This is my last regular column. I've enjoyed the opportunity to reflect on the intersection of religion and news in this newspaper for 18 years. I'm grateful to the Democrat Gazette and before that, the Northwest Arkansas Times.
Here's how I began that first column in 2004: Albert Einstein is often quoted for his insight: "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it." Or more colloquially, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
If we are to help heal the world rather than help destroy it, we'll have to discover a higher consciousness than the conventional thinking that has created a nation divided almost in half -- red states and blue states. We'll have to find political wisdom that transcends the idea that "if you are not for us, you're against us." We'll have to find a religious path that is more comprehensive than saved verses lost, righteous verses infidel, etc.
The fundamental Christian values are compassion and love and a commitment to justice seen through the eyes of compassion and love. This is the ancient wisdom of Jesus. If Christians are to help heal the world rather than destroy it, we are going to have to act out of these higher values and resist the simplistic temptation to replace morality with moralism, servanthood with triumphalism. It is easy to see why many thoughtful people of compassion and love can look at the contemporary church and see it more as a source of the problems than the solutions.
I write from inside my own particular consciousness. I am a Southern-born, straight, white, male, Christian. People like me created the American South, and we still hold most of its power. I love the South. It is a place of great wonder, grace and creativity. But I also know we have a lot of problems.
Because people like me have had all of the power, these problems are our problems. We created them. And "No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it."
The Arkansas Legislature is full of people like me. It always has been. And the legislature thinks we have problems. Problems with Black people who want their history written from a wider perspective. Problems with immigrants who have been drawn to the American Dream a few generations after our ancestors were. Problems with people whose sexual identity is anything other than straight. Problems with women who want to control their own bodies and families.
The problem is that people like me have all the power, and we think we know how everybody else should live. But we aren't good at listening to people who are different from us.
Richard Niebuhr said, "[People] are generally right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. What we deny is generally something that lies outside our experience, about which we can therefore say nothing."
During my childhood, white people believed segregation was God's will. Black people told us we were wrong, but we weren't very good at listening. Black people weren't the problem. White people were the problem. We denied the full humanity of Black people. We needed to grow in compassion and love.
What if the straight, white Christian people in charge now would listen to our neighbors? Listen with compassion. We might create a more just society. If the Arkansas legislature and governor would listen with compassion and love to the stories of our neighbors, they wouldn't be passing mean laws.
St. Paul teaches the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance. "Against such things, there is no law." (Galatians 22-23)
Often I have found the fruit of the Spirit in the unexpected place and in the unfamiliar person. I met the Spirit when I opened myself to friendships with gay people. The Spirit manifested when I got to know transgender neighbors and even a few drag queens. I've known good women with unplanned pregnancies making their best choices. I've seen the fruit of the Spirit in undocumented immigrants and in Dreamers. There is no just law against these people of the Spirit.
As I think back to my columns over these 18 years, I often wrote about people or groups who I believed were being treated unfairly by our culture and by Christians. So many columns ended simply with Jesus' admonition, "Love your neighbor as yourself." That seems like a good place to end it. Thanks for reading.