This Is Who We Are

“This is not us. We are better than this. This is not who we are.”

I encounter these kinds of phrases just about every single day, and every time I do I get a little more irritated. Because actually, this *is* us. We aren’t better than this. This is who we are. It may not be who you thought we were. You may wish we were better than this. But that doesn’t change the truth.

We have to be honest about who we are, collectively. We can’t keep willfully ignoring what we’re doing, or at least what we’re all complicit in. We can’t continue to absolve ourselves with our self-righteous “we’re better than this” mentalities. When we see institutions we’re a part of doing harm, we can’t afford to pretend the problem is somehow not ours to deal with, act like we’re better than it, and move on. After all, I can hardly cure my cancer by saying “I’m healthier than this; this is not what my body is.” I have to be honest about it and do every kind of treatment imaginable to try for a chance at being cancer-free some day.

When churches harbor white supremacy, homophobia, sexism, and abuse, we who are Christians can’t just turn away and say “well, that’s not who we are.” It is in fact who and what The Church as a whole is, and we have to deal with that. When the United States adopts a foreign policy of “We’re America, Bitch!” and closes its borders to asylum-seekers fleeing domestic abuse, we who are Americans cannot pretend we’re better than this. We need to acknowledge that we’re all part of the problem, that this is in fact who and what we are right now, like it or not.

So let’s all stop saying “we’re better than this.” We’re not. Instead, let’s work to make it so that someday, we actually are better than this.