Language lessons

I am continually grieved by how we talk about each other in the church. We have become masters of the subtle (and not-so-subtle) put-down, the ridiculing snort, the label used to marginalize someone (e.g. literalist, revisionist). We have even come up with strangely anachronistic ideas of what an Anglican is, and promote little myths about others: e.g. evangelicals are dumb and not truly Anglican; anglo-catholics are a sick lot and a relic of the past; liberals don't care about Scripture and only want to kowtow to the cultural elites.

Our foe is either benighted or wicked or sick: if we stick to this story, then we don't need to listen to their reasons, we don't need to see them as human, we don't need to see ourselves in them, we don't need to agonize over whether or not we could be wrong. And if we keep telling the story that people are either liberal or conservative, that it's them or us, then we can have our nice black-and-white world where the other doesn't need to be engaged or taken seriously. We can assume power and force out the others, or just not listen to them; either way, we're insulated.

If you ask me, it's a recipe for damned smug self-righteousness and triumphalism, a table we seem to gather around especially when we're with like-minded people. But I don't think it's the right Table. It's certainly no credit to our faith or the gospel.

I do it too, I am not an outsider but very much an insider trying to be...what? Human? Is that too self-congratulatory? Probably.

But the more we live in this land of enmity, the more and more I feel as if we are in a Babylonian Captivity, far from our home -- and I don't want to learn to love exile.