Category: Politics Page 3 of 4

I am never more cynical about politics than deep into the election season, something which, in our day, we never completely escape. In reading Mornings on Horseback I’ve been doubly captive, reading about politics while politics consumes center stage in our public life.

Early in his 20s, Theodore Roosevelt was elected a New York State Assemblyman and in that post began to learn the grittier side of political life. On one occasion, he supported a bill which, upon reflection, he later opposed coming to agree with others who argued that it was unconstitutional. In changing his mind and his vote, this is, in part, what he said:

“We have heard a great deal about the people demanding the passage of this bill. Now, anything the people demand that is right it is most clearly and most emphatically the duty of this Legislature to do; but we should never yield to what they demand if it is wrong…. If the people disapprove our conduct, let us make up our minds to retire to private life with the consciousness that we have acted as our better sense dictated; and I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I had acted as I ought not to.” (page 269)

McCullough considered this ill-advised and politically naïve. And perhaps it was a foolish thing to verbally express, but it to me is something I long for in any leader. Leadership is not ignoring the people one leads, but it is not being chained to them either. We should elect people who think, consider, decide, and act based upon the best information available to them, and not according to the most powerful lobbyist or latest poll. God, give us such.

This article is one of this week’s most emailed stories from the pages of the NY Times. It tells of a woman who stormed a Loveland, Colorado art gallery and destroyed a painting reportedly portraying Jesus having sex with a male.

The artist says that it was a commentary on abuses in the Roman Catholic church. The iconoclast says that it desecrated her Lord.

So, do we cheer her? Or distance ourselves from her?

When we have read reports of Muslims getting all moody over cartoons depicting Mohammed, we wonder what the big deal is. “Chill,” we say. In a similar vein, in this case, I believe Christians need to chill.

Yes, from what I read of the image, it is offensive. But are we to destroy every offensive representation of Jesus? I find it particularly offensive that Jesus is seen as the champion of the Republican party. I find it offensive that He is preached as the one wanting to provide all my wealth and prosperity. These are desecrations of Jesus.

If we are to take on every offensive portrayal of Jesus, then we should be sending Christian SWAT teams into many churches where He is presented as a mere man whose body rotted in a Palestinian tomb. [Sadly, I’m afraid some might think this is a good idea.]

We should be saddened by such things, but not surprised or overwhelmed.

Paul did not take a hammer to the provocative and idolatrous images in Athens. Rather, the provocation they caused in his spirit led him to do what he could to bring the kingdom of Christ to bear upon the city. He preached.

We must ignore the taunts of the enemy. He wants a fight. What he does not want are faithful Christians living out a Christian life of love before and with their neighbors. And what he does not want is Gospel truth being faithfully proclaimed. But that is the very response we should bring.

So, please, step away from the crowbar.

Follow this link to a public response of the faculty of Covenant Theological Seminary to the sad and frustrating attention being given to one extreme “evangelical” pastor calling for the burning of the Koran.

Apart from the content of the response which is dispassionate and sensible, we can learn a great deal from the APPROACH taken. Two things stand out:

1. The authors of this response have shown great respect to the pastor and his flock by actually READING and interacting with what he has written and said, and not relying on the media distortions of what he MIGHT have written or said. This should always be our policy. Listen before we speak.

Christians have, for example, taken President Obama to task for his ‘support’ of the proposed NYC mosque. But how many took the time to READ what he actually said? (You can do so here.)

This is an important principle. If we are going to be critical, we should exercise great humility in doing so, especially if we have not directly interacted with what we criticize.

2. The authors practice a principle of gospel peace by finding all they can to affirm before they turn their guns to critique. This is so rare, and sadly rare among Gospel believing Christians. There is truth to affirm in a bad movie, in an awful hymn, in a questionable pastoral position, and yes, in a president with whom some have frequent disagreements. To affirm what we can before we critique is merely to practice what we have come to know as the Golden Rule. How many of us want to burn Terry McCoy as viciously as he wants to burn the Koran? We must always find what we can affirm before we criticize.

