Everybody, it seems, is angry at somebody these days,
although has not that always been true?
We are also caught up in a lot of anger toward groups of people who are
different from us and from whom we strongly sense a threat to “our way of life,”
or our security, or simply because they are wrong and stupid.
Politics, it is said, is about the art of compromise, and
that is true. But it also is the art of division, of getting people to choose
up sides. Actually this impulse of
politics usually comes first, and then, when we are clear about our divisions
comes the art of compromise.
Of course the problem is that the art of compromise is a significant
aspect of politics about which many people are angry. Members of congress who engage in it are
quickly labeled apostate, challenged and driven from office (Eric Cantor being
a good example). The former Speaker of
the House, John Boehner, was often angry at President Obama. He even sued him,
but the two remained friendly, so Boehner remained suspect because he did not
allow his anger to turn into hate.
The language of hate follows upon the language of anger,
when the latter is devoid of mercy. Some
may cry “foul!” for my introducing a religious concept into the conversation,
but it also has a history in American political rhetoric. A couple times recently I listened to the
whole of “America the Beautiful,” Katherine Lee Bates’ hymn for the country she
loved and wanted us to as well. It is the second verse that has moved me in my
recent hearings.
O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating
strife,
Who more than self their country
loved,
And mercy more than life!
A patriot is one who loves country more than self, and mercy
more than life. What does that
mean? An internet search found almost
exclusively the interpretation that “mercy” is a stand in for God or for the
grace of God as saving us, more than we ever can by our own deeds. Maybe that is what Bates meant, but she also
chose that particular word, mercy.
Mercy is about the capacity to love even when wronged, to
forgive and be able to accept forgiveness.
It is the value at the heart of our hearts that, in one of my favorite
definitions of forgiveness because it is so provocative, we recognize “That we
are not, at bottom, radically different from those who harm us.” Most of us,
including myself, do not want this to be true, and, when we fell hurt and
angry, find the thought an abomination.
Of course I/we am/are better than he/she/them. It is the “natural” way of things. There would, however, be no authentic
Christian faith without mercy and forgiveness at its heart, and precisely this
kind of turn-the-world-upside-down.
The United States as a political and social experiment also
depends on the value of mercy—that I remain convinced that those who differ
from me or more like me than different from me, that even in our profound
differences, we can be patriots together. We might even learn to love our
differences rather than be suspicious of them or even hate them.
There are plenty of incidences in the Bible where God gets
angry with his people, even to the point of wrath and judgment. But the key to the Bible’s story is that
never tells the whole truth about God, and that is that God can never let go,
and God asks the same of us with each other.
It’s hard work when the world is not clearly stratified into hierarchies
based either on birth or wealth or behavior.
I think that’s the one thing our founding fathers and mothers knew: that this grand experiment of a free society
of equals would be very hard work indeed.
Katherine Lee Bates knew that we would need to love mercy
more than life itself for this beautiful dream to come true.
When we say, “I’m angry!” Jesus says “Be merciful just as
God has been merciful.”
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