Us and them

And from today’s headlines . . . , “New Jersey Gov. and presidential hopeful Chris Christie apologized and said he was ‘embarrassed and humiliated’ by the actions of his staff that closed busy access lanes of the George Washington Bridge in September, snarling traffic in a town whose mayor did not support the governor's reelection bid.” So apparently a staffer misappropriated the authority of a state governor to not only “cause trouble” for a stiff-necked fellow politician but also inconvenienced and, more seriously, compromised the safety of the general public. If only behavior like this was unheard of. Unfortunately it is more commonplace than we would like to believe.

Let us assume that the person who initiated this action is otherwise a decent and caring person and that this particular behavior is atypical for her. What brings her to make such a bad judgment like this? Did she consider all of the ramifications and, if so, how did she justify her actions to herself? Although we will likely never know the answers to these questions, based upon our own experiences we may be able to come to some fair conclusions.

We live in a world that thrives on competition. Politics, business, sports and war are all driven by the need and desire to do and be better than the rivals. It is in this desire to be better than the other that the line is most often crossed and behaviors arise from within us that we would normally consider repugnant. In war we think of the other as the enemy and we go through all sorts of mental and emotional gymnastics to dehumanize him so that we can cope with the thought of killing him. With the same mindset some will deny that the unborn infant is a living human. At a somewhat different level don’t we often witness rival sports teams and their fans denigrating one another with callous remarks and even assaults? So we shouldn’t be surprised when we see this same behavior in the world of business and politics.

Competition, of course, is not the culprit of this twisted thought process. In fact, I am the culprit if I ever allow myself to believe that I am better than someone else; that I have more value in the eyes of God than any other person. I have been given certain gifts by God that make me unique and in the bargain perhaps more capable of doing certain things better than another person. That does not translate, however, into me actually being better than the other person. In the eyes of God, this is not possible.

The remedy for this blindness from which we sometimes suffer is to seek to see others with the eyes of our Lord. Imagine if we fully understood the extent to which we are each loved by our Creator. Let us pray for the grace to reach for this understanding and for forgiveness when we fail to do so.