So, this is an important statement not only for its content but also for its approach. I hope we, at least, learn from it.

Many have referenced or forwarded to me this well stated commentary on the rise of Fox News broadcaster Glenn Beck, as a spokesman for Christian orthodoxy. The blindness with which Christians so easily blend the gospel with a political position is a great sorrow to me, and it is one which this commentator, Russell Moore, exposes with sorrowful insight.

The church has walked this way before. Whenever we allow a person to meld Christian language with a political position, in the end, the Christian message will be harmed. All who support movement, in Beck, or any other, explicitly, or even implicitly by providing the audience, will share in the black spot which will befall the church when this blows apart, as every such movement eventually does.

What I have not seen others reference is Moore’s conclusion, printed below.

The answer to this scandal isn’t a retreat, as some would have it, to an allegedly apolitical isolation. Such attempts lead us right back here, in spades, to a hyper-political wasteland. If the churches are not forming consciences, consciences will be formed by the status quo, including whatever demagogues can yell the loudest or cry the hardest. The answer isn’t a narrowing sectarianism, retreating further and further into our enclaves. The answer includes local churches that preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and disciple their congregations to know the difference between the kingdom of God and the latest political whim.

This is convicting to the church, and challenging to pastors like myself. As many in our congregations mistakingly equate Christian orthodoxy with political conservatism, to critique that conservatism becomes an increasingly dicey proposition when such critique necessarily causes adherents to question the associated orthodoxy.

Nevertheless, we must have the insight, wisdom, and courage to do so, even if such puts us at odds with those who pay our bills.

Amen, here, To Denis Haack.

Read the whole, but I’m struck by these two excerpts:

Talk to young adults who are non-Christians and a significant number are unwilling to seriously consider the claims of Christian faith because they cannot imagine voting Republican.

and

We may not like a particular President or agree with his policies but we are forbidden to be dismissive or disrespectful. Bible believing Christians would be a lot more believable if they actually took their Bibles seriously.

It reminds me of this.

I know that the topic of immigration, legal or otherwise, is a highly charged and emotional issue. I know that people feel very strongly about the matter for many deeply seated personal reasons. I understand that, and do not want anyone to take personally anything I might say about the matter. My concern in this case is not the immigration issue itself. That is a complex issue that politicians tend to avoid because it has no simple answers. My concern is that when those who possess power wield that power in ways that isolate the powerless, the potential for injustice is so great that we should take notice and ponder carefully the implications.

Megan McCardle, a libertarian commentator for the Atlantic Monthly makes the point I want to make very well here. A sample:

If, however, this law could not possibly be passed if it affected the majority, because it’s far too intrusive and would result in a lot of people passing unhappy hours in jail or waiting by the side of the road while the police checked their ID with immigration . . . well, then, it’s probably not something we should be doing to other people, either.

But I encourage the reading of the whole. It’s short.

Three times I have had someone direct my attention to a bumper sticker/T-shirt which has, apparently, become quite the rage among politically conservative Christians. It says “Pray for Obama.” So far so good. But this legitimate concern is linked with a bible verse, Psalm 109:8, and thereby subverted and made despicable.

The Christians who have pointed this out to me, thoughtful men both of them, thought it was funny. The verse referenced reads, in part, “may another take his office.” It was, to them, a clever way of saying, “I wish we had a different president.” It was not a happy thing for me to correct them.

The problem is that they were ignoring the other part of the verse: “May his days be few.”

It is this portion of the verse that leaps out and is deeply offensive to others. To their ears, it is a call for Obama’s death. And I have to say I think THEY in this case are reading it correctly. Taken as a whole, it is offensive.

Let me assume the best, that these were produced as a joke (like ‘baseball’ being mentioned in Genesis 1, “In the big inning…”).

The problem is that that which may be funny when told inside a closed culture may not appear as funny when broadcast outside that culture. To take the inside jokes outside without considering how insensitive they will sound to those not on the inside is very, very careless. It is not loving to those we are called to serve, and it is damaging, further damaging, to the very testimony of love and grace that we believe is integral to the Christian message.

