Post-Left, Post-Right

I went to my first emerging-style gathering on Monday. It was very exciting. I took Bob with me, my very good friend. I didn't expect him to like it, but he's always interested in learning about new things in the church. He actually liked it a lot, but had one complaint - one of the prayer stations set up had news stories from 'liberal' sources. Now, Bob's not your typical conservative. He doesn't support the Iraq war, he doesn't support the US support of Israel. But he still feels, like many Christians, that most of the media is 'liberal' (a term I loathe to use - what's liberal about forcing any sort of agenda?!). It really got me thinking; how can we truly get past the right-wing, left-wing politics? This is just one more place where post-modernism comes into play. Politics are so based on buzzwords that language, a means of communication that we tend to think of as inherently based on logic, breaks down. Certain words, rather than conveying the meaning of the speaker, really end up triggering emotional and visceral responses in the hearer. And so this man whom I love, a compassionate man, complained about an article about how many people are dying of AIDS in Africa, how many children are being devastated by the Iraq war, how many people cannot find work after the Katrina disaster. Did he really mean that he doesn't have sympathy for these people? No. But these issues have been so embedded in political language that it's nearly impossible to talk about them without being (or at least being seen as) partisan.

I don't say this meaning anyone to think that I'm not guilty of the same thing. I have so much difficulty getting beyond words. Partly because I think of myself as a 'rational' person, whatever that means.

How do we get beyond this? I don't think I have an answer. The answer can't come from the speaker, or even an intermediary; the answer has to come in the form of a radical change in the way we think about the conveyance of ideas. An inner change. But isn't that what Christ is good at?