Why We Riot Against Each Other

Belgrade in June 2000

In June of 2000 I was working in Belgrade, Serbia. The NATO bombing of the country had concluded ten days earlier.

Most Serbians felt the United States was to blame for the war, the runaway inflation, the sectarian violence, and the destruction. The US embassy was trashed and graffiti denouncing the US adorned many walls.

My colleagues kept me under cover. I didn’t speak in public unless I was told I was in a safe place and I moved quickly from one building to the next, head low, usually shielded by locals.

At night, there were riots. Fires, mobs, some looting—all the things that go with a violent uprising. On a couple of occasions, my route to and from encountered these riots.

My handlers were good to skirt the violence and avoid the roadblocks. Even so, my skin tingled with the energy in the atmosphere.

It’s one thing to encounter a mass protest that turns violent. It’s another to join it.

I have purposefully built a friend list on Facebook that includes people of all stripes, views, ethnicities, and persuasions. It’s one of my efforts to hear from a broad coalition of people. Perhaps offer a view from the Kingdom. You know, the salt and light Jesus referenced.

As Wednesday, January 6th, unfolded and the United States Capitol was breached, I felt what I felt twenty years ago in Belgrade. I was sucked into the uprising initially. What I thought was a way forward, and an idea I posted to my page, quickly became foreboding. I did what I’ve done half-a-dozen times over the course of my life, including in Belgrade, and tried to get clear.

In one way, the energy of a riot is enthralling. But there is something else, perhaps self-preservation, that says, there is no benefit in this. Get out of here. As Churchill said, “You can’t argue with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.”

Watching from my Facebook, reading the news feeds, the riot that began on Wednesday—that was boiling for months—is now rendering what riots produce: brokenness, destruction, ruination, anger, fear of retribution, hope for vengeance, and the seething defensiveness produced by an action that failed to produce satisfaction while creating greater chaos.

The Capitol was damaged—not irreparably—but what stately dignity it had was torpedoed. The windows will be replaced by Monday and the doors rehung. Security will be reviewed. History will conflate Wednesday the 6th with the British burning the Capitol and other buildings in August of 1814.

Several billion dollars of damage are the result of rioting around America this year. A few trillion dollars in lost business should be added to the cost of our riots. A woman was shot dead by Capitol police, three others died in Wednesday’s convocation at the DC mall, a police officer is dead—several dozen others have died this year in rioting. Hundreds of police officers have been wounded, dozens killed. Only God knows the data on mental wounds.   

It makes my skin tingle to write about it—like I’m back in Belgrade trying to blend in.

Each encounter of uprising I’ve experienced in my travels changed me. Wednesday the 6th altered me as well.

Millions and millions of us were not at the US Capitol on Wednesday, but we found ourselves caught in the riot of late (who knows when this uprising began?). I stayed in my study Wednesday and Thursday. I had a hard time going to sleep—like I had a hard time going to sleep in Belgrade.  

There is always loss and destruction with a riot. The media where I live reported a riot in SO7 after George Floyd died. I waited a couple of days, then drove to that part of the city to see for myself. There was no riot because there was no destruction or damage, not even a trampled plant. The media was just trying to sell advertising space.

The tumult erupting most recently on Wednesday is a microcosm of a much larger damage pattern. Thousands of Americans are on the move. Few people move for the fun of it. The old woman who was my neighbor in Oklahoma commented, as she looked over the hedge the day we unloaded the U-Haul, “Moving is what people are going to do in hell.” No one is reporting reliable numbers, which I understand, but hundreds of thousands of people are migrating to escape repression, pandemonium, pandemic, financial ruin, homelessness, collectors, disillusionment.

A riot can be loud, pulsing. Belgrade was. Some are eerily quiet. The only sound in Tompkins Square Park was wood popping in the dozens of fires.  

I wonder, now that we’ve once again attributed unspeakably ugly names to our fellows: fascist, Nazi, bu** hole, a** hole, sh** face, radical, deplorable, despicable, fu****s, and the like, if we are done doing this to each other. It would be prudent. The psychology is that if we continue, then at some point, our consciences are inured to actually acting on what we say.

On my Facebook, there are numerous calls to assassinate President Trump. Several are calling for the purging of Republicans from the populace. And this knife cuts both ways. The crowd on Wednesday took delight in breaking Speaker Pelosi’s name plate, grinding out cigarette butts on plaques, looting, and dishonoring the house they professed to riot and protect.

