We Can Build a Beautiful City: Bless Your Enemies (Part Four)
This is the fourth of a four-part series called “We Can Build a Beautiful City.”
The level of divisiveness and rancor in our country is operating at extremely unhealthy levels. There are serious questions I have as to whether our shaky union can continue.
In the first part of this series, I was hoping to inspire local people to take ownership of their community’s challenges instead of outsourcing responsibility.
In the second part of this series, my hope was to encourage people to be the kind of truly free Americans our Constitution guarantees by refusing to be ambivalent about seeking out the truth which can set us free.
In the third part of this series, I wanted to normalize difference, dissent, and disagreement as one of those characteristics we should expect in a democracy. Tolerance of other truth-seekers is what enables us to live in a free society.
There is one more challenge to building a beautiful city I want to address: tribalism.
Tribal identities are to be expected
For most of human history, we have organized ourselves as social animals into tribes.
Families group together around common ancestors. Groups of families develop identities around ethnic similarity and create cultural norms that bind them together. Countries and nations structure authority and law around geographic boundaries. Individuals and families unite under the banner of religious creeds and practices (Christians, Muslims, atheists).
Americans organize themselves around political beliefs (Republicans, Democrats), economic theories (socialists, capitalists), fitness practices (CrossFit, yoga), and any other number of criteria. In recent years we have organized around vaccines, mask-wearing practices, and even race theory (critical race theory vs. anti-CRT, Black Lives Matter vs. All Lives Matter).
Birds of a feather flock together.
Tribe defined
For the purpose of this piece, I have chosen to view these groups as tribes of a sort due to the fact that they share a set of tribe-like characteristics. Those traits are:
Tribes organize around a common set of beliefs and practices.
Tribes share a sense of purpose and mission derived from their beliefs.
Tribes provide a sense of belonging and acceptance to individuals.
Tribes offer protection in a dangerous world.
Tribes encourage conformity of the individual to the group.
Tribes tend to demand loyalty from individual members.
Tribes create a sense of separation from other groups based on all the factors above.
The unique American experiment
The United States of America is a wonderful experiment. Establish a national identity around a Constitution that allows individuals to maintain their religious, ethnic, and cultural tribal identities, grant those people substantial freedoms and protected rights, and create a system of government that guarantees representation to all people through free and fair elections. No, we have not always lived up to these grand ideals.
The expectation of the American experiment is a sense of communal pride and patriotism of individuals and tribes to the broader collective tribe. In America, you are encouraged to fully live out your individual and tribal identity while still being an American citizen. This kind of encouraged and tolerated diversity makes the USA unique in the world. Consider for instance that France has banned Muslim women from wearing the burqa. Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on record as calling Muslim expression a threat to French identity.
The right to religious freedom and expression is enshrined in the US Constitution. Such a ban would be met with vigorous opposition in the US even though many US citizens express suspicion of Muslims.
Though our nation has struggled to fully embody the goodness of our Constitutional freedoms, we uphold the belief that individuals and groups have broad civil rights and freedoms that enable and guarantee free expression and practice.
We must continue to hold firmly to these beliefs if we hope to encourage the increasingly diverse individuals and groups in our country to build a beautiful city together. I sense that achieving and maintaining such unity in our communities is becoming increasingly difficult.
Undermining the beautiful city
Unity can be fostered among diverse groups as long as no one feels threatened or fears the loss of their freedom. The American system requires a certain virtue of its citizens to either love and/or tolerate their neighbor enough to allow them the same freedoms to pursue happiness in ways that are different from their own.
There are two threats that I believe could potentially undo faith in the American experiment:
The constant fear that my tribe is under attack
The callous disregard by one tribe over the loss of another tribe’s freedoms
My tribe is under attack
Fear is being stoked on all sides leading every tribe to believe it is under deadly assault.
Capitalism Is under attack by the socialists. Christians are threatened by progressive secularists. The environment is under assault by corporate elites. Voters, gun owners, and just about any other lobby group are incited to fear that some opposing group is actively lobbying to take away their rights and freedoms. I am not disputing that there are lobbyists who would like to restructure our freedoms. I am suggesting that we have to be able to disagree without demonizing each other as dangerous enemies in every single disagreement.
“Unity can be fostered among diverse groups as long as no one feels threatened or fears the loss of their freedom.”
