Protests or progress: What an anthem crisis is revealing to us about relationships

I’ve been thinking a lot about this whole “NFL players flag protest”, and not really interested in debating “right or wrong.” Rather, it has struck a chord for me about how we’re choosing to live life.

How we view our relationship with our country, and that of others around us, seems to mirror how we approach interpersonal relationships.

Great leaders get concerned about the day people stop voicing their beliefs and participating. It means they’ve given up and checked out. They don’t believe there’s something worth fighting for in that marriage, that company, that country. They don’t see any hope in closing the gap between the vision they believed in, and the reality of the relationship.

Giving up means this: They no longer believe the potential of a better future is more real than the pains of the past.

It means a vision has died. They’ve moved on because fixing what’s broken is too daunting a task, too helpless to see ever happening. Starting over somewhere else carries inside it, inherently, the hope of a better future. And in that future, there exists a better version of themselves and the people they’ll be in the relationship with, and one day, that hope leads them to a door.

When that happens, it also means the dividers win, because we no longer feel the “other side” is willing to actually listen, lock arms and come together to get us to a different place.

If you’re unsure if our country, or ________ (enter a troubled relationship you’re having here) is at that point, here’s your litmus test: Has your communication shifted from running at and attacking problems, to running at and attacking each other? Have you’ve stopped firing shots at the problem in hopes of eroding its power, and reduced the fruit of your efforts to taking shots at each other?

At its core, I believe most of this brokenness is rooted in a lack of empathy. When we’ve been through the type or depth of pain another has felt, it’s much easier to meet them where they are, and begin a dialogue upon a foundation of understanding.

Years ago, I tore my Achilles. One Sunday morning, my leg was really hurting so I sat during the worship songs at church while others stood, and I remember wondering at the time if anyone behind me, who saw me sitting, considered judging me as ungrateful for the sacrifice made for me.

Without crutches, there was no outward sign of my hurt. Sometimes pain and gratitude coexist, regardless of what you think you see.

What I remember more than the pain, or concern for “what will they think,” to this day, is my wife putting her hand on my shoulder, in empathy. She never tore her Achilles, but she’s known other pain, so she reached out with love and empathy, from that place. In fact, we’d had a silly argument that morning, and hadn’t yet resolved it. But at that moment, she chose to allow love to push her past my behavior that morning, in favor of something much bigger.

I remember later, in retrospect, praying for our nation, “God, help us move past fear, past being offended, and past our need to be right, and choose to see people first from that place, to gain understanding, and learn how their gratitude and pain coexist so we can be part of the healing process.”

Pain and gratitude can coexist. In fact, they usually do, if we look past the behavior that feels at first like it offends or violates our beliefs.

I get it, it’s incredibly difficult to get past the “how they’re doing it” to actually see a person in pain. I’ve admittedly struggled with that myself with our kids, relationships, friends, and co-workers. I’ve at times been so hung up on the surface level offense, that I missed the underlying pain that needed to be heard.

At age fifty, I’ve learned to be grateful for those who looked past my “how I said it or did it” in the past, and cared enough to pull closer to uncover my pain when I needed it, instead of marginalizing me for my “how”.

Funny thing is, I bet you’d find more in common with ‘them’ than you thought, if you took their label off, or considered changing it, just for a moment. Maybe, just maybe, we’d find empathy and understanding if we didn’t limit our view of them by the label we’ve put on them. Maybe if we moved beyond seeing a rich, spoiled athlete, and see them as our son who spent 20 years committing to his dream, we’d find some sort of pride in the fact that instead of being a rich, spoiled athlete, he sees his position of success as an opportunity to be a voice for the oppressed.

No, I’m not delusional. Sure, there’s some bad apples and media-hungry athletes on the bandwagon. But I bet we might find that most of them, at their core, love the same American ideals as us. Maybe they’re just choosing to put more at risk publicly for that American promised to the rest of us, by bringing light to the dark places of the American dream. Maybe instead of waiting for someone to craft the perfect protest, because of the very same love for the very same country, they’re putting more at risk than the rest of us who find it easier to stay home and hide behind social media arguments on our tablets.

I have to admit, I still couldn’t imagine not standing for the flag/anthem. I get emotional every time, and grateful for those who sacrifice every day for my freedoms. When I see injustices, I’ve approached protesting & affecting change differently, perhaps.

Does that make me right? I don’t even know how to define right.

But, I’m also white, born and raised in Canada, and only moved to America 35 years ago. So, despite how hard I’ve worked my butt off in life and be empathetic to others in need or who’ve been through pain I’ve never experienced, I don’t understand what it feels like not to be white, not to subconsciously and instinctively see life and react to it through filters I perhaps don’t even know exist.

Because of that, I really want to understand more about the pain, the concerns “they” have so I can love better, care more, and perhaps consider being less passive about changing things that don’t seem to affect me directly.

Sometimes ‘right’ just isn’t available. However, the debate over it deflects the dialogue from what really matters. It happens in marriages all the time, where two people are spending more time battling over something that, at its core, wasn’t big enough to fight over in the first place. Meanwhile, they’re spending months in separate bedrooms because of unmet needs stemming from arguments over who did more housework, or who spent what money, while all the while honor for each other and empathy fades away, shot by shot, comment by comment, and with every silent moment.

For me, however, perhaps the saddest response (or lack thereof) to the “anthem crisis” has come from the church community. I’ve seen so many Ministry leaders who I also consider friends, jumping on the “how dare they” train. To them, I’d say this: Be careful.

You’ve built a lot of your teachings around how religion focuses on expecting you to live up to a set of rules of conduct, but faith is a relationship about grace and mercy and reconciliation and walking in love. Admittedly, I was initially pretty offended, couldn’t imagine kneeling for our anthem, and I love and honor those who sacrificed.

Then I realized I had a responsibility, as I do with when my kids outwardly act in conflict with what I expected, to look deeper than their rebellion. I see my role as one where I’m supposed to dig deeper to understand the underlying pain motivating them and driving their behavior to be expressed the only way they know how. You teach us all to love, and you’re missing your chance to unite and be a voice of change because they’re offending your comfort, preferences, and nationalism.

You’re better than that and have lived and loved through tougher times. In fact, you’ve insisted on it from others in how they treat YOU and judge you as ministry leaders when your actions offended the core beliefs of others. Maybe this is your chance to suck it up, get over your offense, and reach out in love, not with the “talk to the hand if you ain’t with us” hands that you’ve been posting with.

What if we looked past their imperfection, and asked some questions to better understand their perspective, and use this to bring us closer as a nation? I know, “…we already know what they think, and they’re wrong.” My prayer is that “divisive” doesn’t win. So far, it is, because dividers have figured out a way to get us to fall into the trap of defending man-made symbols that stand for what we believe, and getting us to fight people over symbols, instead of using those symbols to fight for people, and for each other.

What if it’s less about the distraction of fighting for whose behavior is right, and more about locking arms amidst differences, walking through it together, running with each other, instead of at each other?