A few months ago, my wife and I took a routine trip to Asheville, North Carolina. We have an excellent dentist in a nearby suburb that we are willing to drive the nearly two hour trip to see and we love the Biltmore estate as well as the welcome pack-mule trip to Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods that we lack access to otherwise.
But if you’re familiar with Asheville, you will likely recall a couple of things about it. One: the roads there are horrible, or rather, horribly laid out. It requires every ounce of your attention to make it from one highway to another and the city streets are even worse, the scene of what I can only recall as my wife and my first fight as a couple, me assuming that I had made a correct turn, she frustrated that I pridefully wouldn’t turn around. And two: Asheville is known for a certain reputation, an eclectic hub, a spiritual Mecca for gurus and hippies, and home to what is probably the most progressive North Carolinians in the state short of the eastern college towns. It only followed that we should be able to find some ethnic food that otherwise would have been rare for us.
So we found a little curry house downtown and placed an order. And in that little bar lobby, I took a moment to read through an Instagram-worthy chalkboard composition of their mission. As I read through the typical ad copy, a number of statements and keywords stood out to me, either explicitly highlighted in different colors or jumping out due to my alertness for bias. Of particular note were statements like, “support of local economies”, “paying a living wage”, “protecting the environment”, and “celebration of diversity.” I found myself quickly rolling my eyes inside at the obvious pretention with which someone must have written this blatant sloganeering and immediately began constructing the straw man of their entire personality and projecting it onto the entire establishment.
But then, I stopped myself. And I thought just a little bit more carefully. I began to realize that, though the talking points were hit, there was no overt political message being presented. There was no call to arms to lobby for wide-sweeping regulation and enforcement of these practices across the whole of restaurants and businesses everywhere. There was no lambast of those who wouldn’t or couldn’t run their business with the same standards. This was a simple, personal message of conviction and, most importantly, action taken by one restaurant, one businessperson who believed so much in their own beliefs about how a business should be run that they did the one thing they could do peacefully: they lived it out themselves.
And then I thought, “why would I actually fundamentally disagree with any of these points being made?” Would it be such a horrible state if a restaurant would be able to bring so much value to their patrons that they could afford to run their business in such a way as to pay their employees enough to live and thrive on that salary alone? As a Christian, what other way should a business be run but in a way that was “sustainable” long term for the environment? Would some businesses focusing on supporting and growing their local economies take away from some other economies in an unjust manner? And aside from the knee-jerk overreaction of some influential institutions in society to a perceived lack of diversity, is it nonsensical to embrace any celebration of diversity at any level, when here I was, an American in the South, craving flavors from the other side of the planet?
It was there that I was reminded of the truth that politics poisons everything. I was so eager to dismiss this message, this mission, because I had been trained to. Sure, it is quite probable that the author of that mission holds political principles that I would be diametrically opposed to and they may even despise me and my values for them. But in our fervent defense of political principles, principles that should be defended, we so often square ourselves off from our opponents and steadfastly oppose them in a binary manner, a manner which not only denies the nuance of almost every issue imaginable but also often forces us into a corner defending a position we do not or would not actually take were we able to separate the merit of the outcome from the means of its execution. Let us always be willing to agree wholeheartedly on the destination with those who wish to travel there while tirelessly opposing any unjust means of our arrival.
And maybe get some excellent curry on the way there.