Today, we have this photo, taken by Graham Peacock (who blogs here). I’ll let him explain…
In an instant news age, we tend to judge more and do so more quickly. Access to information is constant and eventually the algorithm will get you with delicately curated gobbets designed to ramp up your outrage. I confess I have succumbed. I confess that I still succumb.
There’s a temptation for those of us from a more progressive/literate/liberal perspective to think we are above this: we’re not—I’ve perfected the subtle sneer, and I write a blog…
I haven’t really done anything about Lent this year; I haven’t given myself the space for it. At its best though, I’ve found Lent is a time for reflection and refocussing: what is important? Where am I going? What is God/nature/conscience telling me that I’ve hushed with constant noise and activity?
I found this one day at the beginning of Lent. I’d taken a picture of some graffiti on the same wall, intending to share it: it featured conspiracy theories and I felt like doing the virtuous social media thing, which is in essence nothing more than that phrase from the Good Book: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people’—that subtle sneer again.
What would happen if I loved more and judged less?
I don’t have to have an opinion on everything, or if I do, I don’t need to share it : ‘I don’t know’ is often a better answer. Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle,” wrote Ian Maclaren in 1898, before social media changed the quote and ascribed it to Plato. In those days, ‘pitiful ‘was used in the sense of ‘compassionate’: in other words, much as you wind me up and I feel the desire to tell you so, I can pause and consider that I don’t really know much about you or what you are going through.
If I’m tired or feel overloaded, I judge more and I love less: I’m likely to say and post things I later regret. I can choose to unplug.
There’s a word I remember when I knew more New Testament Greek than I know now—which is the kind of phrase that stops most conversations—ἀγάπη (stick it in Google translate); it’s hard to put into English, but it means something like selfless/sacrificial love. The idea was used a lot by early followers of Jesus, before we grew up and discovered the culture wars and the joys of drawing so many angry lines in the sand…
Yet, it’s a word I could write down, look at and hold in silence before I rush and fill my being with so much noise and activity. I could do it for Lent, honestly I could, sometime soon…
By the way, in the end, I didn’t ‘shame share’ the conspiracy theory graffiti, but it’s still there on my camera roll: annoy me intensely and who knows if my resolve will hold?
Sometimes it’s better to love more and judge less, but get me on a bad day…
