To all my friends: in light of this past election

I have many friends on both sides of the political spectrum.  I have staunchly conservative friends whose high ideals include the sanctity of life, freedom, hard work, and family values.  I have strongly liberal friends whose high ideals include equality, justice, opportunity, and to ease the suffering of others.  I love all these ideals and so many more.  So I want to address friends on both sides so that you understand.

I am trying desperately, like so many others, to understand this past election.  Like so many I was not excited about the candidates.  Like so many I am tired of the political rhetoric, of the status quo, the anger and the vitriol.  Like so many I grieve for our country... for our heart and soul....

Many of my right leaning friends are angry and frustrated by those on the left.  They feel like the left are being sore losers ("now the left knows how the right has felt for the past 8 years" I have read in multiple places).  I have seen my right leaning friends asking the left to remember that life goes on.  I have seen loving people frustrated at being called racist when they weren't voting about race, they were voting for their high ideals.

I have been listening and trying to understand.

I want the way we discuss politics to change.  I want it to stop being so all or nothing, so angry and contentious.  I want to acknowledge that people on both sides are seeking good.

I also want to ask my friends on the right to understand that the response to this election is not about Hillary supporters being sore losers.  It is not simply an issue of disliking or even hating the policies of Trump.  From the perspective of many in this country, the issue is one of life and death.  Even if you disagree with this perspective, please consider that this is how many people see the outcome of this election.  Life and death.

I have many friends who hate or dislike the affordable care act.  I get it.  Higher premiums, higher taxes, move government intervention, less free market.... I have heard the discussions about healthcare being a right or a privileged.  However the affordable care act means a lot to me.  It has saved my husband's life.  It has saved the lives of people I know who were uninsurable.  For me, and many like me, the affordable care act has not been about extra money in our pockets.  It has been life for me and my daughters.

I know that many people are skeptical about global warming and climate change, and that creating policies that cause people to suffer for the sake of an imagined problem is wrong.  However, if there is even a little chance that climate change is real, then we need to take it seriously.  If you speak to those in Zambia, they do not question the validity of climate change - instead they live it.  They have seen the growing seasons change and shrink, the weather warm, and the rains come later.  Their food supply is directly connected to the weather.  Life and death...

Several years ago a black family member of mine was beaten by police while obediently following directions of a police officer.  I'm sure you are wondering what he was doing to solicit a response from police... he was riding as a passenger in a friend's new car.  Basically he was doing nothing.  He was profiled because he was black.  Also, he has an accent.  The people at the police station were surprised he was a natural born US citizen.

I read about shootings and I am horrified by the way, in an instant, life can be ended.  Life is SO costly!  Death horrifies me in a way that it didn't before I had kids.  Death is wrong and preventable death seems even wronger.... Life and death.

While, for some, Trump represents throwing aside the status quo, grabbing hold of democracy, fighting for jobs, and moving forward without corrupt investment, for many others Trump represents something very different.  What he represents does not stem from the media's twisting of the truth but from his own words and behavior.  For many he represents: being willing to strip people of human and civil rights because of the way they look or talk and calling it "securing our borders."  He represents telling those who are fighting for equal rights to "shut up and stop being wimps".  To many women he represents a cultural acceptance of sexual harassment, abuse, blame culture, violence against women, and validating the glass ceiling.  To others he represents belittling, undermining, and standardizing systemic racism, even advocating violence against minorities.

So if you are a Trump supporter and you do not understand why people are so upset, please consider this: people hear and see in Trump that they are not equal, that they are unwanted, that they are unloved, and that there is hostility against them because of things beyond their control, that their hard work doesn't count, that their opportunity for a beautiful future is not an option no matter how hard they fight for it.

And if you are a Christian and you felt those things over past 8 years (that you are increasingly marginalized within your own country, that there is hostility just because of your faith), remember that you serve a Christ who did not utter a word as he was being unjustly accused.  That the fruit of God's Spirit and the evidence of his Kingdom (which supersedes America) is: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Gentleness, Faithfulness, and Self-Control.  These are not to be imposed on others, but should be evident in our lives as we seek to represent Jesus to this world.  Against these things there can be no law.  These things are life.

Let us be bearers of Life!