Civil Discourse

A couple of days ago, one of my facebook friends posted an update saying simply, "We must return to a more civil tone in our national debate." I agreed and clicked the "like" button. As a result, I was notified each time someone responded to that thread. It was ironic in a "Saturday Night Live" sort of way. No one responded negatively to the idea of civil discourse, but it seemed that the consenus was that we could have civil discourse if the other side of the issue would act better. Very quickly the conversation descended to accusations of lies, ignorance, name calling, and bad motives; in other words, while rallying around the idea of civil discourse, the actual discourse became quite acrimonious within just a few sentences.

As a Christ follower and minister, I have made it a practice not to engage in political discussions not because I have no point of view or consider myself to be above such topics, but because I know that God loves those from every political persuasion. He does not check the voting registration of anyone seeking Him before granting access, so neither do I.

The reason for this post is not to chastize those who engage in political name-calling. That is the centuries old nature of politics. I'm writing this post today because I see the same name calling going on in our churches around the nation. I have written about this numerous times on this blog. We are very quick to go on the attack if someone has the audacity to propose something different from our preference. There is little consideration of "the greater good" when we are convinced that we already live the perfection of that ideal, or at least know how it should look. I am troubled when a controversy arises and the motivation is to "win" more than it is to seek what is correct. We in the church have learned our craft well from the political arena. We make sure that we keep our constituencies happy and form coalitions to make sure that we have an unassailable voting block. We are quick to write our letters of complaint and to attack the motives of those who dare propose new ideas. Churches all over the nation are going through "turf wars". The casualties of those wars are those who need what Christ has to offer, but can't see him because those who are supposed to be his representatives appear to be no different than the people they see on Fox or CNN.