Fingerpointing

** The following is an edited version of my original post. It was brought to my attention that my choice of language was not the best, and because I feel like I have a point to get across, I'll refrain from using angry expletives. **

It's been 17 days since The Bridge, and the fingerpointing has begun.

This talking head said this. And this person in charge did that. Well, this other guy whose job it was didn't do it well enough. This whole system lacks the income it needs to sufficiently run itself. Well, those elected officials signed a no-new-taxes pledge, so they didn't raise the gas tax 5c, so they took millions out of the road-and-bridge fund, so it's THEIR fault, those small-government, penny-pinching, near-sighted buttholes.

WHO PUT THESE PEOPLE IN POWER OVER US, ANYWAY?!

Oh, wait. That was us.

Remember when that dapper dude with the perfect teeth got up and invoked the name of Jesus and lowering taxes in the same breath? Dang, did he sound good! The Lord doesn't want money in the pockets of no money-grubbin' government. The Lord wants money in OUR pockets, for we're Americans, and the Lord has BLESSED us with a good income with which we're to be good stewards. He's got my vote.

Or, remember when that other person told us that as Americans, we're to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and make it happen ourselves? We don't need a big bureaucracy to tell us what to do or help us live our lives- God meant for us to be a FREE people, FREE to make our own life decisions and FREE of Big Brother looking over our shoulder. That's just like what daddy used to tell me. They've got my vote.

Well, folks. It's not that all these power figures and decision-makers that we've voted into office are bad people, have bad ideas or are even bad policymakers. Maybe they didn't think things through entirely, but then again, neither do we. Why should we expect anything more out of our government than we expect out of ourselves? It's not their fault. It's ours. They're all great at one thing:

SPEAKING OUR LANGUAGE.

We hate taxes. We hate spending money that's not on a movie or a latte. We hate spending money that's not on ourselves. In fact, we love ourselves. And we loathe anything that gets between us and our ability to love ourselves more. And the only thing we loathe more than that is a person with a face telling us or making us do something that gets between us and our ability to love ourselves more. So we latch on to the people with faces who make us feel good about ourselves, who tell us we can keep our money and keep spending it on our lattes and our Cosmopolitan magazines and our new baseball stadiums. Oops, scratch that last one. We didn't have a say in that one, but the feel-good faces said it was okay to tax us for that.

Well, those 100-plus people on the Interstate 35W bridge had a face. The kind of face you see everyday. So does everyone else who drove that highway that day. I drove that highway that day. I have a face. I also have a name. It's Ian, nice to meet you. They had names, too. They had lives. I know, because I saw them with my own eyes. I watched as the ones who were lucky enough to make it off that bridge, and well enough to be out of their hospital beds, limped down the aisle at a memorial service with Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, all of whom were praying for and remembering those who were not lucky enough or well enough to be with us.

But we forget that they're there. In fact, I'll be so bold as to say we don't care that they're there.

If you're going to point fingers, point them at me. I'm lazy, and I don't care about other people. I especially hate spending money on people other than myself, especially if it involves giving money to a gas pump. But after you're done pointing it at me, do yourself a favor- be honest and turn that finger around, point it at yourself. You'd complain about an extra 5c on a gallon of gas, too. Maybe not you specifically, but if I had 5c for every person who I've heard complain about the cost of loving themselves with a cup of coffee I'm serving them, I'd probably have enough money to chip in a few bucks to keep a bridge in decent running shape and keep myself, or you, or maybe even that whiny witch from finding themselves at the bottom of the Mississippi.

"Well, I would NEVER wish for someone to end up at the bottom of the Mississippi!"

Yes you do. You wish it every single day. I know I do. For my complete willingness to love myself and not give you a second thought, I wish for you to end up on the bottom of the Mississippi.

There's a quite simple term for this type of behavior. It's called masturbation. Us Christians are taught that it's bad for us, that it takes the focus off of others and puts it squarely on ourselves, for our own sake, to love ourselves. It's selfish. It's evil. It's sinful. It's also called, in more derogatory terms, "screwing yourself". And we do it everyday, with our money and our time and our resources that we spend on ourselves and not others. We do it over and over, and it feels great. You become so involved with it that basic everyday life stuff goes un-maintained. And then when an everyday something that you took for granted crashes to the bottom of a river, you start to think "I've really screwed myself now."

To myself, and to anyone and everyone who's reading this: we are severely near-sighted. Please start seeing other people and realizing how each of us is dependent upon the other for life itself, because it's time to wake up and realize:

We have really screwed ourselves now. The finger points at you and me.