This fear of the dangerous enemy is used to mainly rear its head around election season. Republicans are persuaded to fear the onslaught of Democrats who not only oppose their values, but also want to destroy and cancel them. Both sides are guilty of this fear-mongering.
This culture of suspicion has become a hallmark of the modern era. We have little faith or trust in anyone. Worse, we hold the most uncharitable opinions of people who disagree with us.
It is not hard to believe the world is a treacherous place. Convince a tribe that a threat is on their doorstep and they will resort to extreme forms of protective behavior.
Disagreement with an opposing tribe quickly becomes demonization. The other side isn’t just wrong, they are evil and dangerous. If they are perceived as enough of a threat, a lone wolf from a tribe may resort to pre-emptive violence.
It is high time we demand that our politicians cease with the vitriol and fear-based attacks on opponents. It is not only counterproductive, it has created an environment that nourishes the belief that my neighbor is potentially a dangerous enemy. We will never build beautiful communities with leaders stoking these types of fears.
Freedom lost for one is freedom lost for all
One of the more short-sighted threats to democracy is this growing belief among some that reducing free speech for some groups will be an improvement to a free society. Free speech is messy but there is a myriad of reasons why we should protect it for everyone, including people whose ideas we vehemently reject.
Free speech is one of the great ways we possess the power to resist tyrannical government. To support the reduction in freedom for one tribe, even an enemy tribe, could be a terrible miscalculation. Political winds can change and the powers that be could be coming for you next.
Eliminating opposing belief systems does not serve to protect the diversity of our communities, it diminishes and threatens it.
Dismantling the distrust of tribalism
How can we dismantle the distrust of this emerging tribalism? We are spinning on the endless crazy cycle of distrust and defense. Your tribe attacks mine, we answer tit-for-tat. Your tribe becomes more defensive and even violent, mine reciprocates.
Jesus said, “Bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” (Luke 6:28, NIV).
Romans 12:14 takes it further, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse (NIV).”
The fastest way off the crazy cycle is for one tribe to begin blessing the other by doing good to them and seeking their welfare. It is hard to attack an enemy who continuously is seeking to do good to you.
We are far too obsessed with the allure of power. Each of our tribes believes that the key to peace and prosperity is the acquisition of power but nothing could be further from the truth.
Bless your enemies
In Jeremiah 29, the people of Judah had been taken captive by the Babylonians. God gave them instructions through the prophet Jeremiah to “seek the peace and prosperity” of Babylon. During Judah’s 70-year captivity by their enemies, they were instructed to seek to be a blessing in a foreign land.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes,
“You can be a minority, living in a country whose religion, culture, and legal system are not your own, and yet sustain your identity, live your faith, and contribute to the common good, exactly as Jeremiah said. It isn’t easy. It demands a complex finessing of identities. It involves a willingness to live in a state of cognitive dissonance. It isn’t for the fainthearted. But it is creative.”
What if we sought, not dominance over other tribes, but their overall welfare? Who could distrust that?
What if we embraced the Golden Rule and loved our neighbors as ourselves?
“What if we sought, not dominance over other tribes, but their overall welfare?”
Perhaps we could renew a shared vision in which we rejoice over each other’s prosperity and the enjoyment of the free expression of our full rights and liberties. Instead of feeling threatened by a different tribal belief or practice, we could humbly acknowledge the beauty of the opportunity to live and believe differently.
Instead of seeing this world as one in which resources are scarce and must be rapidly acquired and viciously protected, we could extend an open hand because we embrace an abundance mindset.
We could be extremists for love as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. encouraged.
Tribalism will destroy our communities. We can build a beautiful city but it will require us to reject tribalism by seeking to bless our enemies and those who use their freedom to believe and live differently than we do. In so doing, I pray each of our tribes expands and grows as we welcome former enemies as friends and neighbors to be loved.
Jesus showed us what love for enemies looked like when He willingly went to the cross to give His life for His persecutors. “Father, forgive them,” He prayed as the Romans crucified Him. In death, He blessed His torturers, but in His resurrected life Jesus welcomes us to join Him as He builds a beautiful Kingdom.
We can enjoy a foretaste of that Heavenly City even now. We can build a beautiful, abundant city, but it will require hard work and sacrifice even for the sake of our enemies.
