youth group and hitler

I don't have the energy or discipline required for 6-9th grade boys and girls.  It is exhausting.  But I love them, so every Wednesday night, we gather.
Tonight, with Valentine's Day coming up I found this cheesy game in an email about collecting hearts and whoever gets the most wins and then some even more cheesier questions and love.  But the follow-up scripture was a very familiar one that is dear to my heart: 

You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your strength and with all of your mind.  And you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

So we played it.  And it was kind of fun.But then it came the time to talk about it.

We got to talking about who our neighbors were.  Were they just the old couple who lives next door?  Or the cranky mom who won't let us play basketball?  Just people in our town?  In our county?  In our state?  in the world?

In the way things do happen with this extremely talkative group (which was only boys by this point), we got to talking about "illegal immigrants" (I'm trying very hard to encourage folks to use the term undocumented... many of them actually did come here legally but circumstances have prevented them from going home, renewing visas, etc.) and "terrorists." 

We started asking whether it was fair to characterize a whole group of people.

We asked if people who do bad things deserve our hatred or our love if we are Christians.

We started wondering about how folks get to the point where they allow terrible things to happen in their own country, like people in Nazi Germany.  We wondered if we would have stood up for our neighbors and faced prison and death on behalf of another person. Would we have gone along, or would we have sacrificed ourselves and our families? 

Would we have tried to leave?  Where would we have gone?  Would we have entered a country illegally if we thought it was our only place of escape and refuge?  Would people have welcomed us or turned us away?  Where are the folks who come here coming from?  Would they have come legally if they had the option?

We found ourselves ending with Deuteronomy 10

Look around you: Everything you see is God's—the heavens above and beyond, the Earth, and everything on it. But it was your ancestors who God fell in love with; he picked their children—that's you!—out of all the other peoples. That's where we are right now. So cut away the thick calluses from your heart and stop being so willfully hardheaded. God, your God, is the God of all gods, he's the Master of all masters, a God immense and powerful and awesome. He doesn't play favorites, takes no bribes, makes sure orphans and widows are treated fairly, takes loving care of foreigners by seeing that they get food and clothing.

You must treat foreigners with the same loving care—
remember, you were once foreigners in Egypt.
Reverently respect God, your God, serve him, hold tight to him,
back up your promises with the authority of his name.
He's your praise! He's your God!
He did all these tremendous, these staggering things
that you saw with your own eyes.  (The Message, verses 14-21)

It was not at all where we thought the evening would end up... but these kids are smart. And when you can get them to talk one at a time, they have some fascinating things to say. My prayer is that they will go home and never look at their neighbors... the grumpy guy next door, or the strangers who live all around us, or the brothers and sisters we see on the television half way across the world... the same way again.

The New American Religion Behind the Growing American Rage

The New American Religion Behind the Growing American Rage

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I do sense there is this murky prelude to culture war (or holy war as Richardson calls it) brewing. I sensed it in 2004 when broken crosses were used to spell "God Bless the USA" on our campus lawn in front of the chapel. I sense it today in this anger over health care that is really nothing about health care. Richardson's interview is interesting and he helps us to relate and empathize with his subject, while at the same time leaving the reader, me at least, with the same sense of forboding that he himself feels.

I agree. There are people who are strongly convicted on both sides. My fear is that a war is brewing, a war that none of us really want to see happen, a deep cultural war that will tear apart our communities. I'm not in the middle on this cultural divide. I know what side I'm on. I know what side family and friends are on. And I'm so tired of family being torn apart that perhaps this struggle just seems like a little too much to handle right now. I don't even want to think about what will happen if the flood gates really open.

Perhaps it's always been like this. Perhaps my twenty-seven year old mind is just a little naive to think that we are the first to have these conversations. I know that nothing is new under the sun. I know that Jesus said that we must hate our mother and father, meaning that there are times when we have to let go of those family ties to stand up for what is true. I know these cultural wars surrounded Vietnam, and McCarythism/Red Scare.

But what are the roots of these differences? How can I and my neighbors really be so different? Don't we have the same internal anatomy? Don't we all have flesh and blood and hearts and minds? Aren't we all living in the same world? Hearing the same news? (well, no, actually)

It's not just generational. It's not just religious. It's not even just political - although there is where the line seems to be most clearly drawn. These differences seem to be so deep that when we encounter the same issue, we see completely different things. When we see the same news story presented, we feel different things. When we talk about an issue - we can use the EXACT SAME WORDS and have the EXACT SAME CONCERNS (as was the case in my conference's debate on the world-wide nature of the church amendments) and vote in the exact opposite way! Because our minds are already made up. The fear and distrust is already there. The lines have already been drawn and we know what side we are on.

I recently found out about outlawpreachers. It's kind of a nebulous term loosely used to describe a bunch of ministers and christians who preach nothing but the love and grace of God. At least that's how I am hearing it. That's what I'm clinging to right now. In the midst of the division and fingerpointing and name-calling, and fear on both sides, I'm clinging to the love and grace of God in Jesus Christ. That's it. That is the source of all hope and promise. And it may be the ONLY way out of this mess.

(All of this being said - this is the very first post that I have tagged the words hate and religion. That says a lot.)