Jared Byas

Love Tenaciously

The Temptation of Frontal Attacks

In Falling Upward, Richard Rohr says something that I am just now realizing has deep significance to me. “We all become well-disguised mirror image of anything that we fight too long or too directly. That which we oppose determines the energy and frames the questions after a while. Most frontal attacks on evil just produce another kind of evil in yourself, along with a very inflated self-image to boot.”

When I first read this, it seemed that Rohr wants us to be passive. A call to stop all the fighting. It could be read as a “both-sides-ism” or a call to “just get along.” Some people assume that when I say Love Matters More, that I am doing the same. That what I am saying is that love is about not standing up for our beliefs. That “getting along” is more important. But that’s not it.

Love is much harder than that. What I am saying, and how I read Rohr, is that I have a lot of fight left in me – but my tactics have changed. For me, “standing up for my beliefs” became defined by what I was against. To use Rohr’s phrase, I lived by “frontal attacks on evil.” 

For me, fighting evil is no longer getting into debates with people who disagree with me. It’s not making sure people know that I’m on the “right side of history.” For me, fighting evil is about retreating from the front lines of hate and disagreement and heading upstream to work on the front lines of helping create solutions.

When I surround myself with other creative problem-solvers, when I work shoulder-to-shoulder on positive initiatives, then I find that my energy is positive and I don’t have the time or energy to worry too much about those who disagree with me. I guess what I’m saying is – there’s plenty of work to do and I want to do better at getting to work instead of exhausting myself every day trying to convince people online who won’t be convinced. There’s a world waiting for hope, love, justice, kindness – both in our personal interactions and enacted through our policies – and I want to make sure that at the end of the day I can say that I put my hand to the plow toward those things in very practical ways. If I’m going to be exhausted, I want it to be because I put in the practical work of outsmarting evil – not being distracted by its temptation for frontal attacks. 

I am not interested in attacking but creating. I am not interested in telling others why their vision for the world won’t work but in doing the harder, painstaking, tedious work of building toward mine.

God is the cause of Global Warming

I completely disagree with my friend Art who says that Satan and evildoers (like liberals, popes, people who don’t believe in the rapture, et al.) are the cause of global warming. Although he does present some good evidence (click here to see his post), I have stumbled upon some counter-evidence that it’s actually God and not Satan.

Religion & The Democratic Party

There was a very interesting article in the Time this week about Democratic leaders now being willing to talk about their faith in the public arena. To read the article, click here. Some may see this as only a contrived effort to get more religious votes, others a sincere step forward. In any case, the article was a breath of fresh air for me, that this complete bifurcation and assumption that all Christians are Republicans is starting to break down. Here is a taste of the article:

“The most conservative white Protestants, he says, are all but
off-limits to the Democrats. But then there are more than 22 million voters he
calls “freestyle Evangelicals,” worried about not only their eternal souls but
also their kids’ schools, their car’s fuel efficiency and the crisis in Darfur.
In the past, those voters may have leaned Republican in part because the GOP has
been far smarter about presenting itself as friendly to people of faith while
painting the Democrats as a bunch of sneering, secular coastal élites. But
the Republican lock on Evangelicals may be breaking. The percentage of white
Evangelicals who self-identify as Republicans has declined from roughly 50% in
2004 to about 44% this past February, according to Green. Now the number is
closer to 40% as more Evangelicals choose to label themselves independents.
“There is a loosening of the Republican coalition, particularly among people
under 30,” Green says, “but it is not yet a movement toward the Democrats. It is
a small but real change.””

Religion & The Democratic Party

There was a very interesting article in the Time this week about Democratic leaders now being willing to talk about their faith in the public arena. To read the article, click here. Some may see this as only a contrived effort to get more religious votes, others a sincere step forward. In any case, the article was a breath of fresh air for me, that this complete bifurcation and assumption that all Christians are Republicans is starting to break down. Here is a taste of the article:

“The most conservative white Protestants, he says, are all but
off-limits to the Democrats. But then there are more than 22 million voters he
calls “freestyle Evangelicals,” worried about not only their eternal souls but
also their kids’ schools, their car’s fuel efficiency and the crisis in Darfur.
In the past, those voters may have leaned Republican in part because the GOP has
been far smarter about presenting itself as friendly to people of faith while
painting the Democrats as a bunch of sneering, secular coastal élites. But
the Republican lock on Evangelicals may be breaking. The percentage of white
Evangelicals who self-identify as Republicans has declined from roughly 50% in
2004 to about 44% this past February, according to Green. Now the number is
closer to 40% as more Evangelicals choose to label themselves independents.
“There is a loosening of the Republican coalition, particularly among people
under 30,” Green says, “but it is not yet a movement toward the Democrats. It is
a small but real change.””

Religion & The Democratic Party

There was a very interesting article in the Time this week about Democratic leaders now being willing to talk about their faith in the public arena. To read the article, click here. Some may see this as only a contrived effort to get more religious votes, others a sincere step forward. In any case, the article was a breath of fresh air for me, that this complete bifurcation and assumption that all Christians are Republicans is starting to break down. Here is a taste of the article:

“The most conservative white Protestants, he says, are all but
off-limits to the Democrats. But then there are more than 22 million voters he
calls “freestyle Evangelicals,” worried about not only their eternal souls but
also their kids’ schools, their car’s fuel efficiency and the crisis in Darfur.
In the past, those voters may have leaned Republican in part because the GOP has
been far smarter about presenting itself as friendly to people of faith while
painting the Democrats as a bunch of sneering, secular coastal élites. But
the Republican lock on Evangelicals may be breaking. The percentage of white
Evangelicals who self-identify as Republicans has declined from roughly 50% in
2004 to about 44% this past February, according to Green. Now the number is
closer to 40% as more Evangelicals choose to label themselves independents.
“There is a loosening of the Republican coalition, particularly among people
under 30,” Green says, “but it is not yet a movement toward the Democrats. It is
a small but real change.””