Our Framing Stories: How They Can Free Us or – As In the Club Q Shooting, Can Demonize Us

We are framed by stories.  Our values, horizons and purpose are shaped by the stories that we have heard, read and absorbed.  Some of those stories are constructed – and refracted, to reinforce prejudices and resentments.  While we don’t yet know for sure if the gunman who burst into Club Q in Colorado Springs carried a story of hate, all the indicators suggest that he was influenced by a pattern of stories that suggest people who identify as LGBTQ are an aberration and therefore can be destroyed, which he proceeded to do by murdering five (at recent count) and wounding dozens with a long gun.  Similarly, an ongoing story of resentment has no doubt been the key ingredient in lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people during an August 2020 protest march in Kenosha, Wisconsin; and who last week was invited by some members of Congress to Washington to tell his story.  Some of those same Representatives are touting Kyle Rittenhouse as a hero of the Second Amendment, and predict that he may join their ranks in the future.

These framing stories of prejudice and resentment, which then get acted out in horrific ways, kindle (I am resisting the impulse to say trigger) a similar resentment and prejudice in me.  About a month ago, while coming out of convenience store during a drive home from another state, I noticed two men who were getting into their truck.  The combination of their dress, truck, facial hair, and the unfamiliarity of where I was prompted me to comment, “Trump voters”.  And I projected onto them all sorts of negative attributes and intentions.  It rather shocked me, because it was totally unfair on my part.  I made all sorts of assumptions on the basis of a very brief visual encounter.  I diminished them; actually I dismissed them, and as I did so I diminished myself.  My visceral reaction wasn’t racial profiling, because the two men were white.  But it had the same sort of dynamic.  “Oh my God”, I said to myself, “I do it too.”

These framing stories are pernicious and destructive.  They have the power to reduce us to hyper-reactive warriors, who then seek to distance, dismiss or even destroy those who the framing story suggests don’t fit into what is construed to be normal or acceptable.

How do we fix this?  We don’t.  Or we can’t.  Another framing story that our culture carries is that we have the capacity to shape our environment.  That we have the knowledge, particularly the technological knowledge, to fix the broken parts of society.  A glaring example of how that is not working is what is unraveling at Twitter.  Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, and by many accounts a technical genius, has forcefully brought his knowledge to his newly acquired company.  He is applying a technical fix.  Instead of building up Twitter, Musk’s actions are making it more fragile.  People have been fired, and now people are leaving.  Pundits wonder whether Twitter will survive.

I am not suggesting that we rule out technical fixes.  As one who has worked in the gun violence prevention arena for several years, we need to legislate better background checks and institute (and enforce) red flag laws, ban assault weapons, upgrade mental health services, invest in community violence intervention, and so on.  That will make a difference.

But we need to go deeper.  We need to claim another framing story that can take us beneath and beyond resentment, prejudice and an unwavering commitment to technical fixes.  From my vantage point, the framing story we need to claim should contain the elements of love and hope woven throughout.  I’m not talking about love as a passing feeling or a pleasant experience;  but love as an act of the will.  Love that binds us closer together as members of the human family.  And not hope as thinly veiled optimism, which wishes that things can be better; but a fierce hope that invests in better outcomes – even when the return on investment does not show immediate positive gains.  As writer Jim Wallis has written, hope is believing in spite of the evidence; and then watching the evidence change.

Every religion that I know frames its foundational story around love and hope.  Those framing stories often get lost when the institutional dimension of a particular religion becomes more committed to self-preservation or, more dangerously, to exercising control and claiming domination.  That has happened – and continues to cause many people to either keep their distance or drive people away from religious institutions.  But love and hope still shine through, despite some of religion’s structural intransigence and resistance.  Martin Luther King spoke of this important and life-giving power:  “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” 

Love is not just a feeling.  It is a power.   We need to incorporate love – and hope, in a framing story.  And keep telling it.  And then watch the evidence change.

 

 

The Bombings We Are Not Paying Attention To

In the last few days the country, if not the world, has had a crash course in bunker buster bombs, ever since three of them literally crashed down on a nuclear weapons development facility in Fordow, Iran.  Delivered by a stealth B2 bomber, the pretext, subtext and...

No Permanent Allies? No Permanent Enemies?

No permanent allies. No permanent enemies. That was a foundational mantra of a ten day community organizing training that I received nearly 40 years ago.  It was a new idea for me, and I struggled with it. Growing up during the height of the cold war, I had been...

Love More. Resist More

  I have recently engaged my mind in a paradox that both strengthens my resolve and soothes my soul.  Love more.  Resist more.  Normally it is thought that loving and resisting need to be kept separate from one another:  you can’t love someone or something you...

A Spiritual Antidote to Fear

In 2008, toward the end of a three-day retreat in Canterbury Cathedral for about 700 Episcopal and Anglican bishops from around the world, Archbishop Rowan Williams finished his brilliant presentation on love and grace, and then asked us to reach out to another. Find...

Preferential Option for the Poor: A Needed Edit

“A preferential option for the poor” became a foundational component of Catholic Social teaching when the term was first issued by Latin American Catholic leaders and theologians in the mid-1960s. The phrase echoed the many admonitions from Jesus as recorded in the...

Emerging Moral Obscenity

It is a moral obscenity.  It is said by some that white Afrikaners in South Africa are the victims of genocide, but there is no data to support the claim. It is said that the cohort of Afrikaners coming to America are refugees, but there are indications that they are...

The Ordering of Love: a New Debate in the Culture Wars

Several decades ago, a national debate raged over a question that helped launch America’s ongoing culture war:  who can you love? One side was insistent that love – which would involve intimate sexual expression – should be confined to a man and a woman. A popular...

Make America Great Again: A Clamping Down on Paradigm Shift

In April of 1970 the United States decided to invade Cambodia, thus expanding the Vietnam War. I was nearing the end of my freshman year in college. Campuses around the country rose up in angry indignation. Protests were planned, strikes were proposed, marches were...

Teach Us to Care and Not to Care: T.S. Eliot

It is becoming harder and harder to achieve emotional, spiritual and in some cases physical distance from what is happening in this country.  I hear more and more people saying that they are reluctant to buy, sell or make changes to their home because the economy is...

Ep 22 – “The Greatest Unifier” with Rick Joyner

In this episode, I welcome Rick Joyner, a prominent Evangelical leader, author, public speaker, and founder of Morningstar Ministries. We explore how to respectfully build mutual understanding and work together across differences. Rick shares about his life-changing conversion, his strong support for President Trump, his belief in God as the greatest unifier, and the challenges and hopes that he sees for the country. We also discuss finding unity in diversity and the ongoing pursuit of liberty and justice for all.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join my mailing list to receive the latest blog updates.

You have Successfully Subscribed!