Examining the Log in My Eye

I'm not sure when I decided I was better than America.

Certainly, in my youth, I was rather enamoured of the place. Raised on a steady diet of Sweet Valley High and Full House, the US of A seemed to be a land of cultural milk and honey, a land where cool things happened to cool people. America had Disneyland and Hollywood; Canada had West Edmonton Mall and Hinterland Who's Who.

America was flashy; Canada was subdued. America strode confidently into the world arena; Canada peeked in timidly, unsure whether it was invited.

However, over time (somewhere between Desert Storm and Operation: Screw an Entire Country Because We *Thought* There Were WMDs - Sorry, Our Bad), my opinion of our southern neighbours changed. Where I once saw cultural brilliance, I now saw mindless dreck (Bruckheimer, I'm looking at you). Where I once saw a swashbuckling sheriff on a white steed, I now saw a corrupt black-hatted villain, swirling his moustache.

As my negative opinion of the elephant with which the mouse sleeps grew, so did my sense of superiority. We might not be flashy, I thought, but at least we don't trample over everyone who gets in our way.

Condescension well in place, I found myself residing in the very country over which I lorded my own superior understanding of the world. Yet, just as I had hoped, I have found that the brush with which I have painted this country and its inhabitants is simply much too wide to take into consideration the nuances of opinion and world-view held here.

Much of this education has come through our new church. We intentionally sought a Mennonite church, figuring that at least there we could be assured that our beliefs that church and state should be kept apart (faaaaaar apart) and that war is not the way to peace would be honoured. As we had hoped, we've met many like-minded people.

But I've been struck by how many of those people are like-minded yet not like-heritaged. There are several people who came to the Mennonite way from other denominations, who felt increasingly uncomfortable with what they were hearing from both pulpit and government, who thought there had to be another way to engage their fellow Americans and the world.

Meeting kind, gracious, intelligent people who are extremely concerned about the state of their country and are working hard to change the areas in which they feel their forebears have erred has done much to alter my perception of this country. Certainly the entitled, "Stars and Stripes represent all that is good in the world" Americans exist, but they're not all like that.

This realization has also altered my perception of myself. I am realizing how much my "I don't agree with the way America and Americans behave all the time" (a valid opinion) has stealthily become "I'm better than Them because I don't agree." Which makes me no better in the end, and recreates exactly the mindset I purport to despise.

So here's to graciousness and humility, understanding and forebearance. On my part, that is.