Whether to Be Apolitical
In many ways I never liked politics. Certain discussions on how nations should be administered could be interesting, but as a whole the field was so ugly, so reminiscent of a poorly-made and outdated website: gray and unaesthetic, broken, inefficient, frustrating. What was worse, it always seemed to be usurping the place of supposedly nobler and more important subjects, like religion. According to the voices that shaped my understanding of life, the love of Jesus was the thing that would change the world. We were to “seek first the kingdom” and “all these things” would fall into place as we did. Politics, I knew, didn’t change hearts; changed hearts added up to cultural movements, which in turn led to political change, and the way to change hearts was to love the people around you, be real with them, listen to them, and be there for them. But despite this understanding, I often saw political allegiances clawing their way up to the level of religious importance and even supplanting what...