Why are people so angry at each other? Why are there such tendencies to form factions and sides? It is because, with the stirring pot of 2020, people began to distrust and feel unsafe in our world. Whether it’s politics, red, blue, vaccines, masks, etc, people are not just opinionated about issues, people are angry about issues.
Something that God spoke to me this year was this: When people do not feel safe, tribalism is the natural tendency.
It is to gather with people who think, feel, act like us. Additionally, to justify and solidify our position, we make enemies of those who are not in our group. It is a survival mechanism to make sense of an unsafe world and to feel a semblance of safety.
But tribalism is not what Jesus has called us to be as Christians.
We are to be the people who, like Jesus, sit at an open table of love. We stand for our convictions but pray for our enemies, and we wash their feet.
We are able to do this because, in our eyes, the world is never unsafe as long as God is King. As long as he writes the last story (which he will), our lives are always in safe hands. And as a result of that, we don’t need to form tribes.
Do you sense the movement of tribalism around you? Do you sense the temptation within you?
