Lost at Home
I have known for a while that I am stranger wandering through a strange land. The twin pillars upon which I built my life - God and Country; more specifically, the Christian Church and the foundational documents of American democracy - have crumbled to dust. They were twin mirages, fortified by my own idealism and hope, but they were most assuredly mirages, as the last decade has clearly revealed. And so it is time to ask myself what is left. What now, after the buttresses of stability have been hollowed out from the inside?
I assure you that this is not an easy question to answer. John Pavlovitz, linked below, offers his own excellent thoughts. I thoroughly understand his dis-ease, his disbelief, his face-palming reactions to events and policies that seemed inconceivable for the vast majority of my life. Not ever gonna happen. This is America, dammit.
But it has happened. I have little to no trust in the Christian Church. I have little to no trust in my fellow Americans. Both groups - and there is significant overlap between them - have forfeited the right to expect my trust. The Christian Church, more than once, elected a congenitally lying, cheating, racist, misogynistic traitor, rapist, and convicted felon to the highest office of the land and called it “following Jesus.” And non-religious Americans followed suit, and were and are quite content to bask in the aftermath of the desecration of the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. “All men are created equal.” That’s a good one. Tell that to the 72% of the residents of Alligator Alcatraz who have never been convicted of committing a crime.
This stuff breaks my brain. It also breaks my heart. It’s caused significant psychic damage. I, like everyone else, need human contact. I desire community. But there’s a very good chance that half the people I encounter in a newish city, where I started out knowing zero people, will quickly reveal themselves to be part of the horror show. And it IS a horror show. Sorry about the shocked look. And I assure you that it’s best if I just back away slowly, and then run quickly once I’m out of your sight. You don’t want to hear me react aloud to you. I’ve discovered the hard way that “What’s wrong with you as a human being?” is not a good conversation starter.
In the absence of the supernatural, I have sought out good ol’ secular therapists. And they have been helpful. I’m trying to rebuild a worldview; the set of core beliefs and assumptions that serve as the foundation for thought and action. Here’s what I believe at the moment. I believe in Jesus, who mostly has nothing to do with the Christian Church. But Jesus said a lot of things that I think are good, and true, and worth basing a life upon. And I believe in, ironically, the Founding Fathers of the United States, once highly praised and now studiously ignored by half the population.
I’m trying to love my neighbors. And it turns out that my neighbors have names and faces, joys and tragedies that inform who they are today. It’s not a theoretical concept. My neighbors are the people who live near me. And I’ve gotten to know many of them, and it turns out that half of them wear the same shellshocked look that I wear when I leave the house, and they’re happy to tell me their stories. Many, many of them are refugees from Christian churches, trying to figure out ways to carry on something approximating love in the midst of the rubble. Just like me.
We’re all lost at home. I’m glad we’ve found each other. I have very little hope for home in the larger sense of the term. But I have hope for them.