I looked at the date on the last post today and realized just how quickly time passes. Truth be told, I've had a million ideas in the past few months for blog posts, but they keep getting lost beneath everything else I have going on.
Thinking back over that time, however, I noticed a consistent theme that keeps coming up in conversations and encounters with other people; conflict. I definitely believe that there is such a thing as good conflict which leads to resolution and reconciliation, but that is not what I see or experience as much as the insidious variety. Sometimes people, myself included, seem to be at odds with others simply to keep themselves separated, apart, safe from discomfort. Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Atheists, Us and Them become labels that we abuse at times to keep ourselves feeling like we are right and others are wrong.
The truly interesting thing here is the animosity which we develop for people who are not like ourselves in some way, and the methods we use to bury it underneath layers of humor, ideology, or some other mechanism. We don't express our discomfort with others directly so that it might be brought to light and worked out. We justify it based on reason, on idealogical differences, or some other mask so that we do not have to become personal with other people. We live on sides of issues and ideas so that we don't have to feel unsure, so that we can be right, so that we don't have to admit that maybe we are being self-centered and need to deal with that. Our selfishness comes out as an undertone to the ideas we associate ourselves with. We end up on different sides of a fence so that we will never have to deal with gray areas where we may not be right, where we may not be better than anyone else.
In Buddhism there is a central belief in the "middle way" which is not terribly different from what Christ espouses in the gospel. The idea here is that we should not be so committed to uprightness that we are detached to the suffering and experience of others, nor should we be so self-indulgent that our own needs supersede those of others. Likewise, Christ demands of His followers that they be neither like the Pharisees who lord their own righteousness over the people, or like those who treat God like a genie, of use only to meet their wants and desires. Instead, we are to walk humbly in love for God and one another. It's a simple idea, but so hard to enact every day with everyone. We want to be right. We want to be better than. For my part, I like being detached from those who would challenge me. I like to win arguments rather than win friends. The latter is really hard and takes a lot of time, whereas the former make me feel superior and gratifies instantly.
The reason I want to believe in God, that I want to follow Jesus, is not because of some logical argument that convinced me of the truth. If that was the case, I would not be a believer. I see in the way I naturally live that I am selfish, that I want to get the better of people. But I want to believe that I can care about other people more than myself, that I can learn to experience love with others, and be joyful about who they are. I see that possibility in Christ's life and teachings, in the calling of His ministry and those who followed him. It is counter-cultural in a way that offers real hope of becoming the community we need to become if we are ever to overcome self-interest at the cost of self-destruction. It is natural and easy to hate others if it benefits me immediately, even if the cost is not worth it in the long run.
We have to lay ourselves aside if we are ever going to do anything worth doing. We need to see ourselves as being part of something more important than our own gratification if we are to live well together. We have to find a different way every day to care more about others than being right, than feeling justified in our self-addicted worlds.
