Losing and Finding God in 2020

It’s no secret to anyone who’s been following me for longer than a hot minute that I am a Christian, however divisive that word may be. It also should be no secret to this same group of people who come around these parts to hear what I have to say, that I’m not a perfect Christian. Or even a particularly good one. I’m just a woman who has walked enough of a crooked path to know that I desperately need God’s grace and love and, because of this same brokenness, I have an innate fondness and heart for other people who are walking in their own messes and hurts and fears.

For me, it’s always been more relationship than religion. Mostly because I never get it right but, still, every single time I sit down and talk with God (don’t walk away yet, even if you don’t believe this stuff), He shows up. I find peace and I remember that I am loved.

That’s it.

So lately, it’s especially disconcerting to this person who needs this peace to survive, that I have found that I have spent the better part of the last year both losing and finding God in the politics of 2020. In my quiet time, which again is very necessary, I try desperately to summon the words or the thoughts or the right headspace to draw close to God, and instead my mind, like a runaway train, starts to wander around the chaos that’s been transpiring in our world and my lack of answers and how nothing makes sense to me anymore. And I feel lost, filled with doubt, and very, very confused.

See, I’ve never really been a political person. As a young and idealistic teenager and young adult, I swung more liberal, as those of that age do, but not majorly so. Now, as a grown woman with a family and stronger faith and grasp on some of the harsher realities of the world, I probably swing a little more conservative, at least fiscally so. But, really, at the end of the day, my apathetic approach to politics has left me a staunch moderate. Right down the middle. I see things from both sides, often falling to the left on some issues and the right on others. I’m neither hellfire and brimstone nor tree-hugging hippie. I’m in between. This is where I thought most people, who really are just doing their best every day to live the best way they know how, fall.

Until as a Christian, moderate became synonymous with”radical left” in a sharp right turn of “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” rhetoric I never saw coming.

It seems like overnight, somehow, this happened on both sides of the sharp political divide. And, even further, on one side it became a lot less about party and platform and more about a man and idolatry. There was no space in the middle anymore and I was being told, in no uncertain terms, that if I went one way I was a baby killer and a communist but if I went the other I was a racist. There was no in-between.

And, to make it doubly and triply complicated, as a Christian, I felt silenced because I couldn’t quite make peace with turning a blind eye to the hate dripping from the airwaves by the man in charge or the sharp rhetoric that caused actual damage to my friends of color or who don’t check the right box when it comes to their sexual orientation or belief system. I suffered massive cognitive dissonance between what the “platform” was and what was actually being said. I was being told words didn’t matter. But they did. To me. I was being told that I had to vote to protect Religion, my religion, because Christians were being silenced.

Yet, as a Christian influencer, I never once felt silenced or censored or had my reach cut short when I talked about Jesus. So I couldn’t make sense of that, either.

So, I kept silent. I would sit in a room filled with people telling me that they couldn’t vote for someone who likes abortion and feel knotted up inside because my belief is that no one likes abortion, they just have different ideas on how to legislate it. And truthfully, because I’m not a theologian, I would feel out of my league and ignorant as Bible verses were flung around left and right to support the arguments on every side.

I mean, maybe I’m a simple woman, but the only thing I can make peace with is loving people where they are, as they are, and letting Him do the rest.

But still, I would walk away feeling politically homeless and alone from so many situations because I couldn’t get behind a man who spewed hate out of one side of his mouth while holding a Bible in the other, yet feeling desperately afraid of being called a (shudder to think it) snowflake socialist.

And here’s the thing….after talking to so many other people on both sides of the fence, I know I’m not alone. Some of my conservative friends were afraid to say they supported Trump just as much as I was afraid to say I didn’t. We’ve become so polarized that we lost God and truth and reason and civility.

What I’ve realized from this, of course, is that no one side is all bad or all wrong just as no other side is all good and all righteous. No party corners the market on righteousness and God hasn’t shined His light down on one side of the aisle over the other. Anything one side accuses the other of doing or starting, the other side can quickly find the same (I’m looking at you “Not my President” versus “Birthers”). The division didn’t start with just one party and only one party has not perpetuated it. It’s a both-side issue, made darker by the dangerous rhetoric from the top.

And this is where I lost God. Because I watched as our Capitol was stormed by people waving Jesus flags and I could not make sense of it. I watched as reason and civility disappeared and hate became the norm. No more closet racists, we’re all out in the open now. And I felt disconnected from God because I couldn’t make sense of how people were using His name. I felt lost. Alone. And stupid.

