What the Church Should Be

I’d like to continue the theme of what the church, specifically the Episcopal Church in Western Washington, should be.

My vision for the church is to be an institution that stands against fear and recognizes each person for who he or she is. Our culture tends to stereotype people into caricature-like categories. In reality, human beings are immensely complex—often self-contradicting—creatures. And when people see things differently, as people inevitably do, we tend to question the motives or good faith. In mischaracterizing others, we not only encourage others to stereotype and mischaracterize us, we shortchange ourselves by squelching an opportunity to learn. For an illustration of this, see the comments on just about any website, which quickly tend to degenerate into ad hominem attacks and name-calling.

We live in a culture of fear: where a mother can be arrested for leaving a third grader in a car while she runs into the store, but without a thought for the potential risks of taking they child inside with her. I call this fake fear. It’s inspired not by actual experience with other people, but by a menacing picture of The Other presented to us by a relentless, always-on media. So we fret and hover over our children rather than sending them to school on their own. (While looking into the perception of risk versus the reality with respect to children, I found an interesting website: freerangekids.com ).

I think that fear, which is aggravated and encouraged by the media, arises because our society has become so atomized. We’re alone in a crowd, wearing headphones and texting with people hundreds of miles away rather than conversing with people right next to us. Everyone is a stranger. We don’t know our neighbors. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s fear. And fear is often grounded in ignorance. Sure, there are things in the world that we ought to be afraid of, but those things are the exception. Instead, we’ve made fear the rule. “Encourage your hopes, not your fears.” That’s a bumper sticker slogan and somewhat of a cliché, but it would be a wonderful slogan for the church (in Latin, of course!).



***
It has been almost a month since I’ve been of my social media of choice. In a sense, it has been liberating because I’m not obsessively checking it every few minutes. But there is a substantial downside: the reality of our culture is that social media is how many of us do stay in touch. I have no idea what most of my friends are up to, and am missing parties and events. It remains to be seen how or even if my relationships will adjust to take account of being unplugged. I’ll let you know.

Brad