musings by Jessica

Working on my writing as I muse on the world! :0)

Musings on Conflict

This week a 37 year old mother was killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis.  As I browsed through news articles and comment sections trying to make sense of what happened, I was struck primarily by two things:  The first was how difficult it was to even ascertain what happened, and the second was how unthoughtful and unkind people’s comments were.  Half the news articles blamed the ICE officers.  Half the news articles blamed the woman.  Half of the people making comments blamed the ICE officers.  The other half blamed the woman.  The President and Vice President of our country blamed the woman.  Everyone but me seemed to know exactly what happened and exactly who’s fault it was.

This whole experience felt disturbing to me and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something is deeply wrong with how our society handles tragedy.  

As a person of faith, I believe that every person is a child of God – and not just any God- a loving, compassionate God who cares when His children experience pain.  One of my favorite stories in scripture shows this Father of the Universe weeping while looking down on the work of His hands and seeing His children hurting eachother.  

Having this image juxtaposed with the reactions in the comment sections helped me realize that what felt most disturbing to me was the lack of compassion.  Only half of the population saw this woman as someone deserving of compassion and they were the half of the population who’s life experiences and world view matched up with hers.  How would things be different if regardless of differences, everyone saw her as a sister?

Could this woman be seen as someone who was trying to do good according to her own conscience, based on her own life experience and value system, even if she made choices that half the population disagrees with?

Let’s take another angle.  Activism and protest are things people seem pretty excited about these days.  Perhaps because there are a lot of people who have strong opinions about what needs to be done and strong opinions about what we need to stop the other side from doing.  Have you noticed that none of these strong statements and protests seem to change the other side’s mind?  One side makes a strong statement and holds a protest.  The other side rolls their eyes.  Reverse roles and repeat.  Wheels spin, but anger and contempt seem to be the only products of this energy expenditure.  And the voices get louder and louder.

It would be interesting to do a study on what protests in history actually made a difference.  The ones under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. come to mind.  What were different about his?  Yes, they were nonviolvent, but there are many other nonviolent protests that are ineffective.  I wonder if a major source of power behind his movement was his worldview that everyone is a child of God.  Yes, he proclaimed that the minority group he was advocating for were children of God and therefore, worthy of the same privileges as the majority group. But even more notably, he seemed to also not forget that the members of the majority group that he was pushing up against were also children of God, and were worth treating with respect, even when they had different views and were even actively causing harm.  Instead of having contempt for the other side, Martin Luther King Jr. put the work in to keep trying to be a bridge builder.   He was classy, calm, & confident.  He used his words.  And because his words were respectful and rang true, over time people listened.  

I wonder how quickly our nation’s problems could be solved if each person simply tried on a more humble posture of seeing people they disagreed with as their brother or sister, someone worthy of respect & compassion, someone who is trying to do good in their own way?  It would certainly make reading the news more pleasant.