Mr. Biden, now President-elect Biden, has pledged to heal our schism. His beginning point as the next leader of the free world has been to seize upon the riot of the 6th and exacerbate already fractious racial tensions. It will be interesting to see if this approach works. To date, it does not seem promising.

Mr. Trump did not have the luxury of a favorable media, so he used Twitter… until his lifetime banishment for tweeting incivilities. Mr. Biden does have the advantage of media favor. Time will tell how he comports himself, but thus far Mr. Biden is using his bully pulpit to utter similar invective into the poison dregs American society is ingesting.

Civility: formal politeness and courtesy.

When will it occur to us that incivility and discourtesy are offensive to the dignity of a person as opposed to that person’s idea, thought, or belief? Castigate another human as ignoble and you create an enemy—a true enemy, another human being whom you lose for life. Keep at it and you will have more than a war of words.

Maybe if we had to look someone in the eye and utter our despicable denouncements we would have a greater probability of controlling our tongues. It’s easy to be courageously gratuitous on a keyboard. 

One must wonder what the trajectory of Mr. Trump’s presidency might have been if someone had taken his phone away from him—like someone took Mr. Obama’s Blackberry from him. One must wonder what legacy awaits Mr. Biden. He’s got ten days to formulate a healing balm before history places responsibility for America’s wellbeing upon his administration. Which of his advisors is counseling him on the recipe for American harmony? It’s certainly not Speaker Pelosi or Senator Schumer. Neither of the Obamas are using their influence toward reconciliation. Mr. Bush has emerged from his paint studio just long enough to denounce what he doesn’t like while offering no words whatsoever of assistance, usefulness, or leadership perspective.

Who then will lead us and heal our land?

In a democracy, it is the people who counsel their representatives. This is why the biblical admonition to pray for those in leadership is powerful. When we speak to God about our representatives, we speak to God about ourselves. All of this ugliness and divisiveness, this bloodbath of incivility, tells us little about Washington and a lot about ourselves, “we the people.”

I suppose the first question is whether or not we are praying. The second is what message are we sending to our representatives. Ugliness begets ugliness until someone is humble enough to say, “Enough.”

An old Jewish man, a friend of mine, and a man old enough to know what he was saying, told me I was a Nazi because he deemed me conservative (aren’t all Christians conservative?). I protested. He flared, declaring that he’d be lucky if he wasn’t garroted and hanging from a rafter if the Republicans have their way.

An attribution of Nazism is probably the most disgusting thing a Jewish person could say to another human being. My friend uttered his most riotous incivility. It concluded our mutual respect. He lost. He garroted himself. Consequently, we both lost.

I’ve thought a great deal about why we do this to each other—why we riot against each other. Of course, I’m not the only person wondering about this.

The opinion writers—I suppose I am one as well—seem to all agree that people are unhappy and prone to destruction. They feel disenfranchised, dismissed, disadvantaged, disrespected, demeaned. (So many of the ugly words begin with “d”, don’t they?)

The solution then is to make everyone happy.

Is this not what all of our leaders are barking about doing? You will be happy if we make America great again. You will be happy if we all wear a mask, all get vaccinated, if we implement the New Green Deal, and can’t buy a drink on the airplane outbound from DC. If we seize the wealth of the rich and redistribute it. If we limit government, pack the Supreme Court, open our borders, stop the Chinese, bomb the Iranians, abort our babies, free the prisoners, tax more, or less, or send you $600 of your own money as a consolation prize for making it this far.  

It’s interesting how much of our future happiness is dependent upon quashing dissent or exacting retribution from those who disagree with us. As we attempt to implement our way, it’s remarkable who is expendable and in what numbers. History is a long and sordid tale of man’s inhumanity to man in order to establish a perfect way, a utopia, a religious empire on earth.

My happiness rides upon your horse.

If we terminate those whose lives are done, then we don’t have to pay for them. Perhaps we could give the money saved to education reform, unless we need it ourselves. That would be good—justifiable. If we recognize that the people educated at the finest schools are smarter and better equipped, and acquiesce, let them lead the way, then society’s friction will be greased and culture smoother. This (preening arrogance in self-effacing pride) makes sense.

If we collaborate, all pull together, tolerate—don’t disagree—then we can achieve heaven on earth. And, this makes sense. Of course, those who won’t go along create an unfortunate problem, but I digress.

No less than the Bible reports that when mankind collaborated to build a ziggurat to heaven, God saw that success as defined by humanity was likely—and confused our language to sabotage our false sense of success. The closer we examine the history of humanity, the more it appears we are going in circles while declaring great progress.

