As humans we want to hold the high moral ground. It has always been so. The number of wars which have been fought based on superiority alone is staggering. We are right, they are wrong. We will fight to the death to prove it. Sacrifice our children. Bomb our neighbors. All to defend ourselves and our version of the truth.

But none of it starts as a full-blown war. No, it begins way before weapons come out. A war of words is always first. And before that, is the conflict of ideas. And before that are the thoughts behind the ideas. This may be why God told us to take every thought captive. He knows the source of our division is not them as we believe it is. The problem is an internal one.

I have always been an us kind of girl. I know our way is the right way. I have been convinced that because I know scripture, that we are in the right and they just need to find the truth to see properly. But recently, I have found I no longer want to be a part of us. I don’t like how us is representing the God I love so much. If this political/spiritual climate is what we stand for, I am all for becoming them.

After much self-reflection, (which is hard to do when you are an us) I decided to become a them. I decided to listen to other viewpoints without overlaying my own judgements. I put aside my decades-long superiority mindset and really began to listen. I must say, it has been more difficult than I thought to lay down my own preconceived ideas about the world…but worth it, to actually hear from other points of view I had formerly dismissed as them rhetoric.

However, I found an interesting transformation occurred when I joined them. I actually became us, again. Still sitting on the moral high ground…only from a different perspective. Easily seeing right from wrong…and once again I was right. My thoughts shifted to judgement of them because they could not understand. Only now, them was who I used to be and us was who I used to call them.

Confused, yet? Me too. Apparently, there is no them. There is only us. Us pointing fingers. Us looking down our noses at others who are not us. Us thinking we have more understanding. Us knowing we are right. Us getting angry at them for not seeing or saying or doing what we think they should. We are confident in our rightness. So confident that we cannot see. We are blind to our own faulty thoughts. We are blind to the workings in our own hearts which are filled with pride…we see it as not compromising our beliefs, instead of the hard-heartedness that it actually is. It’s exhausting, isn’t it? To always be right? To be the ones who are always fighting them? To feel we are the ones responsible for guarding our truth?

I realize now how silly that sounds. As if God needs our help to set things straight and keep the world turning. This season is but a breath in light of eternity. I am realizing self-reflection, looking at myself in the mirror, is hard to do in an honest way. Instead of reading the Bible, I need the Bible to read me. (as Richard Rohr says) When I see the amount of times I want to cover and hide my own flaws, I recognize it is much easier to focus on them than on me.  Humility seems a surrender of my us-ness, by admitting I do not know everything. That I have so much to learn. That my pride is causing my us-ness. That no matter which side I am on, self-righteousness is still filthy rags.

When I let the Bible read me…I see that Jesus wasn’t an us. He did not follow the religious leaders when they were smugly confident of their beliefs. He chose a different way by sitting with the unclean. He loved the poor. He was called to the broken. Neither did he become an us of the Roman government. He chose to live in the margins of society. He did not pursue wealth. He was homeless for most of his ministry. He valued those everyone else despised. He cared for the broken, he did not threaten or torment them. Jesus was a them. He gave up being an us. He was counter cultural in his desire to love everyone.

The Bible has read my heart and found me lacking. I do not even resemble Jesus. His compassion was unprecedented. His insistence on continuously going to the poor, healing the sick, and casting out demons made him a them. All the us-es were uncomfortable because he was not like they were. It was beyond human comprehension, and I think if I had been alive then, I would have been an us who questioned everything he did.

I like to believe I could have seen him as he was, but if my current condition is any indicator, I would have pointed my finger at him for being a them. And God would weep, because Jesus showed us all that we are them. God weeps for us and our blindness to his love. In giving up being us, we receive the fact that we are them…the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted.

And so, once again, I bow my knee to become one of them.