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“BEFORE CRITICIZING, LOOK INSIDE”
Luanne Austin
Award of Outstanding Merit - $1,000

Luanne Austin has written a column and feature stories for the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, VA for 12 years. Her column, Rural Pen, and other articles have won awards from the Virginia Press and National Newspaper Associations. She has published a collection of her most popular columns in a book, Stain the Water Clear. Luanne teaches writing workshops and is a sought-after speaker. She and her husband, Kimball, have been married for 30 years and have three adult children.

Now that the nasty old election is over, we can turn to more pleasant subjects.

If not more pleasant, at least subjects we have even more control over than electing the men and women who run the country: ourselves.

It’s all the finger-pointing that disgusts me. Why must we demonize those who disagree with us? Can’t we justify our opinions without making the opposition into Satan incarnate? Why can’t we just say we disagree and leave it at that?

Now that we’re all a bit more rational, we realize that our neighbor with the Kerry or Bush bumper sticker is not such a bad person. He helped shovel the driveway during last year’s big snow, or she made a casserole for us when we had a baby or our mother died, or they took our kids to school when the bus broke down.

It’s all projection. We dwell upon the murderous intentions of the candidate we hate, and the righteous mission of the one we love, perhaps as a way of avoiding these traits within ourselves.

It’s interesting to look at the candidates as flip sides of ourselves. When you do that, it makes it much harder to choose.

For instance, my pro-life beliefs include the unborn, America’s virgin forests, war and peace, marriage and family, capital punishment, the elderly and infirm, and clean water and air. I am for free enterprise while I hate big conglomerates. Society has a responsibility to take care of its poor, yet should not extract this money from uncharitable hands.

The Catholic Encyclopedia web site made it all clear by pointing out that “In the past 16 months....Capital Punishment killed 98 Americans... War in Iraq killed 16,561 people... Abortionists killed 1,750,656 American infants.”

So each of the two major candidates was a mix of beliefs I support and abhor, all because of “partisan politics.” The line that divides our nation is difficult for me to understand.

“The line that separates good from evil does not separate one group of people from another group of people,” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. “The line runs right down the middle of each of us.”

That’s a sobering thought, isn’t it?

Maybe it’s not the Republicans that are bad, or the Democrats, the conservatives or the liberals, George Bush or John Kerry, Jerry Falwell or Jesse Jackson, it’s us, something in each of us.

Becoming angry at a group or cause should remind us to look within, where we will find a fault or evil that must be dealt with. We must look deeply into our own hearts first before making comment on another’s.

“How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye,’ ” said Jesus in Luke 6:42.

It is difficult to damn the other guy for a sin when I, too, commit and am capable of great evil. But somehow, what we excuse or overlook or justify in ourselves is inexcusable in others.

“Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap?” wrote C.S. Lewis. “Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact, it is the other way around: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself . . .In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one.”

So for some reason we are able to think the best of ourselves, even – for those who are honest – while realizing how bad we are. Can we not extend that to others?

Perhaps when we point the finger at others it is because we are afraid of what we will find in our own hearts.

“Because we cannot reasonably expect to erect a constantly expanding structure of social activism upon a constantly diminishing foundation of faith, attention to the cultivation of the inner life is our first order of business, even in a period of rapid social change,” writes Elton Trueblood.

We can never be authentic participants in the public square if we’re not authentic participants in our own inner life. Our outer life must be an extension of our inner life.

We have only to look at the examples of others, people such as Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and those we have known personally, to know that a seamless life, where the outer actions are a perfect reflection of the heart, always leaves its’ mark.

Wouldn’t it be great if all politicians, social activists and voters were people at peace with themselves with a passion for the plight of others?

It begins with us.

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