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The Gift of Love and Civility

The Gift of Love and Civility

by The Reverend Dr. Roman D. Roldan on May 27, 2020

            From time to time a person feels as though they are the last person on earth, completely alone, with only their thoughts for company. I find it fascinating that someone can feel alone in the company of others, but this is often what happens. It is entirely possible to feel like the last person on earth in a crowd of a thousand people. Some times this is an emotional thing, and sometimes it is an ideological, philosophical, political, and even theological thing. You may not know how it happened, but now you feel like you have lost all points of contact with folks around you, and you find yourself on the outside looking in. You know the distancing has been happening over time, but you become aware of it all at once, and that realization is overwhelming and disheartening.

             I have a friend who lost the great majority of his friends when his church split and he chose to remain with the original congregation. He still attends the same clubs as his former friends, eats at the same restaurants, and goes to the same movie theaters, but he feels profoundly alone. The disinterested cordiality of his former friends, and their avoidance of serious topics around him are difficult to bear. He misses the depth of their conversations, and quietly resents the pressure they put on him to leave his church. His friend group has become so polarized that there is no tolerance for any diverging views. “This is a new thing,” he says. “It started happening about 20 years ago, when conversations on human sexuality became an obsession for our church and our country.”

             When he is with his friends, he feels like an impostor, always walking on egg shells to avoid unnecessary arguments. As a reaction, his faith has become very private, and he feels disconnected from others and from God. “It is as if I am communicating with God and the whole world on a particular radio frequency, but someone has changed that frequency and all I get is radio silence. Even God has gone silent!”

             He continues to talk, and at some point, he wonders if perhaps he is just being stubborn. He should start attending the new church where his friends are. He and his wife spent a lifetime building those relationships, and he needs the gift of community, especially since the death of his wife two years ago. He knows that life can’t be lived in isolation, and that God created him within the context of a community. 

             As I listen patiently, I begin to wonder how and why our world has become this polarized. I remember a time in America when you could honestly disagree with someone without walking away from them and the relationships that took decades to build. This polarization creates such feelings of loneliness and isolation in people that my friend thinks the only way to keep his friends is to join their new church, even though he profoundly disagrees with the group’s theology and their stance on social issues.

            He believes he can fake it until he makes it. The phrase itself saddens me. “That’s not how community should work,” I think to myself. Community should not demand uniformity of thought and loss of individuality. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be... there are many parts, but one body.” My friend is willing to pretend he is an eye, when in fact he is not. Worse yet, his friends are demanding that he behave as an eye, because they are unwilling to accept his actual contributions to the body of Christ. 

             We have been reading from the Gospel of John, chapters 14-17, and Jesus’ famous prayer. Jesus asks his disciples to love each other as the Father loves the Son, and as the Son loves the Father. This love is not just for those who think and worship as we do. This is a love that transcends theological positions, party lines, and ever-splintering denominations. This is a love that doesn’t require an orthodoxy litmus test before we accept our neighbors. This is a love that has very little to do with arrogance, power, control, and having things always go our way. This love cedes, creates room, gives and takes, and builds a reality greater than ourselves.

             I don’t know what my friend will choose to do, but nowadays I find myself praying for the gift of civility and brotherly/sisterly love for our world and our church. I hope you will join me in this prayer.

            Blessings,

            Fr. Roman+

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