A Confession on my participation in violence.

Time to reset

So last night my soon to be sister in law sent a meme out on the family iMessage. She was being sweet and I love her a lot and I responded with sort of a flippant answer because to be honest I thought the meme was questionable. Now she didn’t mean anything by it and just assume that people know me know that I tend to be flippant. Now when I’m not dealing with my family I have a fairly high emotional IQ that for some reason I dock when I’m at home. I guess I view it as a safe space for me to drop my guard but that’s just not a good excuse. This brings me to a root addiction in this country. Whether we are so insecure in our own power dynamic that we abuse the justice system, or we decide to burn down someone’s store because we are frustrated or we retort with words that cut those we care about because we disagree the root cause is VIOLENCE. We are addicted to it. That’s why we cut every argument into an us vs them and that why rather than talk on social media we minimize those we disagree with and we reduce their opinions to meme’s. Not because we want to do the thing we will eventually have to in order to move forward, but instead we are so freaking insecure we would rather rather belittle those we are against then listen to where they are. I had a Quaker minister in college that taught us that violence is like being an alcoholic, if we don’t acknowledge we have a problem we can’t get over it. I guess what I’m trying to do is come out and say my names Christopher and I’ve participated in this system of violence in my own mini transgressions and thats not healthy for me or those around me, and it’s damn sure not Christian (see what I did there). Long story short I’m going to try to do better, and I invite any of you that participate in these little acts of violence to try to do better also.

This is a really long way to say sorry Lia, and probably a hundred other people.

Peace be with You, Christopher Johnson