Perspective, Love, and When to Walk A New Way

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Perspective is powerful. 

When I am absorbed in my own perspective I have become so self-assured that I can be blind to errors in my thinking and judgment that another person might notice immediately.  

When  I'm surrounded by an echo chamber of perspectives just like mine, that self-assurance can devolve into dangerous groupthink, like White Nationalism, hate groups, or the Nazis.   

When I'm bombarded by many different perspectives, I feel paralyzed and confused: all the voices passionately debating online.

When I sit and get quiet and wait for the Lord, self-assurance, anger, judgment, and confusion start to fall away. And I am left with an aching love for everyone.  

I'm not sure if it is a blessing or a curse, but I have mostly been a person who sees many perspectives.  If I know someone well, I will consider what they say as I think about their personal experiences and viewpoints. I try to think this way about my own perspectives. I rarely go all-in on one side of an issue. I find myself in the murky middle a lot, and I desperately want to figure out, who has the right view? What is the right way to be?  There is NO shortage of people who want to tell me, as we live in a world where everyone thinks they are right and the rest of us need to get on board.  

An election year with a pandemic chaser was the loudest clanging cymbal and noisy gong I have ever heard.  The perspectives were deafening.  And yet, when things shut down and I got quiet with the Lord, that was the hardest to bear.  He was so quiet with me. There was love and grief, and tenderness for everyone. I believe that long, quiet, lonely season opened me up.

The Lord has shown me these past few years that perspective is important, but love is what changes the world.  

Love opens us up to real repentance, to metanoia: a changing of your mind, going a new way.

Choosing to love those whom others hate will cost you some relationships, but changing your mind and going a new way without a full explanation is ok.  

Refusing to engage in a back and forth / tit for tat / I am right and you are wrong is ok. 

You may be called a liar, a flip-flopper, a person that has "fallen into the culture and away from God." But, when I look at our current culture, both religious and secular, a culture of love is about the last thing that comes to mind.  

It is ok to turn away from all the noise. To go quietly amid the noise and haste and let your actions speak. 

I believe that getting about the business of love is what is most important.  

You can stop trying to squeeze into a seat at a table that isn't yielding fruit in your life. Remember what was beautiful, but also learn from what was ugly, both in yourself and in others. 

Make good trouble. Jesus surely did.  




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