All lives matter. Do they?
Our rhetoric may not line up with our actions. We may be guilty of what we have despised from our politicians: all talk, no action.
We say we believe in evangelism, yet we do not share the gospel with our neighbor. We say we believe in making our community a better place, but have no personal investment in our local government and school. We say we love all people, yet we do not know the names of the staff of the local Chinese restaurant, and an African-American has not been in our home for a meal in the last year.
We are a divided nation: black or white, Democrat or Republican, immigrant or American, contemporary or traditional, Clemson or Carolina.
Rather than stick our heads in the sand and act as if everything is OK, maybe we need to flood out of our stained-glass sanctuaries and into the streets to listen to hurting people. The reason we see so many demands from others is because no one seems to be listening to them.
Demands are a monologue.
Conversation is a dialogue.
We must dialogue with one another. Don’t allow your frustration with the demands of others to keep you from taking a position of humility to listen. Those who are hurting need to be shown care — first — before we try to set them straight. Ed Stetzer put it well: “When you hear, ‘Black lives matter,’ rather than coming back with, ‘All lives matter,’ or, ‘Blue lives matter,’ why not be quiet and listen instead to hurting and broken people.”
I am guilty of thinking I have all the right answers. Just ask my wife. I tend to jump into a conversation, trying to fix broken people with three points and a poem instead of listening to them and empathizing with their hurts.
We are in tumultuous times; we are standing on a slippery slope of a morality reset in a nation that once set its foundation on the truths of Scripture. Laws are being interpreted based on what the majority of the nation believes to be true.
Our leaders should not surprise us. They are a reflection of the people in a democratic nation. If the majority of people drift from God, they will choose leaders who look just like them. If you want to change the leaders of your country, your only hope is to saturate your community with the hope of the gospel. Only by transforming a culture at the grass roots will reform really take place at the highest level.
If there is ever a time in the history of our country where the church needs to unite, it is now. Let us lay down our differences and preferences, and together saturate our community with the hope of the gospel. It starts with a conversation. Get started.