FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK
by Jay Webster Is it over? Did we get through the election yet? Oh good gawd, there’s still a month left? Please make it stop! America is like a divorced family where we’re all being forced to decide which parent we’re going to live with. Republican dad got Jesus and guns in the separation, while Democrat mom got science and the good music. And we’re all getting the shaft. As Simon and Garfunkel say: Laugh about it, shout about it When you've got to choose Ev'ry way you look at it, you lose Most people identify our area of the country as the “Bible Belt.” Depending on who you are, you either celebrate or cringe when you hear that. It depends on the day for me. As “Belters” (can I call us that?), we really shouldn’t be all that surprised by the infighting. I mean, sure we have that whole love your neighbor and treat them the way you want to be treated thing, but that’s mostly for the neighbors from our political party. And yes, Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and slow to speak and quick to listen and on and on … (Frankly, it’s too much.) But it’s divisions where men are made!
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bmonthly | OCTOBER 2020
In fact, the first recorded conflict was between two brothers in the Garden of Eden. Cain was vegetarian and wanted more diversity … in his family. Able ate meat, smoked, and burned fossil fuels. Things got testy. “Dad always did like you better, you entitled little brown-noser. By the way, you’re killing the garden with your non-renewable energy!” Who knows, maybe there were years of back and forths and tit for tats. “You smell like patchouli.” “Really? Well, your wife is a cow. I mean literally a cow!” And thus the law of an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth (and insult for insult) was established. Eventually of course, Cain had his fill and took Able out to the pasture where he found he wasn’t so hard-headed after all. Unfortunately for us, the pattern was already set: when someone insults you, you insult them back. When someone hurts you, you retaliate. Now history is littered with conflicts, sometimes decades long and multi-generations deep of recycled hostility: Montague and Capulets, Hatfields and McCoys, the Irish and the English, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks … it goes on and on. And, for all of these conflicts, a script has been written — like a care-
