An American Christian Manifesto

I'm a Christian and I'm an American.

I've never in my life been ashamed to be either of those things, but it's gotten to the point that every time I turn on the news or get on social media, I am ashamed of who we've become.

You know, I grew up surrounded by Christians who passionately argued for objective truth in the face of relativism and for the golden rule in the face of conflict— what happened to that?

I was always taught that America was a land of opportunity for everyone including the people I disagree with—what happened to that?

Something has happened in this country: we've succumbed to black-and-white thinking and perpetual outrage, always looking to paint someone as an enemy we can rally against instead of seeing them as fellow human beings or fellow children of God.

And it's not limited to any one issue or situation or political party— it's all of us; it's a willingness to dehumanize our opponents that's infected the whole country.

And it's not the fact that we disagree, it's the way that we disagree.
Because, yeah, some things are wrong and worth fighting against, but not every person who disagrees about something is an enemy and it's too easy to start defining ourselves by what and who we're
against instead of by what we're for.

I mean, What are we for? Where's our moral Center? I don't mean the reason for your position on an issue, I mean the principles that guide how we disagree and how we treat the people we disagree with. Like when Jesus says to "love our enemies", do we even believe that anymore?

So, instead of just complaining, let me tell you what I'm for.

[AN AMERICAN CHRISTIAN MANIFESTO]

First of all, I BELIEVE IN TRUTH.
Some things are TRUE and some things aren't.
TRUTH is not a popularity contest.
There are at least two sides to every disagreement, but that doesn't mean they're equally right— you can be sincere and still be wrong, and I believe the TRUTH matters, especially when it's uncomfortable, because if you only care about the TRUTH when it supports your view, then you don't care about the TRUTH at all.

But as an American, I also BELIEVE IN FREEDOM.
FREEDOM of religion, FREEDOM of speech, FREEDOM to disagree.
We may not always agree about what is true, but we should care enough to work together to find out.

So I BELIEVE IN DIALOGUE, because I believe that exercising our freedoms well requires a healthy ongoing public exchange of ideas where we care together about what is true, not just about winning the argument; where we fight for one another's right to differing opinions about how to respond to those truths, and where we actually listen to and learn from each other, because that's how you get nuance.

And I BELIEVE IN NUANCE, because some things are right and some things are wrong, but sometimes the answers are complicated, and we will miss them if we're not willing to venture outside of our comfort zones.

And that's why I'm scared, because that NUANCE is becoming increasingly difficult in our modern social media landscape.
We measure our worth in likes and shares and retweets, and you get those by preaching to the choir, not by challenging yourself for asking NUANCED questions.
We've become addicted to constant approval, and it's never enough— a faithful supportive friend is nothing if you measure them as only one like; we need 10, we need 100, we need 1000.
And look, I'm not immune—I'm making a YouTube video for crying out loud—but I'm genuinely concerned, because when you need constant approval, there's no room for constructive criticism or listening to people who disagree, because you've got to keep surrounding yourself with people who cheer you on and tell you to ignore your critics because you and your beliefs are perfect, all of us telling each other what our itching ears long to hear and you become afraid to stray from the party line on anything because you can't lose that morphine drip of approval.

Look I'm not longing for some imaginary good old days.
As Christians and as Americans we've never fully lived up to our own ideals.
We've had slavery and inequality and wars but our failures don't invalidate our aspirations.
When the founding fathers wrote that all men are created equal it was an aspirational view, even though they failed to follow through by applying it equally to women and people of color.
This is precisely why we need relationships with people who disagree with us.
NUANCE means that even great people working for great things can make mistakes and have blind spots and that includes us, so maybe
you're right about what your critics need to change but that doesn't mean that you or I don't have things that we need to fix too.

And I'm worried that we've all gotten so fixated on our culture war mentality that we're only giving lip service to fixing ourselves using that false humility as a cover to let us tear down our opponents and sometimes even our allies for not being good enough, forcing them to prove themselves worthy in our eyes by saying all the right things and endorsing all the right causes.
No room for NUANCE or honest disagreement or GRACE for those who still need to learn, just "my way or the highway" and so each of us decides to go "my way", no questions, no curiosity just "I know it all".
And thanks to the internet, we each have our own platform from which to declare our own received wisdom and see what kind of following we can amass.

And you know there is wisdom out there, but as a Christian, I BELIEVE IN HUMILITY, the ability to recognize that you can always learn more, that you can always grow as a person, that we need people who think differently from us to challenge us and help us to become more nuanced thinkers, that this manifesto itself could improve with feedback.

And I BELEIVE IN GRACE, in a world where all of us have been shown such GRACE by God that we are obligated to show it to others, because yeah, TRUTH matters, but no one is right all the time, so unless you've got HUMILITY, you won't know when you're wrong, and unless you've got GRACE no one will listen when you're right.
As a Christian, I take my cues on this from Jesus. Jesus's followers expected a political leader, but they got a suffering servant who took the time to wash people's feet.
He taught that we are most defined by how we treat the least of those among us, the ones who are different, the outcasts, the ones we find it hardest to LOVE, because even if they're wrong and you're right about everything winning isn't all that counts.
Jesus said, "What does it profit a man to gain the world but lose his soul?" I'm worried that we're all losing our soul in our quest to win these little cultural battles.

So here is my call for a return to these core values: TRUTH, FREEDOM, NUANCE, HUMILITY, GRACE, and ultimately LOVE for God and for country and for ourselves, but also for our opponents and our critics.

This is what it means to me to be an American and a Christian.
I want to be proud again to say those words.
I want them to stand for something good in the world, and that will only happen if we make it happen, if we make the hard choices every day to live up to what we say we believe.
Otherwise, we might win a battle here or there, but we'll have lost the only thing that really matters.