“If alternatives exist outside of these forced choices (and they almost always do), then the statements are factually wrong. It’s turning an emotion-driven approach into weaponized belonging. And it always benefits the person throwing down the gauntlet and brandishing those forced, false choices.” Brené Brown

The operative theory here is the same one that drives half my preaching… if we think our options are either/or, we’ve already given up on affecting the outcome. “Weaponized belonging” is all that’s left when we fail to recognize the embrace of a love that cannot end and never fails; a love that is present not in spite of our fears and failures, but in and through them; a love that compels us far beyond the walls of the way it’s always been. Intensely partisan “debates” are just one specific symptom of a much deeper failure to see the world God makes possible rather than the fear that so naturally dominates our attention.