The Great Silencing

It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with The Oregonian, especially with a progressive commentator, especially with a 17 year old Portland progressive commentator.

Yet that’s what happened yesterday.

The Great Silencing in High School

Oliver Kine wrote the newspaper to express concern that, on his high school campus, nobody is allowed to publicly express views that disagree with progressive orthodoxy.

He is captain of their debate team and finds no political debates whatsoever happening on his campus.

When he interviewed fellow students, he found the closet conservatives he was looking for and they told him why they never share their views.

Oliver contrasted his “no debates allowed” culture with the culture his dad enjoyed on campuses as a young man of late night debates and the free exchange of ideas without censorship or shaming opposing views.

These debates and lively exchanges are what shaped his own dad’s progressivism.

And, ironically, these same kinds of activities shaped my own biblical conservatism in matters of the soul and of values, and proneness to innovative, outside-the-box thinking within organizations, while in college.

You can read about Oliver’s experience on his campus here.

The Great Silencing Among Adults

Sadly, you can experience the great silencing for yourself on Facebook.

Because I have a wide array of friends and relatives in my circle, I enjoy an interesting galaxy of diverse views on my feed.

Or at least I did, until the election of 2016.

Three behaviors practiced by devotees of Donald Trump or progressivism have become intolerable.

The fear and loathing, the utter contempt and outright hatred, the narcissism and rage are at over-the-top levels and out of control on both sides.

Three Toxic Markers of Silencing

How does it work?

The first is a requirement of extreme loyalty.

No questions allowed, no different views tolerated, no criticisms permitted–even those from within their own camp.

The second is extreme defensiveness.

Any views that disagree are dangerous and impermissible.

They must be fought and argued no matter what, no matter what relationships are sacrificed, no matter how hostile one needs to be to prevail.

The third is the use of shaming and silencing.

It’s not enough to disagree and debate.

Contrary views must be driven from the group, eliminated from the feed, and those who speak them need to be humiliated and made to confess and recant–or else.

Driving Disagreement Underground

I find this unholy threesome on both sides.

And, as a bit of a maverick, I both notice it when its happening and have myself felt the ire of both sides.

Because I don’t drink from the Donald Trump Kool-aid or the progressivist Kool-aid.

And I dare to say so as thoughtfully, and mercifully, and minimally as possible.

Now, for my own sanity, I have had to “see less of” to far more posts than I ever have before due to this aggressive and extreme shaming and hostility and drum-beating from both sides.

But what this seventeen year old debate captain found was that shaming and silencing change nobody’s hearts.

It just drives deeply held values and views underground–just like in communist or fascist societies where everyone wears a mask and nobody is honest in public.

And, what’s worse, views driven underground to fester in suppression and humiliation tend to grow more extreme and are expressed vehemently when they finally come out.

Which creates a counter-point of extreme loyality, extreme defensiveness, and shaming and silencing within opposite circles where people can say what they want without being silenced or shamed.

In other words, we are in a mutually, self-reinforcing vicious circle of hostility breeding counter-hostility, silencing of dissent breeding the counter silencing of dissent, and extremism breeding counter extremism.

What Can Be Done?

First, it’s time for us all to demote our bloated egos and give up on the grandiose project of making everyone else in the universe see it our way.

You and I are not that important, after all, and the universe doesn’t revolve around us.

Let’s humble ourselves, in other words.

Second, it’s time for us to shut our little pie holes and give our texting thumbs a rest and put the keyboard away.

Speak as a last resort, comment on as few posts as possible, argue very few times a year and listen as a default mode of interaction.

Get into no public debates on Facebook if it can possibly be avoided.

Think outside the box and admit your own side’s faults, shortcomings, and problems–self-confess and self-correct openly.

Both conservatism and progressivism have wounded many souls along the way–denying it won’t help your cause.

Challenge and correct only in private messages as gently as possible and with a genuine kindness and real relationship with the person we’re appealing to.

