It gets even worse when things are more important. Elections always get me anxious, usually for months in advance. I must admit that this year I didn't really pay any attention to politics at all until, well, election day, which wasn't the most civicly-responsible thing to do, I realize, but it made me feel better about the whole ordeal. My freshman year of college was a Presidential election year, and I spent a small chunk of time campaigning, going door-to-door and handing out fliers and such, and the whole time I felt pretty uneasy about it. I mean, I felt like I should be involved, and I generally agreed with this party's views, but I knew there was some ambiguity and some things I just wasn't totally sure about, and I knew that the people in this party tended to hold certain ideas too highly and forget about giving other important matters enough serious thought and feeling, and so I was totally relieved one day when I found out the guy I was campaigning with liked the same kind of music as me and we talked about that the whole time instead of politics.
I think a good chunk of that indecision and uncomfortability--and I hope it goes this way and not the other way around--comes from the fact that most things seem to be held in a kind of tension. By that I mean that there is usually a good deal of truth on either side of an argument, and both sides push and pull each other, and sometimes the truth seems to be in two places at once.
And if there is a good deal of truth on either side of an argument, maybe it's true that neither is wholly wrong, that there's room for both sides to say something true. Now don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that there is no truth, or that truth is relative and everyone's individual "truth" is equally valid. One of the few things I can feel pretty comfortable saying is that I think there is only one truth, and things are right or wrong compared to that standard, and I think that if you throw out that idea that there's not much of a point in talking at all.
But maybe that standard of truth, the way things really are, isn't so black and white as some people want to make it. Maybe, in fact, the truth sometimes (or usually) holds some kind of tension in itself.
One of my favorite characters in any kind of literature is Tevye, the milkman that the play Fiddler on the Roof is all about. I just watched the movie version again a few days ago, and one of my favorite scenes is the one where Perchik, a student from Kiev, first arrives in Anatevka, the little Slavic village where Tevye's Jewish community lives. Tevye is selling his milk to a bunch of men, who are talking about the outside world and cursing everyone, when Perchik comes up and tells them all how silly their cursing is and that they should do something about it instead. One of the men says that they shouldn't bother themselves about the outside world, and Tevye says that he's right. But then Perchik retorts that "You can't close your eyes to what's happening in the world," and Tevye, after thinking a bit, says, "He's right." "He's right and he's right?" another man asks. "They can't both be right." Tevye looks at him, goes to scoop another ladle of milk, and says, "You know, you are also right."
And so I know I'm not the only one who has trouble finding truth. It just seems so terribly hidden sometimes, so awfully complicated, because there are all of these things that at first glance seem to contradict each other, and sometimes they really do, but they all seem true. I see it in theology a lot. One of the questions that has baffled me consistently ever since I first thought about it is about free will. If God is sovereign--that is, he has total control over everything and can do whatever he wills, as long as it is consistent with himself--does mankind really have the ability to make decisions that make a real difference? Well, it seems like it. I decided to go to work yesterday. I could have decided not to, to reject the sub job and stay home, but I went, and as a result of that I spent six hours or so reading tests to students, and I should be getting paid for it in two weeks or so. Did God decide for me? I don't think so. But then, does God have total control over what happens in the world? Well, yes. So then, did you really have control over deciding to go to work? Um, yes? I think so?
You see it in politics, too (it is good to have freedom, but it is also good to think about other people and to sacrifice freedom), and in morality (it is good to love all people unconditionally, but it is not good to cheat on your wife), and in everything, really. There is always tension. Tension, I think more than anything else, characterizes life and being and existence, and tension makes things really hard.
The thing about tension, and one of the big problems about it, is that things are never just one way. You can't just look at a situation and know what the answer is, because there are always 47-billion different variables, and every one of them has some effect on the whole and makes it unique, and that makes it almost impossible to categorize anything. Even the simplest situations have so many implications that it's hard to know what to do. Last year I had a student in class that I found out was spending a lot of time in the hallways when he was supposed to be on his way to another building. As it turned out, he didn't go to that building at all, so I got prepared to write him up, but then when I talked with him, it didn't seem like that was the right answer at all because of some bit of information that I don't remember off the top of my head. It didn't help that this student wasn't doing well in his classes, but I had only just developed enough of a relationship with him to help him see things a little differently and he seemed to be making some progress, and making assumptions now about his character would put that relationship in jeopardy. And so I sat there at my desk, with all of the authority to do whatever I wanted, the write-up in hand, looking at this student in the eyes, totally clueless as to what I needed to do next.
Of course, moral ambiguities aren't the same as the state of truth, but you get what I mean, I hope. Truth is like that, too, and sometimes it's really hard to know what it is at all.
When I was a senior in high school, we had an assignment in our English class where we had to do a good amount of research on a single word, finding definitions, etymology, common and published uses, and so on. I chose the word truth, and of all the things I remember from the assignment (which, honestly, amounts pretty much to this one thing that I'm about to tell you, the fact that I had to actually look up my definitions in an impossibly huge physical copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, and another student's paper that inexplicably featured a mad-scientist protagonist), the thing that made the biggest impact on me is the story of Pontius Pilate. He was the guy that ordered the crucifixion of Jesus (one of the sources we had to use was the Bible, on the account of it being the single greatest literary influence of all of Western culture), but he only did so after trying to get the people in his province to lay off a bit and let him free. After he tries a bunch of things and finds out that the Jews really don't like Jesus at all on account of him calling himself God and such, he talks to Jesus and asks if he's a king, to which Jesus replies rather cryptically that he came to testify to the truth. At this point I think Pilate is probably pretty flustered, seeing that he's trying to do the right thing but no one seems to agree with him, and Jesus isn't really helping because he's not giving him any straight answers, and he responds to Jesus with a short but incredibly profound question: "What is truth?"
And I think that pretty much sums up most of my thoughts most of the time, which is probably why I find myself watching movie trailers more often than I do pondering the nature of reality. Movie trailers are a lot easier to deal with, and if there is tension in a movie, it will probably solve it for you, and it might even give you a hint about the real tension behind the truth about everything. Just thinking about that tension on my own is pretty overwhelming, and making moral judgments about things that are really difficult seems like a really stupid thing to do when I don't really understand much of anything in the grand scheme of things.
Which is why all of the controversy in the last 24 hours or so makes me uncomfortable. People, and by that I mean most people, and by that I mean the people that are really loud about everything and make sure that their voices get heard, have been very good about telling everyone what the correct thing to do in a given situation is. Specifically, I'm talking about the Ferguson decision, which is really interesting because it wasn't even a trial, but everyone is certain that it was a really big deal, and it probably was.
See, I'd really like to just not comment on it, because the situation seems to be really complex, and it also seems like this decision is not at all an isolated incident but is a part of a much larger issue, and I simply don't know enough about everything to know what to say. But it has become the socially acceptable thing to be outraged about it, and everyone who is socially conscientious is saying something and telling everyone about how important it is, and again, they are probably right that it is all very important.
But I find it really unlikely that all of these people, with all of the things that are going on in their lives like grad school and internships and jobs that demand a lot of them, know about everything that is going on, especially when the attorney on the news last night said that most of the important evidence has been kept from the public on purpose. I think what he said about social media blowing things up is probably true, even if this really is a very important issue, because I know how some people get really excited and angry about things like how someone said something that offended someone else, and then they tell all of their friends how terrible that person is, and then that person says something publicly that sheds new light on everything and now what they said doesn't seem so awful, and then that person on social media feels silly in front of everyone and knows they made this person look much worse than they really are and repents for what they said. Or maybe they are still angry about it and make up an excuse so that it looks like they are still right and they just continue to be angry, which probably happens just as often.
See, I think there are a lot of true things being said by people, and some of them are from these loud people on social media, and I think they are probably doing many good things by it. I have heard a lot about how things have been very racially tense in Ferguson, and about how there are way more arrests of black people than white people and how that probably is due to severe racial profiling, and about how this racial profiling has gone on for decades unchecked and so now it's blowing up and lots of people are angry. And I've seen a lot about how white people should be concerned about injustice too, and that it shouldn't just be the minorities who experience it the most that speak up, and I think all of that is probably true as well.
