hindu's and even Zoroastrians. I simply use that as an example of some of the rhetoric I hear surrounding such topics and why staying in the Republican Party has been difficult. This is just an example of many strawman arguments I see Republicans and Conservatives set up. It’s frustrating. On the other hand, listening to Democrats and Liberals call Republicans/Conservative heartless and greedy is a strawman as well. Most Republicans I know wish to help others and do so by donating to charity and offering hours of service. And they give more in both areas than Democrats do. 

This long and wandering stream of consciousness is more for me than anybody else. I have to learn how to engage in kinder ways. I have to learn how to speak truth, but respectfully and sometimes I have to realize that it is my truth. I want to honor the suffering of others during this time so my posts are not necessarily meant to place blame, but more to ask, how do we fix this? That is question I always have in my mind when I post an article.

I believe part of fixing it is admitting where we went wrong and holding those who perpetuate things rather than fixing them, are held accountable. And for the love of the divine in all of us, I wish to listen to those voices that seek for peace and unity rather than those that blame and seek to divide. Both sides should be held accountable forI this. This “Gotcha” culture is killing us all. Have compassion for everybody. Take a breath. I am going to do a little less judging and a little more creating. I hope we all can express compassion and concern beyond ourselves and take responsibility for how we behave may be affecting others and I apologize to those who may see my posts as personal insults or aggressive. I try not to make them such and when I am discussing, I try to keep love for the person I am responding to in my heart. I promise. Sometimes that gets lost in textual communication.

If you read this, thanks for caring enough to finish it. Love you all.