Written words always sound harsher than meant–so pick up the phone or, far better, meet face to face and look people in the eye and repeat back to them what they’ve just told you so they know you really heard them even if you still disagree.

Tell people, “Thanks for sharing your honest opinion–it keeps me sharp!”

Have an Anchor to Keep You Honest

Finally, ask haunting questions that help the other person put themselves in your shoes or the shoes of those they are denouncing.

I didn’t pull these things out of thin air.

I got them from the Book of Proverbs and the Gospels.

Jesus was the master of answering insincere, gotcha questions with haunting, soul-penetrating questions in return.

He was the master of self-regulation, not losing Himself in the heat of the moment, and not reacting to the reactions of others.

He was surprisingly kind to unlikely people and had compassion even on His enemies but saw right through them, too.

He changed minds and won hearts and saved souls–conquering the resistant and the stubborn with undeserved grace and killing them with kindness.

Go thou and do likewise.

Narcissism Goes to Europe

I am a child of the Cold War.

For my first three decades, the worldwide and continuous conflict between the United States and Soviet Communism dominated our waking thoughts.

We lived under the shadow of “Mutually Assured Destruction”.

And to think that I would have lived so long as to see an American president kowtow, flatter, and justify a Russian strongman is almost beyond belief.

Narcissism at Work

On the other hand, having had many unfortunate experiences with narcissistic individuals, it fits an all too familiar pattern.

Narcissism is a condition where one is completely lacking in empathy, and therefore projects their own feelings, thoughts, and ideas into all the other people in their life.

“Everyone sees it like I do” and “My reality is the only reality” are its credos.

Contradict, criticize, disagree with, or expose a narcissist as wrong and they will be your enemy forever.

Praise, flatter, butter up, and suck up to them–stroking their insecure ego–and they’ll be your BFF.

Narcissists love control and admire the big boss and similar, domineering people around them.

They cannot handle losing or failing, so they fire their subordinates bearing bad news or change their attorney or find a new wife or blame a scapegoat…and pretend the loss never happened.

Any information that varies with their “reality” is not real and simply cannot be true and must not be allowed to be true.

Russia is My Friend

Which brings me to yesterday’s Helsinki summit between our president and Vladimir Putin.

And the preceding disastrous meetings with NATO and with the leaders of Great Britain.

Because they share the same enemy–the Democratic Party and its recent president– Trump has a strange bond with Putin and sees him sympathetically as a co-victim of fake news.

He believes the Russian president’s fabrications and denials regarding any Russian misbehavior on any issue–including attempts to undermine our 2016 election.

It’s “us against the world” time.

Hence, our president’s buddying up and his lavish praise for the leader of what is clearly a criminal, anti-democratic regime which is tirelessly working to undermine us on every level.

Even Trump’s most ardent supporters are absolutely chagrined by his performance at the summit with the Russians.

Here is a sample.

Europe is My Enemy

It’s not secret the vast majority of European leaders wanted Hilary Clinton to win.

But what they failed to understand was how Donald Trump’s narcissism turned him into a champion of distressed, blue-collar workers who blame foreigners as robbers of their jobs and view trade agreements as destroying their dignity and livelihood.

They resent every penny spent on foreign aide, on climate agreements, on shifting trade and jobs overseas–and want someone to be punished for robbing them of their lives.

Which fits the president’s narcissism very nicely.

Trump, likewise, honestly believes that foreigners have stolen all our industrial jobs, and that free trade is to blame for destroying American industry.

And he honestly believes the Europeans have taken advantage of us on defense spending, trade deficits, etc.

So, in his mind, they are our actual enemies because he, the champion of the downtrodden blue collars, is their Great Defender.

So, in his mind, getting Britain out of the EU is an act of liberation he is prepared to do anything to help with.

He publicly described the EU as our economic “foe” and demanded they spend more on defense…or else.

The Europeans were even more stunned and befuddled and sounding the alarms.

