The Mirror
What happens when Scripture collides with something you already believe
One thing I have always tried to do is hold a mirror up to myself.
Not because I expect to like everything I see. But because I've learned that growth rarely happens when we only examine everyone else. It's easy to look outward. It's harder to look in.
This past Sunday a sermon did exactly that. And I left church not with answers, but with questions I'm still sitting with.
What I see every day
I live in New York City. And I want to be honest about what I see when I walk through parts of this city now.
I see people, who are not americans, selling goods on the street without permits. I see areas that feel more disordered, less safe, different in ways that are hard to put into words but impossible to ignore. I see what looks like one set of rules for some people and a completely different set for everyone else.
I cannot sell my t-shirts on the street without a license. If I tried, I would be fined, my items would be confiscated, and I could be arrested. That is the law. I follow it. So when I watch others openly ignore it with zero consequences, I don't feel envy. I feel something closer to a deep frustration at a system that has stopped enforcing its own rules.
I believe in the broken window theory. When small violations are ignored, larger ones follow. Order matters. Rules exist for a reason. A city that stops enforcing them is a city that is slowly coming apart.
And there is something else I think about as a woman. When we open our borders to people whose own values and beliefs about women are fundamentally at odds with the rights American women have fought for generations to secure, we are not just changing the demographics of a city. We are importing a set of ideas about who women are and what we deserve. That matters. It affects how safe I feel walking down the street. It is part of the same picture.
So when I say the fabric of this country is changing, I am not speaking in abstractions. I am describing what I see with my own eyes, walking the streets of the city I grew up in. And I am only beginning to understand how many threads of that fabric are being pulled at once. That is a conversation for another day, and another blog. But it starts here.
What I actually feel
People have called me mean names for saying this out loud. They call me heartless. A bigot. Worse.
But here is what I actually feel when I see what is happening to this city and this country: anger, yes. But also sadness. And fear. And something that took me a while to name correctly.
Grief.
I am grieving the country I knew. I am grieving a New York that felt like mine. I am grieving the idea that laws meant something and that the people in charge of enforcing them actually cared about doing so.
For years we had leadership that not only allowed this but encouraged it. That called open borders compassion and called anyone who disagreed cruel. I watched it happen and could not understand how people looked at the same streets I was walking and reached a completely different conclusion about what they were seeing.
That is the part that frustrated me almost as much as the situation itself. Not just the change. But the feeling that I was losing my mind for noticing it.
Then came the sermon
The pastor preached on the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Matthew 20. The story where workers hired at the beginning of the day receive the same pay as those hired at the end. And the early workers are angry. They feel it is unfair.
My first reaction was honest: I get that. I understand that anger completely.
But the sermon pushed further. It asked: what is happening in the heart of the person who feels that unfairness? Is it really about justice? Or is it about something else?
I sat with that question longer than I was comfortable with.
Because here is what I know about myself. I do not lack compassion for individuals. If you sit me down with someone and tell me their story, I will feel it. I will understand. I can hold someone's humanity and still believe their actions are wrong. Those two things are not in conflict.
What the sermon did was not change my position. It made me examine what is driving it. Is it anger? Yes, some of it. Is it a genuine love of this country and a belief that order, law, and fairness are worth defending? Also yes. And am I willing to be honest about which one is louder on any given day? That is the harder question.
What courage actually looks like
I believe we are at a moment in this country that requires people to speak. Not out of anger. Not to add to the ugliness. But because silence is a choice too, and the consequences of the wrong people staying quiet are sitting right in front of us.
I think about the founders a lot lately. They did not have the luxury of being careful. They put their names on a document that could have gotten them killed, not because they were certain of the outcome, but because they were certain of their convictions. I spoke about this in last weeks blog. They all go together.
When you believe something deeply and you know that saying so will cost you something, what do you do? That is not a political question. It is a question of character. Of faith. Of who you are when it is not easy to be that person.
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Faith does not require me to abandon what I believe about justice, order, and the rule of law.
But it does require me to examine my heart.
I can hold a mirror up to myself and still stand where I stand.
That was the gift of this sermon. Not answers. Better questions.
With faith and conviction,
— Christine
The Lion & The Cross
Have you ever left a sermon with more questions than answers? I'd love to hear about it in the comments. And if this resonated with you, please share it. Someone in your life needs to read it.
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