There are plenty of people who don’t like the Black Lives Matter movement, but I want to ask this. Do black lives matter to you?

There are plenty of people who don’t like Evangelicals, but I want to ask this. Did you know that the word “evangelical” means “in keeping with the gospel and its teachings”? If you dig into the gospel and its teachings, it doesn’t look like nationalism or white supremacy (which plenty of people have attached to Evangelicals). It looks like a Middle Eastern man taking the form of a servant for all nations.

There are plenty of people who call themselves Republicans or Democrats (with clear distinctions), but I want to ask this. Did you know that a synonym of “republic” is “democracy” and vice versa? We’re so busy focusing on our capitalized words we forget how much we have in common.

There are plenty of people who want the Pledge of Allegiance to stay as is, keeping the “under God” phrase, but I want to ask this. Did you know it was written by a Christian Socialist, or maybe I should say a christian socialist? Some people would call those two words together an oxymoron, but take a peek at the early church (Acts 2:42-47). “All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” There’s a difference between Socialism and socialism.

There are plenty of us who call ourselves Christians, but I want to ask this. Do we always act christian?

The poet e.e. cummings often used nontraditional capitalization to emphasize particular words and phrases. I like that. It makes you pay attention instead of automatically agreeing with or rejecting a concept based on its capitalization. 

We tend to stereotype capitalized words. Even the word “God.” Don’t get me wrong. I believe God is quite different from the other gods we tend to worship, but we all have notions of God, some of which could be stereotypes…and perhaps wrong ones. Understanding God as love is the quest of a lifetime.

Maybe we need to dig a little deeper when it comes to capitalized words.

Next time you hear the words Black Lives Matter or Evangelical, think lowercase.  

i will too.