And, might I add, I am a woman in my 40s with a pretty strong foundation of faith. And if this is rocking my world and making me doubt things that were once absolutes, can you imagine how this must look to the idealistic youth of our country? How they can’t make sense of what they’re seeing? Can you even grasp how many people we’re losing because we’re caring more about the outcome of an election (which, by the way, God has ordained in His plan anyway so if we trust this, then why are we willing to support chaos to get our way) then feeding the hungry or loving people or fighting for something that helps the poor, weak, widows and downtrodden?

I think we’re losing a bunch of young hearts because we’ve misappropriated Jesus to the elephant.

Listen, I do not know the answers to some of these bigger political issues. I really don’t. I mean, Twitter bans? We’ve got our panties in a bunch about freedom of speech (which it’s not violating in the legal sense) over TWITTER. Over social media. I mean, can’t we all agree that social media should never be the preferred means of communication for our leaders but should instead be relegated to where it belongs–the sharing of cat memes and MLMs? Sure I don’t think we should be censoring people but we all watched what happens when we don’t in real-time on January 6th, so what’s the answer? I DO NOT KNOW.

I’ve watched way too many pieces of scriptures manipulated and tweaked and misused for both sides to want to try and flesh it exactly where God stands on these issues. Once again, the only thing I can hold tight to is what He says about Loving Him and Loving People. And yes, friends, maybe I’m not a smart woman but that’s where it begins and ends for me. I’m neither a radical left (why is the left radical, by the way? Couldn’t the right be considered just as radical given that they stormed the Capitol? Are they not radical because they held Bibles? I don’t know) nor far right.

I’m just one single woman who wants very much to do what God whispers to her every single time she starts to get tied up in knots because she doesn’t know where to stand on some controversial issue: JUST LOVE THEM. That’s it.

So in 2020, I lost God somewhere in this noise. But I found Him when I realized that He exists where love exists. This allows me the freedom and the courage to refuse to sit back and be silent when racism exists. I can’t. Because that’s not love and God can’t exist there. I can’t sit back when sexism or homophobia exists. Because that’s not love, either. I can’t sit back when riots are happening on either side (and don’t @ me about the summer riots and compare them to the Capitol ones, there are stark differences and I won’t go there). Because, you guessed it, that’s not LOVE.

I personally am cynical enough about our political system as a whole that I don’t believe a change in Presidency is going to starkly alter the course of our country, despite all of the dire warnings of socialism and Communism (come at me with that one and let’s discuss what would have to happen to ensure this would take place). I don’t think much in terms of vast policy changes will take place. Yes, we’ll swing slightly more to the left with policies and finances. Yes, some things will be better than others. But with any Presidency, they are only as able to enact as much change as Congress is willing to let them and I think we can all agree that there are far bigger things than one man influencing the swing of the pendulum of our country in either way.

*I’m looking at you Coronavirus and tanking economy.*

But the change my heart longs to see is a return to civility. A return to respect for each other, from the top down. I hope that we all wake up out of this situation like we did when we were severely hungover in our 20s, first with amnesia, second with “did that really happen” regret, and then, after some serious soul searching, we can vow to never again let ourselves get whipped up into a frenzy by one person, one party or one man. I hope that we can restore the Presidency to a place of respect and not a social media reality tv show experiment. No matter what else, if we can normalize civil discourse, without name-calling, insults, and mob boss rhetoric (“if you’re not for me, you’re dead to me”), then we’re winning.

Because Jesus and hate don’t mix. They never have. They never will. And I’m tired of hiding in the shadows because I believe this.

Ok, friends. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. I love you. I really do. The one thing that I believe, maybe more than anything else in this mess, is that no matter how much I disagree with you about an issue, if we can talk it through and listen to understand, somehow the world will end up better in some small way than it started. I respect all of you who stuck around for long enough to read this diatribe and those who gave up halfway in. I love you all. I love this country. And most of all, I love Jesus who loved us so much that He didn’t let all of the hate in his day turn Him into anything other than perfect. Because without that truth, we’re all sunk.

Peace, love, and civility,

Meg

If you want a seriously non-biased Constitutional education with straight-up facts delivered in kind and understanding tones, go follow Sharon McMahon on Instagram RIGHT NOW.

And visit my JUSTWORDS Category if you are interested in more of my ramblings that have zero connection to a recipe.

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