Donald Trump likes to call those who oppose him “the enemies within.”

For Progressives, the feeling is mutual

In both cases the word “within” means within our country.

In contrast, the three religious traditions that trace their origins back to Abraham, each have seasons in which they focus on another enemy within, the enemy within ourselves. Christians are in the middle of Lent. Muslims are keeping Ramadan from Feb. 28 until March 30, and Jews will focus on repentance and atonement on Yom Kippur this coming October.

On Ash Wednesday I confessed:

That I have not loved my neighbor as myself,

That I have not forgiven others.

My unfaithfulness, pride, envy, hypocrisy, and apathy,

My self-indulgent appetites and exploitation of other people,

My neglect of human suffering,

My indifference to injustice and cruelty,

My false judgments, uncharitable thoughts toward my neighbors,

My prejudice and contempt toward those who differ from me,

My waste and pollution of creation,

My lack of concern for those who come after me.

All of the above is like a spiritual cluster bomb. Surely at least one of the sins mentioned will hit the mark. With me, it’s a lot more than one.

Confessing what I have failed to do reveals who I want to be, a picture of who I really am. Christians and Jews claim that humans have been created in the image of God.

Talk about high self-esteem!

I wish I had a bitcoin for every time I’ve heard someone say, “I’m a good person. I don’t steal. I haven’t killed anyone. I pay my taxes, and I vote.”

That’s it?

Talk about low self-worth! Talk about judging oneself according to the lowest ethical standard possible. A bar you can easily step over. Don’t even have to jump. Don’t have to stretch ethically.

Consider the recent blowup in the Oval Office. One friend told me that Zelensky started it. Another called it an ambush by Trump and Vance. You have to blame someone for starting it don’t you?

A low ethical bar perspective says, “The other side started it. I’m just responding in kind. An eye for an eye.”

But what if you see yourself as being created in God’s image, as being, as we say these days, the adult in the room? What if you are not responsible for the wrong done, but nevertheless have the response-ability to refuse to perpetuate the cycle of violence?

What if you as a politician say, “I will work for you” instead of “I will fight for you”?

I’m not talking about semantics here. I’m talking about an introspective perspective that attends to the enemy within ourselves before trying to deal with what we perceive to be the enemy outside ourselves, aka “the other guy.”

Take the log out of your own eye, the ancient text tells us, and you’ll be able to see clearly enough to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

James Hoggan wrote a book titled, I’m Right and You’re an Idiot, in which he argues that “the most pressing environmental problem we face today is not climate change. It is pollution in the public square, where a smog of adversarial rhetoric, propaganda and polarization stifles discussion and debate, creating resistance to change and thwarting our ability to solve our collective problems.”

I wish I had a bitcoin for every time I heard one of my progressive neighbors say, “MAGAs are just a bunch of uneducated idiots.”

A few weeks ago I went to a workshop called, “How to Disagree Better,” put on by a national group called Braver Angels. 

In that workshop we were told that the way to begin disagreeing better is to listen to people with whom you disagree — who think differently than you do — so well that when they are finished laying out their point of view, you are able to repeat back to them accurately what they just said. 

Listening well can break down defensiveness in others and build trust. It means that I approach the “other” not as an enemy but as a potential ally, like I would talk to my spouse whom I love when I disagree with her.

Julian Adorney is a member of Braver Angels who has posted online how he views the solution to our “cultural environmental problem.”

He begins with a clarifying statement. “Civility isn’t just a desire to find common ground, or to bury our differences and sing kumbaya with people who disagree with us. It’s not a desire for ideological unity, a jettisoning of our core convictions, or a refusal to engage in healthy conflict.”

The great scientist, Archimedes, made his famous statement, “Give me a place on which to stand, and I will move the earth.” 

Taking the log out of my own eye is a really good place to stand. Wanting to reconcile with you rather than defeat you, a good place to begin.

This Lent, how about instead of fasting from chocolate, let’s fast from the need to win and learn to disagree better?