Binary Thinking is Killing America!
I have a bee in my bonnet. Lately, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with the plague of binary thinking that pervades our culture. It is literally tearing it apart. We have good and bad, light and dark, red and blue, MAGA and progressive. All these binary dualities of thought and to what end? We haven’t solved any of the major issues in our country. In fact, we have used our binary culture to kick the can down the road to the point of garbage being in the streets, homeless people in mass encampments, and the poor, regardless of location, largely forgotten, and we treat migrants inhumanely.
This has to stop. There are millions of color combinations hundreds of economic and political approaches, a country can do things other than erect walls at its border, and we house and feed everyone on Earth. All of this is doable. We have the technology. What we don’t have in this country is any form of will. A pervasive laziness has taken over society. We have a can’t and won’t mentality. That isn’t the country I thought I lived in.
So how? First, we need to find where God is moving and go there. If God wants all the children in America fed, we should go there and find solutions. The next thing is to focus on what Churches, cities, states, and nations can do to cooperate with where God is pointing. Finally, we need to engage in missions again to eradicate injustice, extend mercy, and pursue goodness.
Why? Because Jesus said so! Some evangelicals say that the sermon on the mount is “woke” and that it’s time to move beyond the message of Jesus. That breaks my heart! The simplest version I found was on Alabaster Company’s website. (https://www.alabasterco.com/blogs/education/sermon-on-the-mount-summary#:~:text=A%20Summary%20of%20Jesus'%20Teachings,for%20the%20poor%20and%20marginalized.) “At the heart of the Sermon on the Mount is a message of love, compassion, and selflessness. Jesus encourages his listeners to love their enemies, to forgive others, and to care for the poor and marginalized. He also emphasizes the importance of humility, telling his followers not to worry about material possessions or outward appearances, but to focus on living a life of righteousness and integrity.” Right now, we live opposite what Jesus preached, so no wonder people want to make the harder message of justice, grace, mercy, peace, and abundance disappear! But we are not called to do the easy but what is hard, and right now, God wants us to look past the binary cultural boundaries and manifest new solutions. Yes, “those people” will complain. We can no longer worry about them. If we act now, we can turn this country, and this world around again.