Love in real life action - Leawood - Church of the Resurrection

I’ve talked about this here before, but I have a mental illness: bipolar disorder. As mental illnesses go, bipolar disorder is undoubtedly one of the most serious out there. An elevated risk of suicide gives it an effective mortality rate nearly twice as high as breast cancer, and it can derail a life incredibly fast. Those who have read my posts here and those who know me might be surprised to learn that I have this debilitating illness. I’ve spent 40 years learning to cope with it and I’m on a solid regimen of medicine, so that all helps; but this illness still hits me hard and, at times, still threatens my life.

Now, keep all that in mind as I share things I’ve heard over the last few years about people like me with serious mental illness:

• There needs to be a national registry of people like me
• We need to bring back asylums so we have “somewhere to put” people like me
• I should not have the same rights as healthy people
• People like me are dangerous and should be monitored by the police
• People like me cannot be trusted to do a job and should not be hired
• Illnesses like mine are the result of unconfessed sin in our lives

I understand that, for many, the differences of opinion that we’re seeing in politics, and many other areas of life, are just that: a difference of opinion and a topic to be avoided at holiday meals. If that’s you, and if you are able to set aside differences without fear of being hurt, today’s lesson may be much easier for you. For many, involving matters of mental illness, race, gender, sexuality, and so many other things, it’s not as easy to put these matters aside because people are actively trying to hurt us.

I’m not trying to drive a wedge further between warring ideologies; I say this to clearly state that I fully realize the gravity and sometimes harm of putting differences aside. This is not something I take lightly. It’s also something I’m not terribly good at. But as much as I want to defend standing your ground against injustice, there is and always will be a case for unity. That’s what today’s lesson is about, and the higher the stakes, the more important it will be to practice this.

Disagreements in today’s heated socio-political environment have become less of a discourse and more of a zero-sum game, where anything one side wins is stolen from the other side. We view ideological differences as a cake, where letting someone else get a bigger piece means a smaller piece—or no piece—for you. Diminishing ideological cake disincentivizes compromise. That’s why so many of these conversations turn ugly so fast: we’re worried about losing our cake as the other side seemingly gets bigger and bigger pieces.

I fully realize that the arguments we’re having today are important and we need to be pushing toward a resolution on some issues; but the reality is, no matter where we fall on issues, we should be reaching the resolutions together. The solutions we can come up with together are worth both sides being willing to give up a little cake to bake a bigger cake. If this is easy for you, great! If you’re like me and it’s not easy for you, I can’t promise this will be easy. But this is one of the sacrifices we make to advance justice in the kingdom of God. If I ever find an easy way to do it, I’ll let you know, but until then, just keep trying.

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October 19, 2021 at 11:27PM
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Love in real life action - Leawood - Church of the Resurrection
"love" - Google News
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