i tried to keep the glass together here

this will not go well, but just loosely and a little desperate and angry. so.

it seems that we are spending more and more time, alarmingly now, trying to prove ourselves right. and worse! prove each other wrong. excuse me, i don't mean to be vague this time, i mean to be very precise. when i say "we" i mean Christians. when i say "ourselves" and "each other" i mean Christians who identify with a particular american political party. and when i say "party" i definitely mean "not fun." and i don't mean "american political party" like i'm running up the anarchy flag and winding up to pitch another worthless I Hate America speech. i mean it as a fact and not an opinion.

why are we doing this again? i can't remember. i recall something about having healthy debate and so on and so forth, which is fine. i recall also a lot of terrble things happening in the world, and America doing and not doing in response, and naturally there will be a whole host of responses to that, so that's fine too. and there have been some very sharp lines drawn in recent years for whatever reason. i'm not really interested in going into those reasons, because we'll never get anywhere. questions of sociology never did it for me. just going over the background, and that i understand all that and i'm not interested in hearing about it. i understand why we identify with one or the other of these parties, sure. conservatives, for the most part, because they have a unified effort, liberals for the most part because they fall into that camp for whatever individual reason or reasons--including not fitting into that uniform conservative effort. what i am interested in hearing about, and want to know, is why we are identifying with these parties so much that we let it dominate what we say to each other. and when i say, "we" and "each other" i mean Christians. you know, us Christians? with the community? with the brotherhood and sisterhood? us? right?

so why are we doing this? these parties are created by the world and run by the world, right? i mean, God didn't create a political party, did he? the Onward Christian Soldiers? the Lions of the Tribe of Judah? no, none of these look anything like the words i see on the ballot boxes.....so......i guess the argument that will come next is that God is driving one of the parties, huh? the conservatives, who seem to be filing theology down to a very sharp point? or is it the liberals, who promote some sort of tolerance and don't file theology at all to let it go dull--except of course, in the face of the conservatives, who are attacked at all costs--is it them? i can't remember what it says in the bible about that. and that's not an invitation to whip out the NIV study bible with all the earmarks and tell me that this quotation in romans is going to prove to me why Jesus voted for ronald reagan or jimmy carter, and why we should be steadfast, strong even! in promoting God's Cause in the political arena. i know all that. i agree with it, even, that we should argue and debate over matters of the world.

what i don't agree with is when it takes over our community. that's a silly word to use, isn't it? a community. there is no community on the grand scale, not one formed with God as the head anyway. there is one with God Who Hates Bush and there is one with God Who Listens to This American Life and is a Vegetarian, and then there is God Who Thinks Gays Should Burn Baby Burn and God Who Hates America, but no community really, just little communities fighting among ourselves. our community, remember, shouldn't that go something like, God knows us all individually and therefore we will disagree about the world and what It Means to Be Like Us and inevitably, of course, in order for us to relate to as many people as possible? and we disagree? but what makes us different is that we can disagree and still love each other? without thinking we are stupid or terrible, or whatever word you want to put down there? as Christians, we have the power to freely disagree and think someone is wrong without division, right? or did that end somewhere, when the towers went down and we lost our heads and sight of who we were?

and unity, i'm not so naive to think that means we all believe in one single thing and set and code of beliefs, that we are brothers and sisters! and that's all! and we should trot merrily off to the Big Jesus Parade and all hold hands together while we watch the Noah's Ark Float pass by, featuring Jars of Clay singing "Flood" to the audience. not unity like that. unity like we are not trapped underneath blankets that say Conservative and Liberal and America or whatever else those blankets say. unity like we are not americans, really. unity like we can somehow remember that our language is spoken with gentleness and respect rather than broken glass. unity like we do not believe in a man with a tie and a woman with a pin on her lapel, we believe in a paradox that is very real and very much alive and does not need the tie or the pin or the blankets to do the work. unity that we suffer because others suffer, even if we disagree how to stop that suffering. unity that i can still feel the change that is almost palpable when The Big Reveal comes and i find out someone i meet knows God, that change that takes away some of the rules of the world, that i can still feel that change rather than dread. and unity like i can stop saying, i am a Christian but not that kind! and not be ashamed of my individual relationship with God, have that be respected and i remember that all myself, just in time to stop the anger when it comes and the broken glass from being crunched around in my mouth. unity like that. and like a thousand thousand other things.

so then. what happened to us, i mean, and why are we doing this? answers, please. in whatever form you'd like to put them in. i'll even take those verses now, but let us talk like ourselves. we do not belong to the world, but we live in it, so let us work the best we can. ready set go.