Last week I talked/wrote about the moderate life – about my natural inclination towards being a moderate regardless of how extreme and ideologically pure I often wish I were. I think a lot about the middle these days. I’m an Episcopalian and, historically, Episcopalians love the middle. For a long time we have been a people who want to create a space where people can gather across difference and disagreement. Our messages and programming have often sought a middle ground in deference to that hope.
There is a deep desire among Christians in my tradition – and really I think among many spiritual people across cultures, denominations, religious traditions, and ideologies – to believe and affirm that if there’s a God, if there’s any divine being or force or consciousness out there one might call God, that this God loves all people. All people. And loves them equally. Loves them without the prejudices or preferences that we as people might have. Which is to say – the categories and guidelines for value and lovability that we might create in our lives do not restrict God and God’s love.
So, often times our striving for a middle ground emerges from that desire – that we might create a community where everyone is welcome. Because “Everyone is welcome” is one of the ways we hope to embody the unconditional, inclusive love of the God in whom we believe.
This is actually a very radical idea – the idea that every single human being is utterly and unconditionally belonging to God, that every single person is a blessing, that every single person is imbued with the very image of God, that every single person is meant to be honored and treated with dignity. That’s radical. I don’t think it should be – especially considering how many people I’ve met that either believe it or want to believe it. But in this world, the unconditional belovedness and belonging of every human being is a radical belief. And I believe it with my whole heart. I believe in God, and I believe that God loves and values every single human being.
In the Episcopal Church, we also hold to this funny notion that God loves Republicans and Democrats. What’s more, we believe that God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, which is shorthand for saying that no one political party or ideological preference gets to corner the market on understanding God. Again, I believe this. And again, it’s worth noting that this itself is in many ways countercultural. We are beset on all sides by people who will argue their party is the proper home for the Christian.
I grew up in a denomination where you were not a good Christian unless you were a Republican – which I accepted blindly until I didn’t. Then, all the way back in 2003, I began attending an Episcopal Church in Los Angeles and I remember thinking these people think I have to be a Democrat to be a good Christian. But I saw a member of the Bush family at church some Sundays and was able to tell myself, Ok, well at least he’s here. Maybe it’s possible to have a mixture.
The temptation to locate God within my own party and preference is universal – and it is ongoing. I will always struggle with the desire to align God with me rather than the other way around. I am reminded of Ann Lamott saying, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Seeking the middle ground has a lot going for it. There is something really healthy about saying let’s find a place to meet. Let’s find a place where our common values outweigh our differences, let’s find our connections wherever we can. Let’s share a meal and a prayer and look out for each other even though we disagree about things. Like the song goes, Clowns to the left of me jokers to the right, here I am stuck in the middle with you. That’s the idea anyway.
The other day I was listening to an interview with American documentarian Ken Burns while driving across town, and I almost had to pull over. In the midst of what seemed like a very casual conversation, he said these words: “There’s only us. There’s no Them. And if anyone tells you there’s a Them, run away. There’s only Us.”
There’s only Us.
What else is there to say?
When the middle ground promotes and nourishes and upholds and strengthens the truth that there is only Us – it is good and healthy, or as we say in the olde English service in our Episcopal Church – it is meet and right.
And also.
Can we please acknowledge that not everyone believes that there’s only Us. That in fact there is great strength, power, wealth, and violence being dedicated to the fostering of an Us/Them mentality? And can we further acknowledge that the middle does not always stand up for everyone being Us? That sometimes the middle will choose an unhealthy and exclusive status quo because it avoids controversy and dis-ease?
I get why were taught not to talk about religion and politics at the dinner table – and also maybe if we had talked about those things at the dinner table we’d be better acquainted with loving each other in the midst of our differences. Maybe we would know how to navigate diversity with grace.
Part of the desire for the middle ground is a desire for calm, for quiet, for agreement. Who wouldn’t want these things? And also, if we privilege agreement, quiet, and calm above peace, justice and equity for all people, we in the middle become toothless and ineffectual at best. At worst we become complicit or even comfortable with the harm of others.
What is the middle doing about the federal siege on Minnesota? What is the middle doing about the terror campaign being waged against immigrants and racial minorities in our country? What is the middle doing about the concentration camps we are building and filling up in our own country? Imagine that I am not asking these questions rhetorically. Because these questions are not extremist questions. They are asked from the middle.
Do we who seek the middle ground do so out of a desire to honor the dignity of every human being? Or are we just shying away from controversy and discomfort? Will we in the middle pay attention even when it breaks our hearts?
One of the most breathtaking things about Jesus is how he sees all of humanity – sees our strength and weakness, our nobility and pettiness, our beauty and ugliness, our love and our hate – he sees all of it, and then he stays right in the middle of all of it with us. He doesn’t abandon us. And he doesn’t abandon hope that there is only Us. There is no Them. His life is hope. His death is hope. And his living again – that’s hope too.
The strength of the middle is supposed to be our understanding that there is only Us. There is no Them. What will we do with that strength?
