What we learn about the news....

Our reactions to the news teach us more about ourselves than the public figures who are making the news.
I, for example, learned this week that I am thoroughly, hopelessly old-fashioned.

I applaud President Obama for hosting a conversation between the Harvard professor Gates and the Cambridge law enforcement officer Crowley. The world would be a better place, I am convinced, if more people sat down together for face-to-face conversation after a volatile exchange. That's a great model. People make mistakes and we need to learn from mistakes and move on. I am very happy about the model of the meeting.
But did they have to drink BEER?

I've got to tell you -- and I'm not embarrassed about it--I wish the President had chosen something else. Am I hopelessly naive? Maybe so. But I just don't think it is a good model to sit down over a beer.
I recognize the roots of my reaction. God bless my mother--a saint on earth if ever there was one! A moral dilemma for my mother took place when someone threw a beer can in her yard. She didn't want to pick up the beer can and put it in HER garbage. (The garbage man might get the idea that someone in OUR home had been drinking. That was unthinkable.) But, if she left it in her yard, it violated her impeccable standards of cleanliness and was a constant reminder that SOMEONE was drinking beer. A true moral dilemma.
But back to the president. I don't think he should be meeting over a beer.
I know that millions of people do it. But I just wish he'd choose something else.
Meet over pie. Meet over coffee. Meet over dinner. Whatever. But beer became the focus of this conversation for reconciliation. And that's too bad.

We live in a world where people desperately need to learn the art of reconciliation, learning from mistakes and moving on. God knows we don't do much moving on in our lives, our families, our churches or our culture. We are terrible offenders to the gospel. We don't reconcile with those who have hurt us, we complain about them. We don't learn from our mistakes -- we just turn to sympathetic friends to replay how badly we have been done wrong. We don't move on. We go over and over and over and over the sound bite mistakes of others. We rally support. We keep things stirred up. We ignore the gospel mandate to love others as Christ loved us. We defy Christ's command to love our enemies. We desperately need to get back to our theological roots here!

But, please, let's don't do it over a beer.
I hope that I can live into my beliefs and be a model for reconciliation. But you aren't going to read about me meeting with opposing parties in a church over a beer.
I'm not trying to be part of the vulture, find-something-to-criticize culture.
Like I say, we learn more about ourselves in our reaction to the news than we learn about the news makers. I'm all for reconciliation, new learning and creating open doors for forgiveness. But leave the beer out of the mix.