I have never much liked the opinions of Rick Warren. For all his talk of being inclusive, he spouts a great amount of division and prejudice. He may be a spokesman for the lesser of the evils of fundamentalism, but that is not saying a whole lot. Certainly if I was choosing symbolic speakers, he would not make my list.
But though his selection bothers me somewhat, I am more bothered by a trend that I see in these pages. I am personally not immune to this trend, but I do make an effort to curb that tendency.
I, like most of you, have strong beliefs about politics, life, and justice. I am most passionate about the futility of war. I will not go deeply into my views, but it is my belief that no spiritual (in the broadest sense of the word) person could vote for a candidate that supports war if there was a candidate who did not support war. I have come to understand that as strongly as I feel about the counter-productiveness of war, it is not helpful to make such a broad generalization.
I read many of the diaries and the comments in them. The first aspect of most diaries is to say what one thinks, report facts, and sometimes come to a conclusion. This is the best of blogs. The second aspect, the one I am concerned about, is to demonize those who have differing (even ridiculous) opinions.
Each time that one divides the population into "us vs. them", a great deal is lost. It really does not matter what the category is, what the group, or what the belief. If everyone who has a misguided or different view is judged "them", we become fractured and antagonistic.
Many of us laughed when Bush said "you are either with us or you are with the terrorists". At least I hope many of us did. It was a ridiculous statement and patently untrue. Yet I hear similar statements every day on these pages. The line that divides is not a thin clean line where people are on one side or the other and cannot associate with anyone on the other side. The line is broad and unclear and to form a larger "we", it is necessary to associate with all people, even those we disagree with vociferously on some issues.
If we each refuse to trust that Obama gets to make his own choice about who he associates with, who he talks with, and who he enlists to promote what he thinks is right, we will have lost some of what brought us to this point of hope.
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