(I'm terribly uneasy in posting this. I deeply wish to be a help to our separated communities. The current social stresses are serious callings for a serious response; one that will have lasting impact for healing and hope. When you've completed this post, you may be one who wished I would have deleted it. Just know of my sympathy as I want to speak words of restructuring strength...but feel quite inadequate even in the trying.)
Protest. What a mixed bag of implications, denunciations, and exorbitant frustrations stream from this current-day seven-letter word. It's contagious conflictionatory style is so strong that Protests are Protested!
The latest to arrive on the scene is the NFL Protest over, if I understand this correctly, the playing of the National Anthem. Before this one, political protests have been making the rounds. What are we to make of this? Where do we fit in? Do we fit in?
I have close friends on both sides of this inflammatory aisle. Stances are firm. Some tempers are aflare. Boundaries are drawn similarly to the setting at the OK Corral. And, what is one to do with this differing array of opinionation? What would Jesus do?
The answer is found in the reframing of the question. It isn't, What would Jesus do?, but rather it may be, What did Jesus do? We have the answer. What he did do corresponds to what he would do. He died for the enemy because he loved the enemy...more than himself.
Our general populace, quite oddly, resents such a directive. The bent seems to lean more toward divisive suspicion. Hype to hate seems to be a much more attractive motivator than learn to love. When one loves one searches for ways to respect, to listen, to make personal adjustments in favor of the other (even our enemy other).
To love others is not to shrug our shoulders in indifference. No, to love others is to count them more important than self. To love others means we will sacrifice that they experience grace and life at my expense. This is the way of the Cross. This is what God did for us...when we were the enemy. He noted our disrespect as well as our contrary selfishness. God protested by absorbing our sins so that we wouldn't be blamed for them. In other words, He blamed Himself.
Could it be that the NFL protests bug us because they represent a sub-nature that we each possess; but the problem is that these are doing so in front of the entire world? Could it be that, before we are miffed from either perspective regarding their position, our own admission of guilt and failure just might bring resolve to our country?
The NFL Protest is not the first nor is it the final nudge to divisive judgment of any others. This has been mankind's style forever. What are we to do? We are to do what Jesus did, die for our opponents that they might experience a profoundly new kind of life. Rights are not the main stroke of freedom. Dying that others may live....is. Isn't that precisely what brave soldiers did for us along the way?
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