Faces on Faith: We must regain our spiritual balance
Well before having any thoughts of coming to Soutwest Florida to serve and live, my wife and I were on vacation down here in June of 2016 — here when the news broke of the mass murder which took place at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, a popular place for the LGBTQ+ community. It was a horrific crime which was intentionally planned for June — for Pride Month.
In the aftermath of the violence, the now late journalist and author Michael Gerson wrote an editorial titled, “After Orlando, Divided We Mourn.” The first line of that piece was this:
“One of the manifold tragedies of the Orlando mass murder is how difficult it is for us to experience it and mourn it together.”
Gerson goes on to point out that the killings touched on a multitude of issues which produce deep emotional responses and disagreements in our nation (then and now): domestic terrorism; LGBTQ+ rights; gun rights. And as Gerson claimed, well before bodies had been identified and families notified, many people had already determined that what happened did nothing but confirm their pre-existing beliefs about those issues.
Why? Why are we seemingly less and less able to come together now as a society? Gerson didn’t delve into that, and as always with a social phenomenon this large, there are a multitude of factors — too many to suitably identify and explore here. But let me suggest one that is deeply connected to faith and spirituality.
My sense is that one of the critical factors at the heart of all this is that we are becoming more and more spiritually “off balance,” with a current, and unhealthy, overemphasis on the individual over the community. Well before the murders in Orlando, we had entered a time in which we were (and continue to be) constantly encouraged to see the world and other people largely, if not completely, through just our own individual lenses. We need only look at the tone and content of so much of our social media, advertising, political and, sadly, religious messaging to see this imbalance exhibited.
While the individual, of course, matters, that kind of overemphasis can lead to what psychologists call a spiritually, morally and ethically “egocentric” worldview, including the belief that what is right or wrong to me must be right or wrong to everyone. That, in turn, can, as history has demonstrated far too often, lead to the belief that those who are different from us, don’t believe what we believe or live the way we think they should, are the enemy. That they deserve to be discriminated against, persecuted or even, as in the case of the Pulse nightclub tragedy, eliminated. And that it is our right to do it.
Not only is this an intellectually and emotionally suspect mindset, it is also a spiritually empty approach to living as one of God’s people. The faithful and spiritually mature person recognizes and embraces the truth that they are just as loved and valued by God as any other person, but no more. The faithful and spiritually mature person recognizes and embraces that while they absolutely matter, it is never just about them. Which means that they — that we — never have God’s permission to take it upon ourselves to decide it is our right to harm another of God’s people.
Instead, we must regain our spiritual balance. Regain the balance between the importance of the individual and the importance of others and the community — the kind of spiritual balance that is meant to be at the heart of the Christian and many other religious traditions. And, as we approach the Fourth of July commemoration in about three weeks, the kind of balance meant to be at the heart of our nation’s life.
Then maybe, one day, we can truly, as Gerson might put it, mourn — and celebrate — together.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Boyea is senior minister at the Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ.