In Theory: Looking ahead as we shed 2016

“This has been a year of heartbreak for me,” writes F. Romall Smalls, an associate minister for social justice at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

In a Religion News Service commentary, Smalls writes about the challenges he’s faced this year, from “the incessant non-indictment of police officers that kill unarmed people of color” to “troubling global trends of conservative nativism, social injustice and widening economic disparity.”

“The tears shed that stained my face this year have become incarnate reminders that living up to the great commandment of Jesus to love our neighbors as we love ourselves is no easy feat,” he writes.

Q: For many, 2016 was a challenging year. What are your thoughts on the past year? What are your hopes for 2017? What resolutions do you think your community, country and the world should take up?

First, a few events of 2016. We witnessed a reality-TV-worthy presidential election with a very unexpected outcome. My thought? We need the King of Kings to return and rule.

Men were allowed to use women’s restrooms because they identified more with the female gender. Insanity. We should consider the privacy rights of the real women who need to use those restrooms.

Too many beloved celebrities passed, some very recently and very tragically. We will miss them. And no matter how popular or wealthy we are, we all need to be prepared for eternity by being reconciled to God through faith in Jesus.

Forty-nine people were brutally murdered in a gay nightclub in Orlando. Nobody should perish that way. God help the poor victims and their families.

God repeatedly urged his people Israel: “return to me.” My primary hope for 2017 is that we as a nation would return to God. In the book of Joel God pleaded: “… even now … return to me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments. Now return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in loving-kindness and relenting of evil. Who knows whether he will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind…?”

Returning to God is the one resolution I believe we should make and keep. It’s the one thing that will set our nation right again.

Pastor Jon Barta
Burbank

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I don’t even know where to start. I don’t know what to protest. I’m flabbergasted by the 10 giant steps backward that humanity seems to have taken.

Should we really have to take to the streets of the world and hold up signs saying, “Stop killing innocent people?” Did we not figure out many centuries ago that killing is bad? And especially the killing of children and unarmed citizens? Haven’t all the moral codes of the world and its history agreed at least upon that?

Shall we protest selfishness itself, which seems to have crept into the minds of people and nations with the same deadly insidiousness as those bugs crawling into people’s brains through their ears on TV?

It seems too small, and too reactive, to protest each next outrage as it crashes over the bow — even as dozens more stack up behind, ready to happen later today, or this week. And to take a proactive stance seems equally fruitless. Do we want civility? Decency? Compassion? All the billboards in the world won’t bring them about simply by calling for them.

With little productive advice to give, I’ll share a fantasy: That we human beings would be able to frame our identity — individual, communal, creedal, and national — in a via positiva, in terms of what we are, instead of what we’re not. Much of the world’s ills stem from thoughts that begin, “I’m not like that other guy.”

The Bible says, “Always be ready to give an account of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). Try it. Try to describe yourself and the values you stand for, in a few full sentences — avoiding any terms like “not,” “rather than,” or “instead of.” You’ll probably catch yourself a couple of times.

If every person, every community, every country, could stand in the world for what it is, without decrying what it’s not, I believe that humanity could turn to face forward again, on the road to civilization.

The Rev. Amy Pringle
St. George’s Episcopal Church
La Cañada Flintridge

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Minister Smalls and I share similar thoughts about the major events of the past year, and we both seek, as he says in his commentary, “answers and hope.” He writes of actively working with his Baptist denomination and other like-minded church leaders and members, for justice for all.

He says, “When those who seek to act like Jesus — and not only appropriate his name — stand up and speak out against injustice, our society is the better for it because no one gets left out.” You don’t have to believe in a supernatural being to appreciate the real person Jesus. Our soon-to-be new President was elected by one of the smaller electoral college margins in our history and was trounced in the popular vote. He says that he is a Christian, so I hope his humbling narrow victory inspires him to act more like Jesus.

I also hope for another miracle, that the real woes of the working-class are actually addressed in the coming year. It is probably too late for Trump voters whose decent jobs have been lost, not to immigrants, but to automation and globalization. But for their children and grandchildren, almost none of whom voted Republican, we need to start with a whole new approach to work, more like the German way: www.attn.com/stories/13232/how-germany-and-america-differ-job-training.

I have no doubt that Jesus the carpenter would have supported this as well.

Roberta Medford
Atheist
Montrose