Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done

Last night a Facebook friend posted a link to a current event on his timeline.  The story instantly made me depressed, and I said so.  800,000 bikers gathering in Washington D.C. to let Muslim Americans know just how much they're hated?  I was heart broken that this is what we do.  This is, for so many, what it means to be "American," and even more sadly, "Christian."  If I'm not careful, politics (read "extreme American conservativism") can send me over the edge, to a place where I don't want to go.  A place where I am critical and hateful, where I become depressed and self righteous.  

I realized tonight that in lashing out at people who hate, I am no better than them.  In succumbing to anger, I condemn people as militant Americans because they identify as Republican.  God, forgive me for this.

I have a dream, though.  I dream of a world - a Kingdom, really - where people wake up and begin to think logically.  A Kingdom where fear no longer drives us, where we are motivated by nothing other than love.  I dream of a day when Christ comes and sets up His Kingdom here on earth, and hatred ceases.  

I mourn for American Christianity, politicized to the point where Jesus' call to radical love has vanished from our hearts.  I mourn for my relatives and my church friends who refuse to see that the call of Christ is far beyond any political affiliation.  I mourn for those for whom Christianity and being American are synonymous.  I mourn for those who rally around the flag of hatred, who fear those who are no enemy at all, who persecute the defenseless, who cast blame and throw stones.  

I mourn for all of us, though.  I mourn for the "liberal" Christians (which, if we're speaking about a dichotomous world, I am) who fall into the same trap of fear and hatred, of name-calling.  

Tonight I made an attempt in that Facebook thread to reach out to one young man who believes all Muslims to be the enemy.  I was not successful.  My biggest regret is not my failure to reach him (although that does depress me more than I'd like to admit).  My biggest regret is that my first reaction was anger toward him.

Never anger.  

Always love.

Christ is coming back.  To that hope I cling.  A better world is on the way.  One where Christ's kingdom is established and sure, where hatred and wars cease.  Where there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Greek, male nor female, where all are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)

Maranatha.  Come, Lord Jesus.