Swipe Left or Swipe Right

Swipe Left or Right

Since I have been married for decades, I have never used dating apps that suggested one swipe left for a person in whom we see no potential for a relationship. One swipes- right when something in the person’s looks, description, job, or interests captures attention because of attraction. This part of technology can leave a person to wonder; do I swipe right or left more often when I see someone?

I will confess to making surface judgments many times, though less often as life experiences have proved my surface judgments wrong many times. As a person with a faith that challenges me to see value in every person, little room exists for swiping left. Yet swiping right requires more love and energy for others than I naturally feel every day.

Brandon Heath has a song, Give Me Your Eyes; it presents a request to have God’s eyes when looking at people. The chorus includes the lines, “Give me Your eyes for just one second; Give me Your eyes so I can see Everything I keep missin’. Give me Your love for humanity. Give me Your love for the broken-hearted, the ones that are far beyond my reach. Give me Your heart for the ones forgotten; Give me Your eyes so I can see.”

There would be lots of love and wisdom in such eyesight, but also pain. Sometimes people swipe left because they have reached the end of their own emotional, physical, intellectual, and spiritual strength. Absorbing facts of one more heartbreak, one more grief, one more insurmountable problem would be the proverbial straw that could break the camel’s back; so sadly, the choice to swipe left is made for anyone we do not know and have no responsibility toward.

Who swipes right when life is far more than dating apps? In this time of isolation over pandemic worries and natural disasters, many more people have pulled back from swiping right in person, but have given help through APPS like Crowd Funding; Go Fund Me, Charity Miles, Share the Meal, Givelify, Special Project Groups, Local Aid Organizations, and traditional help organizations like The Salvation Army, the Red Cross, and others. Generosity helps us to feel better but does not connect us like a sense of belonging to one another. We need interactions as humans do not have a live-alone design in their essence. How fortunate people are who have had others to belong with during these tough pandemic years of social isolation.

Ultimately, though humans are meant for community, less human contact still enables us to swipe left or right when challenged to care for and respect another person, especially those who do not fit what we value. Even with those we know, how often do we call? Send an email or an actual bit of snail mail? If someone comes to mind often in one day, do we remember that could be God’s prodding because the person needs to hear from someone?

Do we go to the same store often? Do we know any of the clerks’ names? Do we try to have simple conversations with people, saying something to show we acknowledge them as fellow human beings, not just someone waiting on us or someone taking up space in the line? Do we talk to the people outside stores collecting for a charity or selling cookies? Do we speak to a teenager as we would to a favorite niece or nephew? Do we look past odd clothes, hairstyles, and mannerisms to see a person? Do we see what our culture has taught us to see, what we want to see, or do we see a person who has value, a person who might be desperate for a kind word or action? Who do we help to have a connection that makes them feel like they matter, that they belong?

Do we swipe left or swipe right?

I ask all these questions here in Blog 1 of Belonging because I ask them

of myself every day.