Extraordinary Creatures

 

Another election passed, another week of government shutdown, another year of progress clogging polarity. I get so tired of all of this infighting and nothing being accomplished. Oh, we hear about great, big wonderful things happening, but that doesn’t help the person putting back groceries at the store when they don’t have enough money to buy it. It doesn’t help the homeless people find homes (and the ones who don’t find the mental health they need to once again want a home). In the church the polarity has also found roots that seem to strangle out God’s message of oneness.

C. S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, wrote that there are no ordinary people. We are all eternal beings. It’s just our destinies that differ, “one to become glorious beings and the other our worst nightmare.” Here on earth we walk together and we have an impact. Much of what we see is the impact on the negative side – wars, infighting, genocide, as well as government shutdowns and leaders who seem more focused on what they want than on what the people they represent need or desire.

In Nigeria for example, one group of people is focused on killing off everyone who doesn’t agree with them, that includes Christians and Muslims from different sects. I believe the only thing stopping that kind of all out slaughter in our country is our law bound civility that grew our of Judeo-Christian values. Most of us don’t see killing those we disagree with as an answer. However, we can understand wanting our country to be filled with people we can agree with.

Is that even possible? Can any country reach total agreement on the issues affecting us? Part of what makes the western world tick is the plurality of the people living there. For the most part we’ve learned to find compromise and ways to live together. In the countries that can’t, well, they are seeking a state with only Christians, or only Muslims, or only Buddhists, or only whites; everyone else must leave or die.  In that light, American isn’t so bad.

But those extreme feelings are present here. Talk today is about making American white (or whiter) again (which it never was, unless you dismiss our First People, which too many do). In order to do that we are shipping out thousands of people who came here to find a better life. Were some of them dangerous criminals? Of course, since all of us are sinners and prone to follow our sinful desires. But most of these immigrants were here working hard, raising their families here and protecting their families back in their country of origin. Their only “crime” was being here illegally.  They were doing us all a service, working in jobs most of us would prefer not to do.  Why can’t we talk more about ways to find them temporary work status on their way to citizenship rather than gathering them up and deporting them?

There is a lot of talk about how white people are being discriminated against by laws meant to even the playing field between whites and people of color. So we are cutting off aid to programs that helped encourage the disadvantaged (whether by color or gender). But yet, if offered, who wouldn’t take an advantage to help them get farther in life? Most whites in America have had exactly that for their entire life.

Another example comes when we hear comments from our leaders about South African blacks being “racist” against whites. You think? After all the years of apartheid with minority whites pushing the black majority under their feet you can only imagine there would be some racists feelings and actions coming from the other direction. And it would be a lot worse had not Nelson Mandela and Bishop Tutu been in leadership when the tables turned.  In our country Dr. Martin Luther King helped keep the revenge violence to a minimum with his example of peaceful resistance, which ultimately brought about a beginning of civil rights and true equality.

Mandela, Tutu and King were all Christians, trying to live out their faith during the most difficult of circumstances. All three resisted their human drive towards vengeance and called for calmer action. All three are shining examples of Lewis’ extraordinary people (if there are “no ordinary” people, are we not left with “extraordinary”?)  All three are now “glorious beings”, enjoying the only place God promises to have total equality and freedom – home with Him. What do our extremist, right wing Christians here in America think Heaven is going to look like – white?  Aren’t they going to be surprised. The very Bible they refer to was written by people of color.

Lewis said we all walk this earth together, making an impact. I’m afraid the negative quotient is winning.  Even the impact the Christian church is having in our country is negative, with certain groups of people being deemed unfit for God’s Kingdom. But I have yet to find where in the Bible it says true followers of God are white, straight, and cis gendered. The Bible simply calls us to believe – believe we are all sinners, unworthy of God’s love; believe God wanted to have a relationship with us, regardless of our sin nature; believe that God gave Jesus to pay the penalty for our sin, in our place, so we could have that relationship, not as something we earn, but as something we accept as a gift.

God created humans in His image. All of us, as Lewis said, are eternal beings, capable of amazing things. We see that every day, even if the negatives clog our vision at times.  We are all extraordinary creatures. God desires all of us to be in relationship with Him. That should be the Christian Church’s singular message. God never called Christians to fix the world, because we couldn’t even if we wanted to. We are a broken mess.  Only God can “fix” the world. But we can become His people. We can let Him work in our lives to be our best selves. Through God we can produce in our life Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness and Self-Control. Think what the world could be like if Christians focused on letting God bear His Fruit through us, rather than trying to fix things via the political spectrum.

There are no ordinary people. All of us are creatures made in the image of our Creator. Let’s seek to look at the people around us as God’s creations, made in God’s image. It might make us look at others a little differently.