Those Who Hurt Themselves

This week, well, weekdays, has/have flown by. Such is life when you spend so much time studying. There really is something to that exhausted satisfaction of knowing that you cannot, despite caffeine or adderall, make yourself study anymore.

I went for coffee with my old youth pastor (now he is some other variety of pastor) yesterday. I told him about my lil' month-long identity crisis, along with my year of frustration with the church, and he advised me to maybe realize where I am in this transition period and note that there is a simplified version of the gospel to which I probably need to return. And it certainly brought to mind how many times throughout this whole age of Trump that I have repeatedly said that I do not want to care about these issues.

Fortunately, enough time has passed, and I have spent so much mental energy on processing, that I feel much more at peace with the idea of leveling out again. The salvation of Jesus is as simple or as complex as you make it, and my studying the complexities has been far more for the sake of evangelism than it has been for my own spiritual life.

Another idea came up during our time having coffee. One was that I should always order a "kids cup" if I want to survive my latte, and another, perhaps more in-depth concept, was concerning the church and the Trump supporters as we find them now.

When my parents got divorced, I spent the following semester evaluating myself for what poor qualities I had inherited from each of them. I also blamed one or both of them for the proceedings at a given time. After all, divorce is not a clear and easy thing; people have to use money and action to make it happen. Following that semester, I visited home and, perhaps for the first time, viewed my parents as people. Hurt people who had a made a stupid decision that would wreck a family. But they were people nonetheless. These were people who needed the love of Jesus as much as any African orphan. And perhaps that is how we should view Trump supporters now. Like my parents, they made a bad call. And also like my parents, they may still think that they made the right call. But they are hurting as a consequence of their actions.

It has been over a year. Maybe it is about time that I (and others) can set aside the blatantly evil actions and recognize a hurting people who need Jesus. If I can drop a little ego regarding my own carefully crafted perspective, it would be a lot easier than just being upset all the time.