In the social media platforms we have the greatest resource in history to communicate with each other. Yet, the splinter us. A universal language is a good plan. I hear the Chinese think the universal language should be Chinese. I’m not sure which dialect they have in mind. Of course, I think English is a good choice, although the two coasts don’t like the English I speak in Texas—say I sound dumb. The people immigrating here from south of the border feel Spanish is best. History is clear, there is no need to ask the French their opinion.

Well, we can figure all of this out later, while we rebuild our ziggurat to utopia. C’est la vie.

It’s the cost of doing cultural business that our future happiness depends on eliminating someone else. Noble ideals have dignity in and of themselves. Never mind that this nobility of intent seems awfully like drowning ants clinging to flotsam in a swollen creek.

Ants? That’s not a very flattering likeness.

My apologies. There is the alternative comparison made by Isaiah and picked up by Jesus : “All we like sheep have gone astray; each of us has turned to his own way.”

Yes, well. Ants are preferable to dumb sheep.

Why can’t we all just get along?

The Bible’s perspective on this question is dark, dark indeed. It declares that from our first ancestors, we are possessed by a fallen, broken, inherently rebellious, and darkened heart that is desperately wicked. As far as God is concerned, this renders us irretrievably worthless. This great fall, which only those living in denial deny, not only afflicts humankind, it tarnishes the world in which we live and leaves all of creation groaning for deliverance.

The story of mankind is that we fight against this lower nature, this human foreboding. It’s only reasonable. After all, it is a terrifying thing to be cursed by God. Let’s get all hands on deck—every man, woman, boy, and child—and see if we can’t collaborate to prove God wrong about our nature and world.

A friend of mine and I discussed this debauchery, this fallenness. Then we sat quiet, sobered. In a moment he said, “You know, you can’t polish a turd.”

Irretrievably worthless. Dark. Desperately wicked. Lost. Fallen. Separated. Hardened. No, the Bible’s perspective on why we can’t get along is not very rosy.

One option is to try harder. Perhaps a different cloth for polishing. Against the grain this time instead of with the grain.

Not only the pages of the Bible, but the pages of every history book ever written records the utter failure of humanity to create happiness, wellbeing, and a civil society that lasts in perpetuity with equity for all people. It’s nice to console ourselves with the notion that Washington is looking after us. I’ll be more convinced when our representatives enroll themselves in the healthcare program they are creating for us.

There are historical bright spots we celebrate, but to date, all our initiatives have fallen short. Periodically, like during the previous century, we slide farther down the mountain than our ancestors thought possible, unless you consult with Adam and Eve.

Well. Given this….

Shall we try again? Harder this time.

This time, if we eliminate the dissidents. If we eliminate the Jews. If we eliminate the orphans, the infirmed, the sick, and the dependent. If we eliminate the Christians, the South, the blacks, the Religious Right, the Socialists, the Trumpers, the police, the rule of law, the history we don’t like, the words that offend us, the people who need cancelling, even the other party if we must, small businesses, nursing home residents, church goers.  

Damn it! Someone has to be to blame.

If you are to blame, then I’m not to blame. Better you than me.

Responsibility is a heavy burden.

Yet, Viktor Frankl discovered during his time in a Nazi concentration camp that the last freedom, the greatest freedom, the freedom that couldn’t be taken from him was the freedom to choose. As he lay naked and cold, awaiting death at the hands of his tormentors, his family murdered, his life’s work destroyed, he concluded that he had the ability to respond freely as suited him. No chains, no walls, no one could take this response-ability from him, not even the Gestapo.

It’s a glorious revelation Mr. Frankl gave to us. It’s just as true for you and me as it was for him. But freedom is not free and responsibility is a heavy burden in that there is no one to blame but you.

The message of the Bible is singular. No other religion, and of the millions and millions of gods worshipped by billions of religious people, no other god but the God of the Bible has a plan for intervention in the tragedy of humanity. In Christianity, God comes to us in our destitution and state of irretrievable uselessness. Every other god, all other religions, require that you make your way to them by whatever means.

Given this, shall we try this again?

Or shall we exercise our response-ability and take responsibility for ourselves, for our fallenness, our darkness? Look around at your Facebook, your culture, your tweets, the depths of your anger, your grief, your systems, and say, “This is my doing. There is no one to blame but me.” It’s a heavy admission to make. Only an unvarnished look at the destitute alternative makes personal culpability palatable.

Remarkably, the message of the Bible is that even in our state of degradation and fallenness, God comes to us and offers us an option out. It’s an idea the Bible calls salvation by grace.