What This Means

David Brooks, as usual, hits the nail on the head on what Trump has been doing towards our closest friends–the Western alliance.

A single narcissist in a position of great power can do untold damage to much that’s good and worthy of preservation.

Sadly, there seems to be a lack of insight and understanding among both our political leadership here at home and our allies on what is wrong with Trump.

And, more importantly, how to interpret and not interpret him.

Meaning, Trump speaks for himself and represents only his “world of one” and “the people who have gotten a raw deal”.

All his interactions and words are about “him” and “his own people”.

Had the American political parties and their European counterparts done a better job of taking care of those who’ve lost the most under global free trade and the technological revolution, no opening would have been there for populists to exploit the division and gain power.

But they didn’t and so here we are.

Hopefully, there will be something left of the Western alliance on the other side of our president’s narcissism.

Treasuring the Now

I’m at the phase of life where there’s more years behind me than ahead of me.

And also where my wife and don’t yet have grand-kids.

A Reminder of Toddler Torments

I recently saw on one of my social media feeds a post about a younger mother dealing with the whims of a toddler and having to flex with all the unplanned and unexpected that a little person brings to life.

She took it in great stride and rolled with it.

I was going to reply but found myself choked up because my heart was too full for words.

I still remember all the physical work of parenting and all the difficulties of raising small children.

Not sugar coating anything.

The constant interruptions, the loss of sleep, the huge amounts of stuff we had to pack and load in the car every last time we went anywhere.

As soon as they sleep through the night they begin teething.

As soon as they can walk it’s a short step to eruptions of “no!” and tantrums, etc.

Add another child to the family, and sibling rivalry and boy wrestling and girl cat fighting are on the way.

The Fantasy of Time-Passing Relief

So there’s an understandable and totally normal parental fantasy of relief–it will be better when they’re older, this phase will soon be done, it will get easier, can’t wait until they’re older, etc.

Yet from where I stand I would gladly give a great deal to have just one of those days back to live again.

To hug and hold and listen more to tender hearts and needy souls and demanding wills and wondering minds.

To watch them play outside again and occasionally enter their imaginary world and tell them stories I made up.

To play catch more and find more answers to more questions together and be more open sooner about my own sins and a grace greater than my sins.

Of course we were involved and engaged parents–it’s not guilt over failure or compensation for some big mistake.

Rather, I simply didn’t treasure those days for what they were at the time.

I knew but didn’t know how soon these days would pass.

Treasure the Now

Every cut needing bandaging, every sibling quarrel needing settling, even every poopy diaper needing changing–those needs to be met were privileges not chores, blessings not curses, opportunities not barriers to something better or easier.

Running the risk of sounding like a cliche, treasure the days while you have them.

Our lives really are like a vapor that arises and soon passes away.

The years really do fly.

And the annoyances and irritations of today mean so little compared with the frightening privilege of parenting a little person.

Make the Most of Your Time

I don’t know, but maybe it’s because both my parents are now gone and I’m the old guy in the family now.

But I do know this:   30 years from now even the gravest national problems and most outrageous political issues and the most irritating politicians will be forgotten as much as those of the 1980’s are now.

But the people whom we have been given to treasure–that’s still going to matter and matter even more, if possible, than now.

So treasure them.

Let go of the impatient signing and irritable complaining and short-sighted craving for relief.

Let go of the compulsion to be sufficient, to have all the answers, to be always in control.

Realize that we all without exception live life as amateurs, that we’re all in way over our heads, and that God gave us children to grow us up.

To quote the Psalmist, “Teach me, O Lord, to number my days. That I might present to you a heart of wisdom.”

Loving Our Nation

Now the fireworks and the festivities of our National birthday are over.

So is it OK on this morning after July 4th to love our country?

Despite it’s flaws and failures?  Despite its collective blind spots and bad periods of history?

There are ever two extremes in response to this question.

An Object of Veneration

The first is “My country, right or wrong!”