But then, I think what that attorney on TV said is probably also true, and I think that in part because of how gracious and careful he was to say everything, though I know that is not necessarily a good litmus test of bias, and that the grand jury who decided not to charge the police officer probably has a better idea about who is guilty or not guilty in this situation than pretty much anyone else in the world, even a better idea than those loud people on social media.
And so we have a lot of different bits of truth out there--truth about justice and truth about whether or not Brown actually did something wrong and truth about who knows the truth and truth about how people ought to be treated and truth about why things are the way they are--and they probably all complement each other quite nicely when they are put together the right way, when they are all lined up correctly with the big Truth of Reality, but most people only see a few pieces, and it's easy to think that things are different from what they actually are when you only have a few pieces of something. You end up putting some things upside down and fitting some things together in ways they weren't really meant to be fit together, and if you had all the pieces you probably wouldn't do that, though even then it would probably take a lot of time and a lot of thinking to make it look the way it's supposed to.
I guess I say all this--all this about tension and reality and pieces of truth--to say that it probably isn't really fair to get angry with one another. People are doing the best they can with the pieces of truth that they have, and there is a lot of tension between different bits of truth, and sometimes it's hard to balance when you're being pulled in many different directions. I don't blame people for losing their balance every now and then. I think that's probably pretty normal.
I think it's also important to realize that perhaps we don't have all the pieces we need, either. Yes, there is a lot of truth about being socially responsible and about being just, about fighting things like racism and sexism and homophobia and all kinds of hatred, about looking after our brothers and sisters, and I think that sometimes we need little reminders to do those things, or sometimes really big, obnoxious reminders that inspire newscasts that interrupt the dancing show I was watching on TV. (I really hope Alfonso wins.) But sometimes very lofty feelings about very good ideas make us think funny, and sometimes we feel so strongly about things like justice and love that we become quite unjust and unloving to one another, and that, frankly, is pretty stupid. If my lofty feelings about squelching racism make me angry enough at everyone to start saying nasty things to them, or to start throwing things and destroying things and stealing things and making places quite unlivable, maybe my lofty feelings about racism aren't very helpful after all.
Of course, it's usually more subtle. It usually has more to do with insinuations, with people who feel very sure of themselves letting people know in very subtle ways that if they don't feel very sure of themselves in the same ways then they are very wrong and need to change very quickly, because how could you possibly think that, and don't you care about justice and goodness, and it's because you're white, isn't it, and you must not be as cultured or refined or academic or socially-conscious as I am. And of course it goes the other way, too: don't you have any respect for the authorities, and why are you so passionate about this, anyway, and aren't there more important things. I hope I'm not a part of either of those crowds right now.
When I think about all of this, about truth and tension and justice, I start to feel very small. I get to hoping no one ever asks me important questions, because I'm scared that I won't be able to give them the right answer, and I probably won't have an answer at all, to be honest. I can't solve the big questions. I can't even solve the little questions of what I'll be doing next fall or what I'll eat for dinner or what I'll say tonight when I meet with a friend.
Of course, that doesn't mean I should do nothing, and I'm glad that the loud people are on social media, because they remind me that I ought to get out there, although I do wish they'd say it a little more nicely and not burn down Walgreen's. There are things I can do. I can love people, giving them my time and my ears and the warmth of a friend. I can fight racism in my school, in my town, in my heart, and stand up for the people I know that have been oppressed. I can have the hard conversations and wrestle with the tension and find out how to love people and to love God in it all. I can do some things, and I'm glad the loud people remind me of that.
But there are also things I can't do. I can't reverse decisions made by juries, nor can I force my way onto one by shouting my meagerly-formed opinion loudly enough. I can't right all of the wrongs of the world, though I can fight against them in small, and sometimes even in quite big, ways. I can't show love by shouting at people or insulting them in subtle ways even if I'm trying to help them see truths about justice and goodness. And I can't make much of a real difference by saying something mostly because I want people to think I'm socially-conscious and educated and fashionable, either.
And I think the world would probably be better served if we embrace the tension, accept our limitations, stop shouting, assume the best we possibly can of one another, and begin to radically love other people in ways that, for someone, at least, really do make a difference.
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