The option out is not without strings attached, however. It’s the burden of responsibility.

The first step out is to accept total responsibility for your fallen darkness, rebellion toward God, and the resultant consequences. There can be no blame, no rationalization, no projection or gaslighting, no self-justification. Only abject agreement with God about the lostness of your cause and yourself.

Just as this is true for you and is your only hope for salvation, the same is true for a country of people. If by professing ourselves wise we have become fools, then only God can save us.  

The biblical word for this act of contrition and acceptance of personal culpability is, repentance. The word literally means to renounce the error of your way and turn in the opposite direction. It is an unqualified apology to God for attempting life independent of Him. No excuses.

What is remarkable about God is that He will have us on such terms. This is what C.S. Lewis calls the divine humility. “It is a poor thing to strike our colors (i.e., surrender) to God when the ship is going down under us, to offer up our own when our own is no longer worth having. If God was proud, He would hardly have us on such terms. But God is not proud. He stoops to conquer.”

In another place, the Bible illustrates that if you turn to God in humble recognition of your need, God runs to embrace you and welcome you home to live with Him in this life and the next. Given the destitution of our best thinking and behavior, it is a divine humility that God comes to us where we are, as we are, to propose an alternative.  

All of this is what the Bible calls the Gospel. It literally means the Good News made possible by Jesus Christ. We just celebrated this, by the way. It’s called Christmas.

God comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, invites us to join His Kingdom, and offers to take everything wrong with us upon Himself so that there is justification in God’s mind for us to have life in Him.

All the blame, shame, degradation, and darkness of this fallen place and our fallen humanity, Jesus Christ took upon Himself when he died on the cross. All that was wrong with us, He dumped in hell, and then catching us up with Him, He endows us with new life, new identity, and a new future.

In so many words, Jesus says throughout the pages of the Bible, “This world is not your home. You’re with me. In me you live, and move, and have the essence of your being. You are filled with my light, my life, my grace, my truth, and my peace. In me, you are a recipient of grace. This statement of fact is as secure as I am strong. Now, live fully, live freely, live sacrificially. The love we share now cannot ever be diminished nor will it tarnish. Trust me.”

One option is to say, “Okay. I relinquish my way without reservation and embrace you and yours. I humbly accept your terms for salvation.”

Or, we can try again.

Maybe the transfer of power will work this time. Come to think of it, I’ve not expended all my vitriol on those asinine Trumpers, those insurrectionists, the scumbags who broke the windows on MY building in DC. Those commies, Socialist pigs, AOC can’t think her way out of a wet paper bag. Why didn’t the Capitol Police snipers not shoot them? If they were BLM people, they’d be dead and rotting on the Capitol lawn. White privilege. A good purging would set us on the right path.

Trying again is always a good idea it seems—until it’s not.

But it’s hard. There are just too many sunk costs to repent, take responsibility. Blame is bitter and revenge is sweet. Never mind that it’s like eating a cold supper.

Yes, but it’s better than the alternative: humbling myself before God. God be damned! I’ll take care of this myself. Where’s my phone, my mouse, my login? I’ll just move to another platform. Give it a try.

People join a riot for a reason. It usually does have something to do with a hope deferred, integrity disenfranchised, character diminished, personal worth devalued, and rights removed. There’s an appeal to the energy of a riot, a venting of anger, destruction of something belonging to someone else, a tearing down of something someone disapproves of, and being caught up in the flow of a human current. Besides, insurance will pay for the damages. Won’t they?

What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine is mine. Socialism will fix our mess. If you disagree, get with the program or we will cancel you, you damn dissident. Communism is even better, socialism perfected. That’s what Marx taught. Who was he again and what part did he play on the world’s stage?

What about you? Had enough? Ready yet to get off of this ride?

All that is required is to drop the pretense and hope vested in this life and your own resourcefulness, turn about-face, and return the embrace of God who is waiting to welcome you home and secure your being. It is the only true hope you have—the only true hope we have. If the current path of destruction has not yet convinced you of this, there is a long road ahead of you.

If you already walk with God, then exit the riot and embrace life in Christ. You are not going to fix anything at Facebook or on Twitter or by jumping ship to Parler. You are not called to change American culture, politics, or party. You are called to engage culture by loving your neighbor as you love yourself.

If you do not walk with God, then exit the riot. Just turn. Leave the hopes you have for self-salvation on the ground, they are not worth retaining. Turn to God through Jesus Christ. Confess your desire to live with Him, depend upon Him—for life, movement, and being. If you need assistance, contact me.

Unless you wish to try again.