"Art is not always about pretty things. It's about who we are, what happened to us, and how our lives are affected."
Politics, strangely enough, has some similarities to art. They both will cause confusion and frustration, because they share the same essentials. People who don't understand your politics will hate it and say that it's not good.
Not all of us might like paintings or sculptures, but there aren't too many people that don't like music. Music is a major form of the arts and there are so many categories of it, either a slight twist in how the guitar sounds creates a new genre of rock or maybe you have no instruments and all computer like Electronica. Regardless, there's a type of rhythm for everyone--and every rhythm is not liked by someone. When Eminem first came out I can remember specifically how much the parents HATED him, he was the anti-christ. And I get it, his content was not the best thing considering the majority of kids loved it. Hip-Hop was already a sore subject for a lot of people, because it was too "blackish." And they talked fast. And they talked about parties, guns, sex, gangs and ghettos. But it was the rawest expression at the time. It was a cultural expression that not everyone knew about, probably because we were trying to hide it and keep it in those neighborhoods. Then Eminem came out and he adapted the essence of rap to his personal life and home, and fast forward to today we are the parents and he's an icon.
Every new sound is a culture shock, whether it's minor or major that depends, but when a new form of expression surfaces from the fringe it catches us off guard at first. It surprises us, not because of the style, but what it means. We don't like things we don't appreciate and we won't appreciate what we don't understand. And we can't understand other's expressions unless we try to learn about them. You begin to appreciate Eminem or any other form when you learn the heart of it such as "this artist went through this, which is why it sounds like this" or "the painter was trying to express this, because such and such happened."
That is the essence of politics. It's our story expressed in policies.
Politics comes from the heart. Sometimes our politics are determined by our relationship to our parents, you like your parents, you like they're politics (or traditions) or you didn't get along too great with them so you didn't adopt their politics (or traditions). This idea is not an answer to our political landscape, it's an example of how closely tied politics is to emotion.
There's a beautiful paradigm shift that is starting to come; even though the traditional "either Republican or Democrat" framework is still strong, in the Church community we are seeing would-be progressive millennials and would-be young conservatives wrestling with the one-size fits all type of politics. On the left side of politics, the church goer feels like there are solid truths about social justice, but something biblical has been missing. On the Republican side they know the values are good, but feel the walk-the-talk piece has been shallow.
Presidencies were typical and traditional for a while, but Obama being African American changed things and Trump being a non-evangelical Republican (despite what the Republican evangelicals say 🤦♂️) put us now in a place where Christians feel like they don't have a comfy category to fit in. This is "huuge."
This isn't a post to say christians should leave one and go to the other or start a Christian Party, but instead for us to help guide the party's emotions closer to the gospel. What we normally do is align ourselves with the party's narrative first and then fit in Jesus, but that's a no-no. It's important to accept that Jesus has both Democratic and Republican virtues, not either/or. It would be even better to accept that there are no earthly political parties that fit inside the kingdom of God, like trying to put a triangle block inside of the circle hole.
Everyone has a different life experience and within their background explains their politics. I think it's our duty to hear out these stories and let ours be heard and from there we can appreciate the other side a little better. Maybe just enough to see the truth (or the misunderstanding) in their politics.
This is the And Campaign's goal; have each side to see the good in the other. By doing this we'll be humbled and have the opportunity to see our political idols, leading us to consider what others might be going through instead of writing them off. We need to have our politics shaped by the work God is doing in the communities he's chosen for us, not us choosing our communities based off of our politics.