The decisions we make manifest themselves in what we become as human beings. If we decide to get back at others for what they said or did that hurt us, and make a habit of such reactions, we become someone who operates from hurt and anger. On the other hand, if we decide to act from a place of love for others, regardless of how they act toward us, we become lovers of humanity—yes, of a broken humanity. If we have a habit of doing what Jesus instructs his followers to do, “turning the other cheek,” “loving our enemies, “praying for those who persecute us,” we are on a path of growth into our true humanity as children of God.
Our decisions determine what we become. We decide for our humanity or inhumanity. We decide to be lovers or reactors. We decide to give to or to get back at another human being. We decide what we become.
Nations decide what they become. In our nation, a congress, a president, a supreme court, and “we the people” decide what we will be toward each other and the world.
As a people, we have opportunities to decide what kind of nation we will be. We can be tribal in our decisions, reacting against others (owning the libs, or detesting MAGA people). We can make decisions from grievances and the despising of others or we can make decisions from a vision of wholeness and compassion.
In a democracy, even a partial democracy like the United States, the decisions of “we the people” regarding who and what kind of leadership we want, in some measure, provide us with the nation we have. The less we are an autocracy and the more we are a democracy, the more clearly “we the people” are responsible for what we get.
We are responsible for choosing a government that seeks justice for and the uplift of those marginalized or a government and nation that marginalize. We know that it is possible to decide for a government that annihilates a people as the Nazis did. Or, as we did, decide to institute slavery and then, with its abolition, decide for the continued marginalization and oppression of a people by implementing Jim Crow laws and by terrorizing a people with lynchings as the South did or by establishing racist policies, actions and mores as the North did.
Of course, if we care little for anyone beyond ourselves, our family, “our people,” our religion, then we will give little attention to the effects government and societal decisions have on people other than ourselves. We will not spend time trying to understand how others are affected by laws, policies, mores. We will, by our support, ignorance or simply not caring, keep in place laws and mores that maintain the oppression of others outside our circle. (Slavery remained for 250 years, Jim Crow laws for 70 years through a combination of support and/or apathy from a majority of Americans.)
However we think about our decisions as a people and a nation, we see what we have decided by what we have become. Germans must come to terms with the nation they became, a nation that was responsible for killing 6 million Jews. Many, at the time of the Holocaust, may have excused themselves by saying they were not voting for genocide, but the truth is the seeds were there in the rhetoric of Hitler and others.
Americans must come to terms with what we became, a nation responsible for the genocide of millions of Native Americans through displacement and massacre, and the death of millions of Africans who died in the Middle Passage and millions who were brutalized as slaves. Of course, coming to terms with our past means acknowledging the truth of our past. Our oppressive actions locally and globally remain, unless we acknowledge our wrongs and repent. Trying to rewrite or ignore these aspects of our history only binds us to past decisions and future acts of oppression.
We continue to decide what we become—especially by our decisions toward those who have been marginalized, excluded, pushed aside in our nation. Of course, what we become as a nation comes from the decisions of a cross-section of the electorate. What many of us would like to see is not even on the ballot, but must be lifted up and worked for though doing justice, loving mercy and living faithfully. Therefore, Jesus calls the children of humanity, who are also children of God, to be light in the darkness. We are to be witnesses to what we have come to know of the love of God.
Jesus spoke of the age we live in as an “evil age.” In this age, we are to witness to what we have seen and have come to know of our true humanity created in the image of God. Like yeast, we are to have an effect on the whole; we are not to force something on others, but to effect the decisions of others and our nation by our witness to the love of God that is good news for the oppressed, heals the brokenhearted and welcomes all.