The New America: A Call to Disagree Without Being Disagreeable

When it comes to an issue or truth that you believe in, maybe even feel like God revealed that truth to you; how do you respond to another Chris­t­ian that might have the oppo­site view from you? Do you feel like the way you respond lines up with how God would want you to respond?

“Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your stan­dard of mea­sure, it will be mea­sured to you.” (Matthew 7:1–2)

When I heard that Pres­i­dent Barack Obama had selected Pas­tor Rick War­ren to deliver the invo­ca­tion at his inau­gu­ra­tion, I was stunned. Con­fused. Out­raged. Offended. I felt betrayed by the man whose can­di­dacy I sup­ported with more vigor and enthu­si­asm than I have ever felt or demon­strated for any can­di­date. Most of all, I felt dis­ap­pointed. I ini­tially felt that the then-President-Elect had let down many of the Amer­i­cans who voted for him.

After all, Pas­tor Rick War­ren is a man who has uttered very ugly words about many of the Divine Creator’s chil­dren. Pas­tor Rick War­ren has engaged in hate speech which has hurt many peo­ple.  Pas­tor Rick War­ren runs a pro­gram at his con­gre­ga­tion that encour­ages self-hatred through efforts to con­vince par­tic­i­pants that they can change the inher­ent and immutable qual­i­ties bestowed upon them by the Divine Creator.

When asked about his selec­tion on Decem­ber 18, 2008, then-President-Elect Obama stated:

I think it is no secret that I am a fierce advo­cate for equal­ity for gay and les­bian Amer­i­cans. It is some­thing I have been con­sis­tent on and some­thing I intend to con­tinue to be con­sis­tent on dur­ing my presidency.

What I’ve also said is that it is impor­tant for Amer­ica to come together even though we may have dis­agree­ments on cer­tain social issues.

And I would note that a cou­ple of years ago I was invited to Rick Warren’s church to speak, despite his aware­ness that I held views entirely con­trary to his when it came to gay and les­bian rights, when it came to issues like abortion.

Nev­er­the­less, I had an oppor­tu­nity to speak, and that dia­logue, I think, is a part of what my campaign’s been all about, that we’re never going to agree on every sin­gle issue. What we have to do is cre­ate an atmos­phere where we can dis­agree with­out being dis­agree­able, and then focus on those things that we hold in com­mon as Amer­i­cans. So Rick War­ren has been invited to speak, Dr. Joseph Low­ery — who has deeply con­trast­ing views to Rick War­ren about a whole host of issues — is also speaking.

Dur­ing the course of the entire inau­gural fes­tiv­i­ties, there are going to be a wide range of view­points pre­sented and that’s how it should be. That’s part of the magic of this coun­try — we are diverse, noisy, and opin­ion­ated. So that’s the spirit in which we have put together what I think will be a ter­rific inau­gu­ra­tion and that’s hope­fully going to be a spirit that car­ries over into my administration.

Pres­i­dent Obama talks a great talk. But what inspired me to vote for him and has com­pelled me to keep faith in and with him thus far has been the quiet, dig­ni­fied — yes, even ele­gant — way in which he also “walks the walk.” For instance, true to his espoused ded­i­ca­tion to diver­sity of thought and opin­ion, he has not only called upon his elec­tion oppo­nent, Sen­a­tor John McCain, for advice, he spent part of his pre-inauguration evening at a din­ner hon­or­ing his for­mer nemesis.

The Divine Cre­ator uses evil to accom­plish good, so I believe that Pres­i­dent Obama’s selec­tion of Pas­tor War­ren served many pur­poses. Cer­tainly it demon­strated that Pres­i­dent Obama plans to be a bold leader. After all, he and his advis­ers knew that select­ing Pas­tor War­ren would out­rage many of his sup­port­ers, but he forged ahead.

Con­tro­versy gen­er­ates dis­cus­sion and Frank Sina­tra is cred­ited with not­ing that there is no such thing as bad pub­lic­ity. So per­haps Pres­i­dent Obama selected Pas­tor War­ren for the express pur­pose of stir­ring up emo­tion because he knew that the resul­tant tem­pest would inspire con­ver­sa­tion and, hope­fully, lead Amer­i­cans with diver­gent view­points to lis­ten to each other with new ears and see each other with new eyes.

And maybe Pres­i­dent Obama’s motives were as pure as his com­men­tary sug­gests. Per­haps he was sim­ply reach­ing out to a man who had once invited him into his church and given him a plat­form from which to share his vision for America.

We will likely never be privy to the thought processes of Pres­i­dent Obama and his staff.

