If you watch the news or use social media, the incivility in our society is no secret to you. Being civil to one another seems to be a lost art. We are becoming more polarized as a result. College students shout down speakers who disagree with them. Politicians try to destroy one another instead of seeking common ground. Tempers are flaring. The political divides in our culture seem to be widening. But this past week a strange thing happened. We saw a rare example of humility, decency, and forgiveness right in the midst of the fray. We saw what happens when civility overcomes politics.
Cringeworthy Comedy
Just before the recent mid-term elections, Saturday Night Live comedian Pete Davidson took some well-deserved heat. During one of his monologues, he mocked a Republican congressional candidate’s appearance. Davidson showed a picture of Texas candidate Dan Crenshaw and said, “you might be surprised to hear he’s a congressional candidate from Texas and not a hit-man in a porno movie.”
Some may have found humor in the fact that Dan Crenshaw wears an eyepatch. It’s Saturday Night Live, after all. But when the audience groaned, Davidson made things worse. “I know he lost his eye in war … whatever.”
The Story Behind The Eyepatch
Davidson’s attempt at humor went over like a lead balloon with many Americans on the eve of Veteran’s Day. The fact is that Dan Crenshaw lost his eye serving as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan in 2012. He and his team were hit by a roadside bomb. Crenshaw lost his eye. Others lost their lives.
It would have been easy for Dan Crenshaw to make political hay out of the incident by asserting his moral authority to demand an apology. But he didn’t do that. Instead, he sent out a tweet:
In the current vicious political climate, the last thing anyone expected was for a politician to take the high road. But the story gets even better.
Shared Loss
It turns out the War on Terror has victimized both these guys. Pete Davidson’s father was a fireman in New York’s Ladder Company 118. He died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Maybe that’s what prompted Pete Davidson to invite Dan Crenshaw onto the Saturday Night Live set the following week. I don’t know. But what happened next was a wonderful thing to see …
In case you missed it, rewatch the end of that last video clip. If you listen closely when Pete Davidson leans over to say something privately to Dan Crenshaw, you can hear him say … “You’re a good man.”
In This Together
I’m pretty sure Dan Crenshaw and Pete Davidson don’t have much in common. Certainly, not their politics. But what they do share is one important thing:
They are both human beings made in the image of God.
Politics is where worldviews collide. It divides us. But being made in God’s image is the one thing we hold in common. I don’t know what we can do to mend the widening political chasm in this country. But if we have any hope of healing our divisions, it will begin when we realize that every form of hatred and brutality begins when we dehumanize The Other. Reconciliation always starts when we acknowledge our shared humanity and search for common ground in solving our problems. Wounds can be healed when we offer kindness and forgiveness instead of vitriol. Or as one wise sage put it:
“A gentle answer turns away wrath …” (Proverbs 15:1)
In his book, Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton said that democracy depends on our knowing that “the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately.”
This should be the attitude of everyone who is engaged in the combat we call politics. If we don’t encourage them to get it back, we may soon run out of things to laugh about.