IT’S TIME TO REFOCUS

©Wendell Griffen, 2018

Justice Is A Verb!

June 26, 2018

News about the hateful words, policies, and practices of the Trump administration dominate the airwaves.  That’s understandable.  President Trump’s comments, policies, and practices should be discovered and exposed. 

However, we who believe in love and justice should focus more attention on building a counter-movement to the hate, fear, hypocrisy, deceit, and authoritarian mindset that Donald Trump represents, and that is particularly evident among white religious nationalists in U.S. congregations.  After all, white religious nationalists pushed Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy ahead of the rest of the Republican field in 2015 and 2016.  They overwhelmingly voted to elect Donald Trump, and remain his most faithful constituents. 

Any hope that the U.S. can become an inclusive, thoughtful, and just society doesn’t depend on President Trump or his white religious nationalist base.  Donald Trump and the white religious nationalists who idolize him are white supremacists.  Don’t expect them to change their views or their ways. 

That hope depends on people who believe in justice, inclusion, and thoughtfulness.  We must turn our attention from Mr. Trump’s hateful ways and words.  We must re-focus our efforts on building and advancing a counter-movement that offers a vision of a hopeful, thoughtful, inclusive, and just future for our society and world, and works to make that vision the new reality. 

It is not enough to merely be “anti-Trump” and “anti-white religious nationalist.”  People need an alternative to hateful, fearful, and otherwise wicked perspectives.  They need to believe in light, not merely rail against darkness.

A counter-movement focused on light will proclaim the truth that all are neighbors.  Immigrants are our neighbors from other lands.  People in Puerto Rico are our neighbors struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Maria.  Women and girls, people holding different views about faith, people of color, workers, people who are frail because of illness, age, and other vulnerabilities, LGBTQ persons, the soil, air, water, vegetation, and animals are our neighbors.  A counter-movement focused on light will say so. 

A counter-movement of light will declare justice as our highest value, and that justice only results from powerful love.  A counter-movement of light understands that people can and will trust powerful love more than vitriol and resentment. 

Shared trust and commitment to powerful love can overcome hate, fear, deceit, hypocrisy, greed, and violence.  The counter-movement of hopeful, thoughtful, inclusive, and just people will out-shine any darkness.  A counter-movement of truthful, freedom-loving, generous, and hospitable people will out-shine deceit, hypocrisy, oppression, selfishness, and unwelcoming people and policies. 

I hope we will focus on being that counter-movement.  Let’s turn our attention from the faces and voices of darkness (Mr. Trump and his followers).  Instead, let’s focus on being people of light and powerful love, together. 

Cursing darkness doesn’t create light.  Only shining does.  When we focus our energies on shining together, the resulting light of our powerful love will overcome the darkness. 

The result of that powerful love will be justice.