I am human and there are limits to what I can do.
I confess there are a handful of people I don’t want to see; I struggle to be polite when I do see them. For a couple of folks in particular, I won’t even try. But I feel at peace because in each case I offered plenty of chances to seize onto my nice side. It wasn’t hatred at first sight. Very few people in my life so far have possessed such talent and spite as to infuriate me right away, and I haven’t seen any of them in ages. I generally approach everyone with an attempt to show them my Father’s love. And those who are on my bad side can always find terms of peace; I don’t enjoy animosity.
In this, I don’t stand on principle. I operate from the heart-mind.
At one time I moved among those who spoke often of “standing on principle” but I found it painful to operate their way. It burned in my heart even when I could pull off the results these people claimed I should seek. I was never really a part of that world, but they were all around me. I continue to see and read of their social encounters when “standing on principle” and it’s often pointlessly rude. They claim it’s necessary to preserve their God-given rights, but I counter that it’s not the God who made us that ever spoke of “rights” as they mean it.
It’s the wrong question. We should be thinking in terms of dominion and boundaries. The only time I yell and act forcefully is when someone threatens something I cannot surrender morally. It’s not about rights but about calling and mission. It’s not personal; it is morally contextual. I’m not trying to put someone in their place and make them adhere to some imaginary standard of justice arising from a heathen culture. I’m simply acting as my God demands, and most folks will certainly consider it inconsistent because they are trying to force God into a rational box. The Spirit of God doesn’t program us like computers.
I have no expectation that I can fix any part of this world. We live in a damned system, so I have no intention to trying to roll back imaginary violations against this foul system. I’m not going to use law and Constitutional rights to bludgeon other people who cross such man-made boundaries. If I can create a better atmosphere for smoother cooperation, I will. I’ll meet them halfway or whatever because it’s about people, not some mythical objective standard.
By the same token, I’ll be damned if I buy into the goofball middle-class bureaucratic “niceness” that quivers in fear at somehow violating their sacred social consensus. The social system around me is damned and I won’t pretend to care either way, but I also won’t go out of my way to start a fight. I’ll seek social stability on God’s terms, not man’s.
I’m often embarrassed to be around those rights activists because it looks like an excuse to spread hatred.