“That’s part of the magic of this coun­try — we are diverse, noisy, and opin­ion­ated.” Pres­i­dent Barack Obama

But on this night as I reflect back on the events of this glo­ri­ous, his­toric day, I believe that the con­tri­bu­tions of both Pas­tor War­ren and Dr. Low­ery to the inau­gural cer­e­mony served as a reminder to believ­ers every­where that the way to model Jesus’ teach­ings is a decep­tively sim­ply but pro­foundly, humanly near-impossibility: Do not judge oth­ers. It is inap­pro­pri­ate and, indeed, sin­ful to ques­tion another believer’s com­mit­ment to his/her faith or ele­vate our own under­stand­ing of the Gospel over our neighbor’s.  Because just as we believe that the truth has been revealed to us in a tan­gi­ble and inti­mate man­ner, so do our fel­low believ­ers.  And because the Holy Spirit uses each and every one of us to accom­plish its most holy pur­poses, those con­flict­ing rev­e­la­tions are not acci­den­tal or ran­dom.  Rather, each of us has our own rela­tion­ship with the Divine Cre­ator and we are granted knowl­edge and under­stand­ing in accor­dance with those purposes.

Pas­tor War­ren is a child of the Divine Cre­ator, loved uncon­di­tion­ally and called to serve.  I reject much of what he preaches and find many of his state­ments abhor­rent and repug­nant.  But I must refrain from judg­ing him because I will be judged, as well.  Rather, I am going to con­tinue striv­ing to reach out to peo­ple like Pas­tor War­ren whose views do not align with my own and whose under­stand­ing of Bib­li­cal teach­ings stand in stark con­trast to mine.  Pres­i­dent Obama is rightly call­ing upon all Amer­i­cans to “cre­ate an atmos­phere where we can dis­agree with­out being dis­agree­able” because within such an envi­ron­ment we can focus on our commonality.

Today Amer­i­cans came together to cel­e­brate our same­ness and revel in our diver­sity.  Dur­ing the invo­ca­tion, Pas­tor War­ren called upon the same Divine Cre­ator to guide our new Pres­i­dent and bless this nation to whom I pray.  He thanked the same Divine Cre­ator that I thank every day for the many bless­ings we enjoy in this coun­try, even dur­ing these chal­leng­ing times.

Like my fel­low cit­i­zens, I watched in awe as, with his hand upon a Bible once owned by Abra­ham Lin­coln, a man whose “father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restau­rant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”  He did so on the steps of a build­ing erected with the labor of his wife’s enslaved ancestors.

I wept along with other Amer­i­cans who, like me, are old enough to remem­ber that ter­ri­ble day when a bul­let ended an earthly life, but not a dream, when Pas­tor War­ren remarked that “today Dr. King and a great cloud of wit­nesses are shout­ing in Heaven.”  If I were a gam­bler, I would bet money that Dr. King and that group of wit­nesses are, like we believ­ers on earth, “diverse, noisy, and opin­ion­ated.”  What a con­ver­sa­tion they must have had today!

My prayer for our new Pres­i­dent and this coun­try is that the same kind of rous­ing dia­logue has just begun in this coun­try and will con­tinue through­out his term of office … and well beyond.

Orig­i­nally pub­lished on Jan­u­ary 20, 2009

Writ­ers Offer­ing Their Finest for the Jan­u­ary 30, 2009 W.O.O.F. Contest

Top Five Picks:

Prose

About Writ­ing

• Cather­ine — My love affair with poetry — The first part of a brief series describ­ing my life with poetry.
• Writ­ing Nag — The Magic of Three — What is the rule of three in writ­ing? How does the rule of three work in writ­ing? This post gives exam­ples of the rule of three in cre­ative writ­ing and includes the Writ­ing Nag’s rule of three.

Fic­tion

• Char­lotte Faulkner — blood is blood is blood and love is true vision — Char­lotte, a fresh­man at Bai­ley Uni­ver­sity, reflects about the inau­gu­ra­tion, her crush, and life at college.

Opin­ion / Trib­utes / Phil­ios­phy / Thoughts

• JHS, Esq. — Tuesday’s Trib­ute: Flo­rence Wend­land — A trib­ute to my client, the late Flo­rence Wend­land, from whom I learned a great deal about uncon­di­tional love, com­mit­ment, tenac­ity, and faith.
• Hope­ful Spirit — The New Amer­ica: A Call to Dis­agree With­out Being Dis­agree­able — At last, Barack Obama has assumed office and the United States has entered a new era. He chal­lenges us to dis­agree with each other with­out being dis­agree­able and, toward that end, included a diverse and eclec­tic group of peo­ple to share in his inau­gu­ra­tion cer­e­mony and fes­tiv­i­ties. Can Amer­ica rise to his challenge?

Poetry

• wil­low — Observe! How not to med­i­tate? — A tongue-in-cheek look at how (not) to meditate.
• Patri­cia Schoen­berger — Event Hori­zon — This is a poem loosely inspired by the sci­en­tific term, Event Horizon.
• wil­low — Lost in Lust — 17 words, 7 lines, 1 hot poem.
• khaye car­de­nas — The Fic­tion Writer — A fic­tion writer’s life.
• Dragon Blog­ger — Bed­room Jun­gle — Ran­dom twit­ter word poem about pas­sion in the bed­room, great poem made from ran­dom words.

Brought to you by Plot­Dog Press with the Ser­ial Sus­pense Screen­play Inteven­tion. Want in to join the next W.O.O.F. con­test? Sub­mit a link to your best writ­ing post from the past three weeks using the form found here.

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