When people strive for influence and power, the stage is set for ugliness. Whether this is happening in a legislative body, a business environment, or even a church, then the Prince of Darkness can so easily enter people’s minds. One group views another not as fellow human beings but as obstacles, obstacles to be defeated and pushed to the side. It can happen even in a hospice, of all places. A hospice worker once told me she preferred working the night shift because that way she avoided the office politics during the daytime. As for churches, churches that claim to welcome the Prince of Peace, too many are at times wracked with in-fighting.
People will be people, it might be said. But people should recognize that other people are people too. They too are human beings, with feelings, with hopes, with emotional vulnerabilities. And when a political opponent reaches out to someone on “the opposite side” with concern, with care, and yes, with love, it moves, even thrills, what is human within us.
And so it was moving, deeply moving, when Prime Minister Sir Keir, during farewell remarks in Parliament, recalled how, when his brother died of cancer, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition, phoned and talked with him privately. They were strongly opposed politically, and yet at that moment one human heart had reached out to another human heart.
So many people were moved by hearing this. It certainly moved me. It gives us hope, hope that behind the conflicts of politics lies something deeper, something truly human, something called love.