Beyond Us vs. Them: Wrestling with A Vision of Goodness

I struggle a lot with binary thinking.

Trump voters vs. Harris voters.

(And, while we’re at it, voters vs. non-voters.)

LGBTQ+ community vs. institutional faith communities.

Dog lovers vs. cat lovers.

Cellphone lovers vs. me

At heart, I know a lot of flawed assumptions underlie such thinking.

For example, my friends Cathy and Jane had a canine-and-feline household for years until their beloved pup, Gus, passed away. I felt as bad for them as I would have if either of their cats had died.

Still, this binary dynamic has shaped a lot of my world view. And none more than good vs. evil.

Maybe it was my childhood exposure to comic book heroes.

Maybe my Catholic school understanding of original sin. Or maybe, as an adolescent, watching Roots, Holocaust or Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.

In Myers-Briggs language, my profile is ESFJ.

And that “J,” judging, is a trait I recognize often in my routine.

It doesn’t necessarily mean ‘judgmental.’ But it does mean a quick summing up of situations, things, people – classifying as x, y or z – to make it easier for me to understand how they fit in my life or I in theirs.

And yes, sometimes it does result in judgment.

That’s why reading Greg Boyle’s latest book, “Cherished Belonging,” has been one of the most difficult things I’ve done.

I had to put the book down several times, sometimes for a day or more before picking it back up to re-engage with Boyle and his thoughts about, as the subtitle notes, “The healing power of love in divided times.”

Boyle is a Jesuit Catholic priest. His first book, Tattoos on the Heart, introduced the world to Homeboy Industries:

the Los Angeles enterprise he founded in 1988 and nurtured alongside generations of people putting their gang involvement behind them.

Throughout Cherished Belonging, Boyle weaves anecdotes, often as humorous as they are revelatory, from his homies to support his argument. And Boyle’s argument, at least as old as the Hebrew Scriptures, remains provocative: “We are all unshakably good.” Whatever despair, trauma or mental illness overshadows that goodness does not destroy it.

As I understood Boyle, the summing up we do is not itself a problem. The problems come from judgments – and definitely any resulting distance – that flow from it.

Why did I struggle so much reading it?

Certainly, not because of Boyle’s writing, which is always engaging, often simultaneously wry and tender.

Rather, in Lent 2025, the daily news makes me feel like the world is experiencing an ongoing sorrow of Good Friday – without a certain hope that Easter lies just beyond.

I realize there’s a lot of binary thinking underlying that feeling. So much so that it’s difficult to open my mind and heart to Boyle’s premise of unshakable goodness and the need for one community dedicated to healing for all.

Yet, as I came back time and again, I found the book’s passages touching my heart. Here are just a few:

“It isn’t that ‘the cruelty is the point,’ but, rather, that ‘the cruelty … points.”

“It points beyond itself to things that need our attention. It points to mental anguish, wounds, damage and trauma that need our healing. Does the cruelty always point to such things? Yes. No exceptions. Accompanying gang members has taught me this.”

“There is no looking away from hate, but what if hate is not what we think it is?

“Do we ‘stand up to it’ – or do we get underneath it, so it can be healed?”

“To be clear: ‘Us and Them’ language is the opposite view of the God we actually have.”

“God doesn’t see ‘victims and victimizers’ but only ever sons and daughters.”

“All the worst adult coping mechanisms merely seek to numb our dread.”

“Our goal, instead, is to be curious about the distress. We let it in, and we become more sturdy as we welcome it.”

“In our movement toward a cherishing community, we can witness the transformation from folks at the margins feeling, perhaps, tolerated but then invited.

“Before long, they see they are being offered inclusion. But the final resting moment comes in belonging.”

Although Boyle does not use the initials of his order in his byline, the book clearly reads as the work of a Catholic Christian.

At the same time, drawing from other faiths as well as psychology and sociology, Cherished Belonging is meant to engage all readers.

And yet, it’s clear in the final chapters that Boyle does take on the “Us” and “Them” dynamic in the contemporary U.S. Catholic Church. He strives to hold to his own arguments in such a way that he doesn’t become caught up in the dynamic. He notes that Pope Francis “proposes a ‘culture of encounter,’ a clear invitation to relational wholeness. It is this positioning that leads to kinship. Nobody vs. Anybody.”

What if I could truly accept that there’s no “Us” vs. “Them”?

Boyle suggests:

“The invitation is to move beyond mere ideology and dualistic thinking. … Maybe we free up our grip on the notion on ‘free will’ and usher in some compassion. Perhaps we can begin to celebrate life more rather than judge it.”

Near the end, he includes an anecdote that spoke straight to my heart.

“During Pride Month, I walked past Southwest Airlines Gate 25 at LAX. The gate was brightly festooned with sparkly streamers and balloons, all in the colors of the Pride flag. Hanging high above the gate agent’s desk were the words ‘Everyone Welcome.’

“I stopped in front of it and I thought,”