This year we had one of the most polarized elections I have ever witnessed. The United States was deeply divided between the viewpoints on this election had the presidential candidates as their champions. The elections came and went and both candidates pleaded with the nation to unite together and bring some peace to a very noisy election cycle. The President implored citizens to do the same. Yet we have become more divided than we were before. More than half of our social media feeds are posts relating to how bad the president elect is or how lucky we are that he got elected. And the messages are dark and quite troubling.
We all have seen how polarization creates contention and malice towards each other. That is the very core of things like racism; them against us. This is interesting because we have started to go meta and be racist towards racists. Now on the outset that sounds great, because they ought to be punished for acting poorly right? But who is the one to do the punishing? And this isn't the only issue that is causing the strife within the United States in the last few days. But we see people grouping together and talking about how much they expect to oppressed and how they feel they were wronged by the election results.
This is not unity! This is jumping off the bridge because everybody else is doing it. People want others to share in their suffering, but all we do when we group ourselves with people who have the same issues and blame another person is make things worse. We feel empty inside and anger swells. We think we feel satisfaction in knowing others are going through the same thing but at the same time we feel wronged even more because surely the parties responsible for this wrongdoing should be made aware and accountable for what is happening.
What is really happening though is a mixture of lack of accountability on our own part for managing our own happiness and running from issues and demons within us. We feel as is somebody else should fix our problems but in reality the person who makes the biggest difference in your life is first and foremost yourself. Hope is something that we get after we admit this and it grows as we nurture it. Nobody can take your happiness away from you, they can only change outward circumstances, which God has enabled us to be able to adapt to some of the harshest of conditions.
Not only that, but God has promised to aid us during times of trial. Yes it is after we thing can do, but I believe it is after everything that we can do that He would approve of. "He who has the spirit not of me, but is of the devil." Let us instead hold up our lights for others to see!
