Watching or reading news is hard these days. This morning my personal prayer time and journaling revolved around the depressing news cycle in our country. We are angry, bitter, divided, and sad. All at at the same time. And, on top of all of that, there is still a COVID-19 pandemic that we are told is going to kill somewhere between another 100,000 Americans and all Americans.
But, in the midst of all of the strife, there are constant pleas to politicians to create new laws. Protesters demand change. Twitter demands to be heard. Police want to be protected. Others want to defund the police. We shout, tweet, text, write, protest, counter-protest, and then vent on Facebook. But, we don’t seem to be looking in the mirror and looking across the street.
Looking for a political quick-fix to the problems that plague our country and our communities is lazy and ultimately pointless. Politics are downstream of culture. Politicians are elected by a majority of people who hold particular views in particular places within our communities. In other words, politicians don’t create the culture, they are elected by the culture.
When we see cultures and communities that are fractured and hurt, we can’t run to the democratic process to fix the problem, we have to run across the street to get to known our neighbors. We have to listen to Jesus and learn to love our neighbor as ourself, but we have to know our neighbor before we can love our neighbor.
The public debate in our culture and in our communities is increasingly dominated by what Jim Collins has called “The tyranny of the OR.” In Collins’s example, he argues that too many executives believe that things must be either A or B, and can’t be both. He argues that businesses don’t need to always bow to the tyranny of OR, but instead should embrace the “Genius of the AND.”
The public debate in our culture drives people into camps of OR instead of AND. So, you can be a liberal OR a conservative. You can be Republican OR a Democrat; police supporter OR police hater; law and order supporter OR an anarchist.
You see that when we when we are dominated by the tyranny of OR, we find ourselves feeling forced to retreat to one end or the other of the ideological spectrum. Our political culture right now is controlled by the tyranny of OR. For instance, you have to choose to support Trump OR hate Trump.
Politics can’t fix us because most politicians don’t actually represent us. Few of us find ourselves falling cleanly along ideological lines. If someone puts a gun to our heads, we will declare that we are one way OR another, but most of the time we fall more along the spectrum of AND. For instance, I support the police (many are my friends) AND I oppose the militarization of policing in many places across our country.
If I get to know my neighbors, I discover that they have a lot of AND in their lives as well. They like to eat healthy AND they love French fries. They might detest our president’s morality AND support his economic policies. They may believe that racism exists AND that racism is not nearly as widespread today as it was 20 years ago.
American politics in 2020 does not allow for the genius of the AND because politicians and political parties profit from the tyranny of the OR.
Politics can’t fix us. The gospel of Jesus, however, is a different story. The gospel reminds us all that we are sinners in need of a savior. The gospel reminds us that we are needy AND that we have something to give. The genius of the gospel shows us that we need not choose between mercy OR justice. In the gospel we see beautiful intersection of mercy AND justice.
People changed by the gospel of Jesus should be the kind of people who embrace the genius of AND in our world. We can love God AND love others. We can prioritize evangelism AND justice. We can believe that capitalism is a powerful tool for human flourishing AND believe that we need to do more to care for the poor.
For too long, Christian people have allowed politicians to demand that we live under the tyranny of the OR to prop up their fundraising campaigns and election efforts. We must reject their demands and embrace the genius of the gospel. But it won’t start one politician at a time. It will begin with one conversation at a time and the building of a shared consensus of what a good society should look like and the, prayerfully, the raising up of different kinds of leaders from within those conversations and cultures to carry the genius of AND beyond local conversations and into the broader cultural conversations of our society.
But how do we get there? We learn to love our neighbors enough to know them, hear from them, and fight to see their lives improved. And, what is the greatest hope to see such things happen in our world? People radically changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Is it a Sunday school answer? Yes, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
