I stood talking to a Christian yesterday, both of us wanting to find common ground, but in every direction our conversation went, our discussion broke down. When he asserted something, I could easily say and use the internet to prove that his claim was false. When I spoke, he used the internet and his media source to say that I—whether a bishop or not — was spreading falsehood.  

We could not even agree about what was factual or what was fabricated by the other’s media source. For me, true dialogue must be based on facts. He agreed, but we couldn’t continue our conversation because we could not agree on a shared set of facts. Afterward someone told me I diffused a situation. I think I only confirmed his thinking. I tried with everything I had to see Christ in him.

Maybe in this whirlwind we are called to a third way: love the bundle of contradictions that you have become. Love your neighbor as yourself.

These days I find myself drawn to meditate on paradox, starting with my own. No, I am not giving up the facts I know, nor am I making a false equivalency that the other man’s tenets of Christian Nationalism were as valid as my faith. But I am trying to return to understanding how knowledge of my own contradictions, and the paradoxes of faith, call me to humility.

The book of Revelation reminds us that “worthy is the slaughtered lamb” to be called Lord (5:12). This same Savior rides into Jerusalem on a donkey in his hour of triumph—on the way to his death. This same Jesus taught that those who lose their lives will find them. The risen Lord tells Paul that when he is weak, he is strong. What is going on?

Esther de Waal writes in Living With Contradiction that “the mind will never apprehend the truth of paradox, only the heart can do that” (p. 24). Love understands that we are human, a bagful of contradictions.

Moreover, Parker Palmer writes in the Promise of Paradox:  “ if I am to live wholly and fully and freely, then I must accept that I am in the contradictions and the contradictions are in me, and all that is held together by a hidden wholeness” (p. 46). More deeply, my wife knows my contradictions, my inconsistently applied faith; she knows the Pharisee-troll living inside me—and she loves me anyway. Of course, the hidden wholeness Palmer writes about is the healing love of God bringing us through life by our growing in love.

The Lamb I must magnify is the love at the throne of my heart making me more lamblike. I need humility and love to face the Pharisee in myself and the one living in my neighbor.

Each day I live to offend more and more, and clergy are telling me that for them, too, it is nearly impossible to create bonds of pastoral relationship. I can love my neighbor and my sibling in Christ without choosing silence in the face of racism or silence when facing the loss of due process and democratic norms. This takes me to my own self-differentiation—living by principle and staying as connected as possible.

These days clergy have one hour, perhaps, each month—and maybe a blog and increasingly brief messages—to create Christian community that must compete with countless hours of media and social media leading us away from community. Clergy cannot compete.  

The kingdom/kin-dom of God travels at the speed of relationship. This is an ubuntu world, a world of mutual benefit. So make relationships with new and different people. Increase your knowledge of the Lamb. Read multiple news sources. Acknowledge the Pharisee-troll in the mirror. Love your
neighbor as yourself.

Know that I am praying for you.