We need to learn to hear with ‘alien ears’ and therefore speak with more gracious lips. And that requires constant repentance and repeated draughts from the fountain of God’s grace.

In the meantime, ditch the bumper stickers and burn the t-shirts. Please.

I tend to vote Republican because I find that I am in general economically and socially conservative. But it is becoming increasingly more embarrassing to live under this banner.

I did not vote for Barak Obama, primarily because of my pro-life convictions. However, the man is our president. I cannot accept the implication made by many that he is unmitigated evil and the sign of impending apocalypse. I have a greater confidence in the providence of God and the resilience of our political system than most, I suppose.

Today’s local paper says that ‘many’ parents are not wanting their children to listen to President Obama’s speech to school children next Tuesday, and our school district is allowing them to opt out. I find this a bit over the top, but schools will always be composed of eccentrics, and so I can overlook it. What really got me was this quote from the chair of the Florida Republican Party:

“I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama’s socialist ideology,” Greer said in a statement. “I do not support using our children as tools to spread liberal propaganda.”

I find this not only embarrassing but naïve as well. It is embarrassing because like him or not, he is our president. He will embrace policies with which I disagree, but he is our president, and is owed the respect that that office gives to him.

But it is naïve as well. Does Mr. Greer and the other parents not understand that schools are all about indoctrination? Not just public schools mind you. SCHOOLS. We home school, and we are all about leading our children to understand the world in a certain way. We are, as it were, ‘using our children to spread a Christian world view’. If he or any of the other parents are concerned about a liberal agenda and see it only in the assumed content of the president’s speech, that is amazingly simplistic.

Please understand: this is not a rant about public schools. I know many who do a wonderful job in those schools. I know many Christians who bring their Christianity to bear in amazing ways in those halls. And I know many parents whose children are prospering there, prospering as Christians.

But any parent with their children in a public school knows that he or she needs to monitor and address what is received there helping the child to embrace what is true, question what is not, and discern the difference. That is called ‘education’. And that is exactly how we ought to approach the president’s address.

I think in protest that I will make sure my son watches the president’s speech on Tuesday. He might just be challenged to pursue something good. And if there is a scary liberal agenda operative, I can think of no better opportunity to hear it, critique it, and learn from it.

I’m ready to sign up for independency. Any reason I shouldn’t?

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UPDATE: Similar thoughts from someone better known here.

To believe that politicians will lie is not to embrace cynicism, but to be wary and wise. To believe that those engaged in a high profile debate of great significance will lie is to simply to grasp the obvious. But when that debate is greatly significant, complex, and politically divisive, the ability to extract truth from the mix is difficult.

In the current US debate regarding health care reform (aka the effort to impose socialized medicine upon an unsuspecting population – choose your preferred label) finding what is true and not true is extremely difficult. The line that has been the most damaging to those pushing for greater government involvement in health care has been that the proposed system would in effect create ‘death panels’. The thinking here is that with the government doling out resources for medical treatment, elderly patients would be denied treatment if it were determined by government regulators that such treatment would not significantly improve the quality of life when measured against the total expense.

(It seems to me that the market now determines this, and the market is no kind arbiter of life and death decisions. But that is beside my point.)

Conservative opponents to (further) government involvement in health care are pushing the ‘death panel’ idea and those supporting proposals now making their way through the legislative process label the idea as a preposterous lie.

My problem is that I think both sides of the debate are capable of manufacturing and massaging reality in order to make their case.

I was intrigued this morning by a reporter on NPR (I know that to some readers I’ve already conceded the case by even listening to NPR, but bear with me) who submitted claims regarding the British system to a British surgeon and government advisor for his factual assessment. He asserted that the claims were not only absurd, but outright lies.

If this reporter were to speak with a different British surgeon or official, would he get a different answer? All things are possible, and that is my problem. I just don’t see how anyone can speak with any certainty on such a politically charged issue in an environment where to so many of the participants in the debate, truth is not as important as victory.

UPDATE: I originally linked to the wrong story. My apologies.