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Across the Pastor’s Desk by Charles Teixeira

This is my third year living in Minnesota, and autumn is my favorite season, hands down. There’s something about watching the golden corn fields return to black soil and green trees slowly turning into a kaleidoscope of brilliant yellow, red and bronze.

But every four years, there are two other colors which pop up among all this natural beauty: red and blue.

Of course, this coming Tuesday is Election Day, and just about every person I know just wants for it to be over. All the endless slandering of party against party and candidate against candidate has become a wedge that’s dividing friendships, families and communities. We take a quick glance at our neighbor’s lawns, assess their yard signs and are tempted to file them away as either “friend” or “foe.”

How did we get here?

At the root of our country’s critically high political tensions, all the feverish angst, is a spiritual crisis:
We’ve prioritized political victories over God’s image.

One of the primary doctrines of my Christian faith is that each of my neighbors, no matter their political leanings, (or any other factor) was created by a Creator in his image (Genesis 1:27).

This is the foundation of what’s called theological anthropology, or the worldview that sees each person as made in the image of God and therefore, having infinite worth and dignity.

It’s that divinely-bestowed, unimpeachable dignity of each person that should cause us to embrace true politics rather than submit to the status quo of demonizing those who vote differently than us.

True politics, striving for the wellbeing of each citizen of the polis, must be founded upon this conviction: God’s image is defamed whenever one of our neighbors is.

We cannot tarnish someone’s image without, at some level, also devaluing God’s. The neverending, dehumanizing hostility that comes with our politics must stop, for God’s sake.

If you are a Christian, I implore you to uphold the dignity of each person out of reverence for God. We can care deeply about the issues facing our nation and still preserve the dignity of those who disagree with us.

Refuse to besmirch or belittle one another because his image is born by the one with whom you disagree. Be willing to bound over the low bar of civility and truly love your neighbors, no matter what color signs they’ve staked.

Charles Teixeira is a pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Albert Lea.