By EMILY RUDE
Courtesy Kansas Reflector
This summer, as civil war looms ever closer, I’ve begun to take seriously that old adage from “The Godfather Part II,” invoking the spirit of such luminaries as Sun Tzu and Machiavelli: Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.
In other words: Get involved in church activities.
Yes, yes, “love thine enemy” and all that. But it’s easy to “love” from a distance — like that person with a “Vote Yes” yard sign beside another, handwritten yard sign that said, “To the person who stole my yard sign: Jesus still loves you!” The “o” in “love” was a cutesy heart.
I wonder what that “love” looks like? It’s certainly very convenient to outsource the job of loving to a deity who’ll do it for free, but, as they say, you get what you pay for. If you don’t put in the time and awkwardness of actually loving your neighbor, you don’t really get the results.
But what does “time and awkwardness” look like? Should you invite that pro-life neighbor for coffee to talk about politics? That would be in line with the typical advice you read about solving political polarization in this country — which, frankly, is laughable. Common sense says that nothing will be solved by trying to discuss abortion with your enemies. In fact, there’s good research (and personal experience) to suggest that talking about things serves merely to cement prior beliefs.
No — we need less discussion, and more doing.
This is why I’m going to church. Not to the services. That would be disingenuous, since I don’t believe (long story). But the reality is that churches in Kansas do most of the neighbor-loving work that government doesn’t — can’t? won’t? — do. Work such as hosting free lunches for kids, or raising money for the local hospital, or helping people pay their rent (see: TACOL in Lindsborg). Cleaning up capitalism’s mess, basically.
Yes, many of the people at church are anti-abortion. Some don’t believe climate change is a problem. Some (many?) would just as soon have all “the gays” leave town, one way or another. Lots of them have guns. I might see one of those guns in a very uncomfortable context someday. I have material reasons to fear and distrust “church-going folk.”
They’re my enemies.
Or rather, a certain vocal fraction of them are. After all, it isn’t the going-to-church part that makes someone a bigot. That’s absurd. Dangerous people are dangerous because of their personality and their media diet, not because of their religion. Having grown up in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church, I know that people who go to church are, you know, people. They’d be who they are regardless. The church just organizes them.
And anyhow, the Lutheran churches in my town are ELCA, not Missouri Synod (if you know, you know).
So, to not get involved in church community projects just because I might bump into a pro-life activist whom I disagree with would be sheer cowardice. Most of the people I interact with on a daily basis — yes, even the gay ones — go to church. Just because my enemies do too doesn’t mean I must boycott the concept wholesale. At that point, I might as well boycott the entire town, conservatives, liberals and all.
Because my enemies are lending a hand, I need to do at least as much. After all, “my enemies” are part of “the good guys” in my town. They are the only ones making a visible, tangible difference.
To be useful to my neighbors and for my own sanity, I need my enemies to think of me as part of their community. I need to think of them as part of mine, even if we fight sometimes. It’s worth it if it means we don’t fall apart when things really fall apart. We need to get used to each other — become a little more like sibling rivals and a little less like opposite sides in an armed civil war. I can handle a family feud. Not civil war.
I’ve started by volunteering at the Messiah Lutheran a couple of times a week, helping with the free lunch program for children. I’m not that essential to the group, yet, but it’s something.
My next move is to see if the impressively effective TACOL (The Associated Churches of Lindsborg) thrift shop needs any free help. For instance, they have a very minimal website, and I happen to have experience setting up websites.
I expect to learn a lot — about my enemies, my friends, my town, myself, and hopefully about what happens when you stop hiding and start helping.
Emily Rude teaches biology at Bethany College in Lindsborg. She lives with her husband in a house of mud, straw and horse manure. She enjoys it all.