Other's ignorance does not require our apology

By John Pearring

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062020.cfm
2 Chronicles 24:17-25
Luke 2:41-51

Zechariah reminds us of the consuming presence of fear and anguish when a nation fails to listen to God.

“Although prophets were sent to them to convert them to the LORD, 
the people would not listen to their warnings.”
(2 Chronicles 24:19)

In my youngest years I believed the statement that nothing a person says in the United States will get them stoned. We have a national ego that transcends the slings and arrows of words. “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.”

Slowly, every so slowly, this morphed into the most heinous of realities. I was probably never right to believe one could say anything they want. Some argue today that I have always belonged to the white, male, dominating class, and so I do not understand the difference between racist spews, being poor, being persecuted, and not begin racist, wealthy, or secure. 

In truth, I understand well the “shut your mouth” nature of societal bias. Nonetheless, I needed to review what I knew, deep inside. What was true? What is the path we all similarly follow? I would suggest that these spewers and dividers are the very folks that Zechariah spoke about. While insisting that he was a terrible sinner, he claimed fealty only to God. Folks who do not listen to God are saying the same things about all of us. None of us are free from shaming by someone else. If we strike back, we join them.

As a Catholic boy in Idaho I could not actively voice my opinion about religion in a secular crowd. We Catholics were separate. We had our own sports teams, our own boy scout troops, our own school system, and our own uniforms. We stood out. “Mackerel Snapper” was not much of a curse flung at me by public school kids, nor was, “Altar Boy.” The sneer and laughter, however, did hurt. I had a big sister who scared the mean children away, though. They were itching for a fight, and over time I was primed for revenge. Soon, I was the bigger brother to my younger siblings, intimidating when necessary. I was the black sheep of the family due to my inability to quell my rage.

I forgot about that time in life. To overcome shame we supported each other by explaining that people’s ignorance didn’t require our apology. God, also, was on our side. I interpreted that incorrectly, I might add.

The moniker in my head changed, from freedom of speech to, “Do not loudly voice your opinion unless you are in friendly territory.” Our faith stood best as a witness to others, we thought, even if they saw we were weird. Others might not know about God’s love. That served me well, for awhile.  

I had Basque friends, children of Idaho generations who populated the valleys with their shepard flocks. Sheep folks, immigrants from Northern Spain. As a young boy I was mistaken sometimes as a Basque, especially when with my Basque friends. Some awful things were said to me. I was stunned, but not quick enough to explain I was not Basque. My friends educated me in the cultural bias. 

They also were Catholics, but not the “regular” kind. They had their own Church and traditions. I learned to respect them. They explained their status as similar to the Indian folk, but awkwardly considered themselves better than the natives. An odd bigotry that further challenged free speech. I would not join in their angry retorts to Indians, thankfully.

A class warfare moniker then became part of my upbringing. A backhanded elitist way of pecking-order culture. “There’s always some poor group of people worse off than you.” God loves everybody, I knew. I wondered how he might order these groups of faithful people. After all, isn’t he on everybody’s side?

As a group now of a larger extended family I realized we also supported each other. Even in the odd framework of pecking orders, we knew that people’s ignorance did not require our apology for being who we were.

School cliques configured our young populations. The same divisions take place today. Cool kids, nerds, jocks, brown-nosers, trust fund babies, dirt poor, morons, druggies — an unending litany of adolescent identity politic preparation for adulthood. 

Unfortunately, work cliques also configure our adult populations, using similar adolescent framing — owners, investors, customers, engineers, sales people, bureaucrats, scammers, marketers, and both employees and contractors. Though logical, much of the caustic ignorance to entitle one gaggle of folks and condemn another still takes place. We can’t help ourselves.

Through it all, the visual identification by race identity bias, the religious dissing, work titles, and wealth measurements run through all of our relationships. How do we handle that? We say, “Live and let live.” 

The religious adult moniker is longer. “Live and let live. We’re all God’s children.” We have to support each other in a much larger community of friends, cohorts, peers, and neighbors. We do not need to feel shame for someone else’s ignorance about who we are. This truth remains.

My family moved from Idaho to Los Angeles in 1966. Joanne and I moved from California to Colorado in 1976. Both moves revealed a repeated rendering of odd and harshly fought class distinctions. Brown, black, white, and Asian bias has bubbled up everywhere, and melted away at the same time. 

The cacophony of divisions gets further complicated by religions (including none), political leanings (left, right, middle, and anarchist), mixed races, and mixed genders. All have blurred lines. Add to them the feminist battles, all the health shaming and aging abuse, and we are almost completely eradicated from our clean more precise cliquish upbringings.  

When Joanne and I moved to Colorado and raised a family we adopted a broader political affiliation. As our sibling’s families grew, and as our children’s families formed, we physically merged into every known race and class. We’ve crossed national borders. We span practically every religious expression known to man and woman. 

In every instance, however, God is still love. God engenders love. It’s harder to say without someone chiding us, but we stick to it as truth.

Politically correct has simply has become impossible. We cannot reside quietly in our cliques, our confines, our uniforms, and our financial circles, insisting that other people do not trigger our sensitivities with words that mean a hundred different things. The triggers are everywhere.

After years compiling identities, tolerating religious beliefs and expressions, and pushing a common insistence that love and family are vital to the common health and welfare of everyone, we are now forced into a new adolescent age of ignorance rearing its ugly head. 

Apparently, we cannot trust God. We have to meld people into conformity to our thinking and plans. In the process, we have begun to destroy order and damage financial progress. Even technology is suffering in the wings, waiting for our world to take a breath and get back to life. Is this really a viable ending to our lives?

“Thus says God, Why are you transgressing the LORD’s commands, so that you cannot prosper? Because you have abandoned the LORD, he has abandoned you.”
(2 Chronicles 24:20)

We’re not going to repair any of these confused relationships without God. We must be witnesses to God’s love in the face of overwhelming spite, violence, and insistent conformity. If enough of us rely upon God’s leading, we can be better witnesses. I’m not sure at all that the days of free speech cannot be returned, but some of us may have to be vocal. Perhaps, even with as fatal results as Zechariah.

“But they conspired against him, and at the king’s command they stoned him in the court of the house of the LORD.”
(2 Chronicles 24:21)

Hopefully, none of us need be the Zechariah for our time. People’s ignorance, still, does not require us to apologize for being who we are.