This is a kind of patriotism that places loyalty to nation above all other values and virtues–blind loyalty that justifies anything and everything done under the flag.

Alexis de Tocqueville captures this idealism with the phrase, “America has the soul of a church”.

Building on the Pilgrims’ desire to create in America “a city on a hill”, a society that would be ideal and good as opposed to what they left behind in Europe.

Secularized through the centuries, this idea sees America as utterly unique and uniquely good among all the nations of the world.

And such a uniquely good and exceptional nation desires undivided and ultimate loyalty.

American Greatness

The USA is a nation of enormous opportunity and incredible inventions and prosperity unknown in human history and remarkable social mobility.

A nation of great achievements and preservers of the post-WW2 global order.

A nation that fought the Kaiser and Hitler until they fell and which successfully resisted Soviet communism until it fell.

A nation that transformed industrial capitalism with mass production and the assembly line and interchangeable parts.

A nation that then ushered in the technological revolution and a digitized society of social media and mass information.

By anyone’s measuring stick, these things are undeniably remarkable in all of human history.

An Object of Loathing

The second is to curse our country and blame it for all ills everywhere and argue there is really nothing good at all about it.

It is the ideal of rejecting one’s own nation and is a kind of self-loathing on a collective level.

Alistair Cooke, a British journalist and commentator on America, added a phrase to De Tocqueville’s, “and America has the soul of a whorehouse, too.”

Like all Europeans, our colonist ancestors viewed native Americans’ as subhuman “savages” who were without morals and without souls even.

So we could do to them whatever we pleased and call their lands unoccupied and uninhabited and uncivilized.

The colonizer mandate to “go to America for a fresh start” and the pioneer mandate to “Go west, young man!” was the result.

American Shame

There are great evils in our history.

There was slavery and the use of chattel slavery imported from Africa to extract cash crops like cotton.

And what we did later to Asians on the West coast in the 1800’s and the 1920’s and during WW2.

And what we did to the Mexican migrants and farm laborers in the 20th century.

And how we treated nations south of our border with engineering coups, support of dictators, economic exploitation, resource extraction, etc.

It is hardly surprising that we with modern eyes look back on our checkered past and the borrowed European assumptions of white superiority that governed our society, we are rightfully appalled and ashamed.

But then it goes a step further and causes some to deny anything and everything good about the United States and reject our society wholesale.

Like Any Family

Perhaps the solution is staring us right in our face.

Perhaps, like every single human being and every single family, we are and always will be a mixture of good and evil, flaws and talents, greatness and failure.

We will ever behave both honorably and shamefully, serving others selflessly and exploiting others selfishly.

Like our souls before God, our performance is disqualifying and worthy of condemnation.

Yet, from God, we receive grace and forgiveness and the opportunity for redemption in a place of humility and utter need.

We receive that extraordinary, shocking grace as a sinner and then extend that grace to others, to our family, to society, and even to all of fallen humility.

Under grace, we own our sins and confess our faults freely and seek to make amends and bring good out of evils as one loved by God undeservedly.

And, under grace, we can both own our nation’s terrible faults and still appreciate and be profoundly grateful for its blessings and benefits.

The truth is this:  both self-boasting and self-loathing are based upon naked and ugly human pride.

The Real Problem is Pride

We crow about our greatness and deny all our evils.

Or we camp on our failures and deny the possibility of redemption.

Out of injured collective pride, we brag or we reject and both reactions then go to war against the other in the body politic.

Cherishing the undeserved good we enjoy, and humbling owning our evils, are the markers of that supreme virtue:  humility.

What we need first and foremost–individually and collectively– is to have our ego collapsed and our evils exposed and our bragging exposed as a lie.

And then to come to God for desperately needed grace and a rescue from outside of ourselves only He can give us.

Then we learn how to treat each other and pay that grace forward and have compassion on our fellow sinners and even on our sinful ancestors.

There is a solution.

Christianity and Patriotism

If only life were simple and one-dimensional!

