I’m sorry. I just don’t get it.

To me, the fundamentals, the very foundation of the United States is equality, human rights, and community. Participating and compromising for the common good.

I got these ideas from Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and if they weren’t enough, also from Lincoln and both Roosevelts. And yes, Doctor King too.

But people who call themselves patriots, and nationalist and pro-America laud leaders who don’t believe in, let alone value, respect or protect any of those things.

And they let their anger, ignorance and disdain for the rest of us rage like a prairie fire.

But if I snap back, I have to consider relations and treat people better than that. If want to remind everyone of what our fundamentals are, I’m warned that I’ll offend someone, that they’ll think I’m too radical.

To me, the very heart, the basics, the absolute fundamental foundations of Jesus and the whole Bible, Old and New, is love.

Love the Lord your God with all your strength and all your heart and all you mind. AND love your neighbor as yourslef.

Love your neighbor? Who is your neighbor?

Love your enemies, pray for those that persecute you.

If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

Seems clear. Seems fundamental.

But if you say that, they look at you suspiciously.

Who are you listening to? What are you reading?

Um, Jesus, the Prophets, judges, and teachers of the Torah and Jesus, Paul, John, the Apostles and Epistle writers of the New Testament.

That’s heresy. That’s reduction-ism. That’s liberation theology. That’s too liberal. That’s watered down.

Here I was thinking it was distilled, concentrated, liquor, jet fuel.

Essence. Spirit. Anything BUT diluted.

Accepting anyone into fellowship who doesn’t submit to every jot and tittle of the law would be like condoning their every error.

Grace itself becomes a work, after having been reminded over and over that our own works are worth nothing.

Not just adherence to orthodoxy, but allegiance to homogeneity is the only safety.

I think to much. I feel too much. I talk too much.

My fundamentalism is the wrong kind of radical.

I’m stupid. I’m crazy. I’m a problem. I hate our heritage.

Don’t point out our ignorance, our apathy, our inconsistency, our mental illness, our stubbornness.

I get it.

Judge not, let ye be judged.

I must have logs in my eyes.

What I thought was fundamental, the fundamentalists find too progressive.

I thought evangelical meant having a personal relationship with God and wanting to share the good news of His love. Isn’t to evangelize, to share, to witness? But the more I speak or share, the more I’m isolated and marginalized. Muffled. Stimied.

What I thought was egalitarian and democratic and just is apparently “socialist” and “elitist” and “unamerican.”

Do I really not understand the fundamentals?

“Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”

— Thomas Jefferson

” Jesus wept.”

—John 11:35