From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
I’ve tried appealing to their sense of decency, to their capacity for compassion, to their faith in Jesus.
I’ve quietly endured thousands of their racist outbursts and homophobic rants on Twitter and at neighborhood picnics and across the Thanksgiving dinner table—in the hopes that I could find some vulnerable place beneath their fear to access later.
I’ve tried buoying pep talks and firm tough love and expressions of kindness and straight-talking challenge and attempts at affirmation.
I’ve tried discussing theology, tried sharing stories of oppressed communities, tried to offer facts in the face of a million lies generated by their President, tried to show the lessons History has already taught us about the slope we’re currently sliding precipitously down.
They have all failed to reach fertile ground.
Nothing has worked.
It’s all been fruitless.
I think it’s time to stop saying that we need to understand these people. I think we do understand them…