America is a divided country. Some say we are polarized, but that is only true if your thinking is binary. And in some sense, binary is not an incorrect way to view things.
Joe Biden either is or is not the President-elect, and Donald Trump will be a one-term President or he will not be. As of this writing, the jury is still out -- or the judges are still out. After one of the most soul crushing election seasons in my longish memory, after a sonombulist campaign by Biden from his basement bunker and the usual Tweet-storm rhetoric from Trump, we emerge like Phil the Groundhog wondering if we will have Four More Years of Trump or 48 months of Biden/Harris.
The divide is a yawning gulf, not only between the candidates and whatever passes for their platforms, but especially for the 70 million or souls who checked the box for either of them (well, 74 million for Biden, but we need to round down for the voting irregularities which inevitably occur in Democrat-run voting precincts -- more about that anon).
American Tribalism has been a thing for quite some time, but it is also getting some fresh and academic attention in this most contentious of election seasons. To be sure, the phenomenon did not begin with Donald Trump, whatever role his divisive behavior might have played. Nor did it begin with Barrack Obama and his incessant race-baiting tactics. Like all things which exist, its origins are as complicated, murky, and obscure as the Wuhan Virus (engineered in a lab? born in a bat? panglin soup? Bill Gates and his immuno-conspiracry with Dr. Evil and Dr. No?).
The problem with the language of "polarized" though is not that we are not divided. Rather, it is that we are more divided than two poles allow. The country is not a binary between good (Republicans) and evil (Democrats). And as much as my libertarian leaning friends might like to pitch the conflict as "centralizers versus decentralizers" or "statists versus anarchism" (though, again, they are not exactly wrong), even libertarians quibble with how much of a good thing is too much (muh roads).
Across the landscape there political placards of all sorts. There are many endorsing the owners' favorite political candidates, of course. But there are also some which might be called "viewpoint endorsements". You know them. "Hate has no home here" and "Love lives here" and "Black lives matter" and "All lives matter" and "Blue lives matter" et al. The one which has caught my eye and which launches this post is "Only Jesus can heal America". Quite.
But what would that look like, an America that is healed? My guess -- and I could be incorrect -- is that an America that is healed by Jesus would not look the way the sign placers would expect or even want. But even the idea that Jesus will heal a country seems deeply troubling in some ways. This is not to assert that Jesus does not care about countries. Nor is it assert that Jesus does not care about political parties or political movements.
What does He care about? And what would He want for a healed America? That may be the trillion dollar question. Reading through the four Gospels which describe His life and words, not to mention the letters written by His first-generation followers, leaves more holes in that picture than it does a completed landscape...holes that could use some of Bob Ross's "happy little trees".
The truth is that we are a fragmented country. Balkanized, even. One of my Tribes -- the Western evangelical Church -- is torn and rent and split by not only whether to vote "red" or "blue", but also whether face masks are a symbol of fascism or the Paycheck Protection Program is a deal with the devil. Keith Green once optimistically sang that the Church was like stained glass windows -- multicolored in our diversity -- waiting for our Jesus to shine His light through us.
"We are like windows
Stained with colors of the rainbow
Set in a darkened room
Till the Bridegroom comes to shining through"
If only. We are fractured. Now I worry that we lie broken on the floor. Only Jesus can heal America. Only Jesus can heal Christians.
