I’m not sure Mrs May did herself much good last night going for the throat of Parliament! She told us we are all tired of “them” not getting on with it — it being “I will keep bringing my deal back until you vote for it.” No wonder someone in one of the Irish political parties has called this mess “a shit show that just goes on and on.”
Why can’t we just all get on? I contrast our leaders with someone who has moved a lot of people over the last week. The vile attack on a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand last Friday shocked a peaceful and tolerant country to the core. Its Prime Minister has showed real leadership: compassion, being there with the lamenter, taking swift action on gun laws, and leading her nation with the right words. “They are us,” she has cried.
This is really against the norm. We like to divide and discriminate.
Leaver versus remainer.
We storm out of meetings that need to happen so we sort out the mess together.
Sexual orientation - “we can’t have that sort here.”
Colour of skin — still a huge issue in 2019. I saw the film “Green Book” on Tuesday night. The story of a black musician and his driver, but more a commentary on America in the 1960’s. But in some places little has changed.
Young versus old
Benefit “scroungers” whose life we know nothing about.
And what of the Church? Are we any better? Why can’t we all get on? Wesley in one of his sermons on catholic spirit didn’t say we have to agree but we have to respect —- “if your heart is right with my heart, give me your hand.”
But we build walls and say we have a problem. An American commentator called John Pavlovitz recently wrote a damning article on the very conservative evangelical church he once attended — but no more, due to their highlighting difference and using the Bible to back up their argument! He writes:
“The only conclusion I can come to is that we were never following the same Jesus—or at the very least we aren’t any longer.
They are following a Jesus who is foreign to me, a Jesus who builds walls.
It is not the Jesus I shared with them on all those Sunday mornings;
the one who touched the hand of the leper,
the one who fed a starving hillside multitude;
the one who preached the scandalous goodness of a despised Samaritan,
the one whose family fled political genocide soon after he was born,
the one who said he and the forgotten prisoner were one in the same,
the one who dined with both priest and with prostitute,
the one who lived off the kindness of those he met as he travelled,
the one who said our neighbours and enemies, deserve the same love we give our families and ourselves.
They seem to have no recollection of this Jesus anymore or have willingly discarded him—or maybe they never had interest in him at all and it’s only now that I can see it.”
So how do we change things? How do we get along? By remembering we are no different or better than the person next to us or anywhere. We are ALL equal in the sight of God. And we need to take responsibility when we make a shit show of our bit. G.K Chesterton famously contributed to a long running correspondence in a London newspaper on the subject of ‘What is wrong with the world?’ with the four-word response ‘Dear Sir, I am.’
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