Between the searching and the need to work it out
I stop believing everything will be alright
Broken
We are broken
I'm walking uphill being turned around and round
Secret in motion when my feet are on the ground
Broken
We are broken
In my mind's eye
One little boy anger one little man
Funny how time flies
"Broken"
Tears for Fears
How are we to understand and respond to these recent tragic
shootings in our world? What are we to
do to protect ourselves from further and future harm? Polarized political positions that present
themselves as mutually exclusive when democracy depends on compromise only add
fuel to a fire that has already burned too long….. and I feel the heat rising.
With each new shooting, both sides use the tragedy as
evidence to support their intractable stances in a standoff debate while obscuring
the deeper truth that the real problem is not in our having too many or too few
guns.
The real problem is us…….
The Bible tells us that “hardship does not spring from the
soil, nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
Yet man is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:6-7). Looking for something or someone outside
ourselves to blame, we fail to see that the brokenness out there in the world
is nothing more, and nothing less, than the brokenness within us, writ large.
If we only see the brokenness of the world “out there”
without acknowledging the brokenness of the world "in here,” inside
ourselves, we can never really understand.
And, in the absence of knowing this brokenness personally, we are doomed
to living in the fear of that which we do not understand.
But, when we acknowledge our common human condition, our
common capacity for both good and evil, both light and darkness; when we
acknowledge that there were 10 tragic losses of life and not 9, embracing our
common future and common fate in a world that is unavoidably ours to share,
then – and only then – can we see our way forward, see our way out. For the answer to darkness in not more
darkness, nor is the solution to meet violence with more violence. Instead, the only “force” that can bring
light to the darkness and healing to the brokenness that is both within and
without, is love.
Not a Pollyannaish Love, not a Hallmark Card Love, but
instead……………
A love that holds a person accountable, but more as a son
than an enemy
A love that reaches out with friendship so that no one’s
thoughts can lead them to a sense of isolation or abandonment
A love that reaches out with generosity so that no one’s
poverty can lead them to desperation
A love that reaches out with forgiveness so that no one
believes themselves to be beyond help, or hope
A love that reaches out with balm for body and mind because
no one is beyond healing
A love given to enemies as if they were friends, a love
given to others as we would want to be loved ourselves
Because, when we really know the brokenness, and when we really know
the power of love given or withheld, we will at the same time know that the
heaven or hell of this world is of our own making.