If all we had to worry about was one duty, one responsibility, or one issue at a time, it would be easy.

But the truth is we balance conflicting duties, competing loyalties, and complex relationships between different loves.

Loving Christ Supremely

Take, for example, the love of God and the love of country.

Those like me who follow Christ have been Christ-redeemed and Christ-indwelt and a love for Him has been grafted into our soul.

Loving Him first and foremost is our paramount duty and, more importantly, our very nature and our supreme joy.

We are citizens first and foremost of His Kingdom, and He, our King, ever and always comes first.

Life Under God in a Fallen World

Yet we live in a fallen world full of other human beings who, like us, also have a sin nature.

It’s why we have a conscience, and why we have governments and borders and taxes.

Governments were ordained by God to keep chaos at bay and administer justice and righteous boundaries that punish evil and reward good.

We live, therefore, in a particular nation at a particular time.

We were born somewhere to someone, and that grounding in time and place anchors us and shapes us.

Love of family, love of one’s country and one’s heritage, is therefore part of our make-up as people, too.

Patriotism Under God

Yet, for us at least, all other loves are under God and subject to the reign of Christ.

For those who are His, as long as a love for one’s country is not idolatrous but is instead put at His disposal, there is nothing wrong with it.

He is our primary love, and all other loves are subordinate and secondary loves under Him.

So it is possible to love God and also to love one’s nation and one’s people.

Paul the Apostle, for example, wept for his own countrymen and their tragic rebellion against God.

He would have been willing to be sent to Hell himself if it would secure his people’s reconciliation to God through Messiah Jesus.

That’s love of country and love of nation–under God.

The vision of a segment of His redeemed people who represent America when all nations bring their glory into the New Jerusalem as tribute to the Lamb is a stirring one.

Weirdly, nations will in fact exist in eternity and all nations will be there offering tribute and laying the best of who and what they are before God forever and ever!

The Devil in the Details

But the Book of Revelation also presents an ugly side of nations.

Nations being chronically and perpetually at war against God.

All nations on earth joining the Antichrist in a world confederacy to oppose Christ at His return.

All nations being at the beck and call of the Devil and controlled by demonic spirits to do the Enemy’s will.

Earlier in the New Testament, the world system is spoken as being “in the lap of the devil”–and that’s all the nations on earth and all governments and systems on earth.

Satan offers Jesus at His temptation all the nations of the earth and all their glory if Christ would worship him.

He brags, “They were handed over to me, and I give them to whoever I wish.” (Luke 4, Matt. 4)

National and Patriotic Idolatry

Human beings don’t take mediocre or bad things and make idols out of them.

We turn good and great things into alternatives to God, worship them instead of Him.

Which is true of nations.

In the Ten Commandments, the phrase “you shall have no other gods” is joined to the phrase “besides me”.

False gods were not to be worshiped alongside of God as equals, and not to be there at all.

No other gods except me and only I (the only God) am to be worshipped is the idea.

Who We Disappoint Tells All

The minute we place our nation above God, we have committed idolatry.

The minute we place our nation alongside of God, we have committed idolatry.

The minute we subordinate God’s interests and God’s will and God’s agendas to those of our nation, and turn Him into a servant of our nation, we are committing idolatry even if we don’t realize it.

There will come a time when push comes to shove, when we will have to choose Caesar or Christ as our first loyalty.

When we cannot please both and leave both satisfied.

When one will be pleased, and the other angry and disappointed and bent on punishing us.

And if Christ is the one we disappoint, then, again, we have been exposed as idolators.

If we comes second, third, and so on up to last, then it’s unacceptable and He will be infinitely dissatisfied and displeased.

Patriotism Under God

So love your country.

Enjoy its blessings and learn its history and appreciate its best qualities while remaining humble and repentant about its worst qualities.

Place your patriotism under God and pray that our nation would serve Him and not the other way around.

And you’ll guard your heart from idols.