Wanting Politicians to Legislate Moral Behavior Reveals an Enmeshed Church

A recent Matt Taibbi article in Rolling Stone, The Death of a Red State, marks the falling star of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District Representative Marilyn Musgrave. Musgrave is noted for a political career spent fighting for conservative social issues. By working to censor books at the local library all the way to seeking a federal ban on gay marriages, Musgrave seems to view a large part of political work as needing to legislate behavior.

So the question that needs to be answered, needs to be nailed down, is this: just what is the role of government concerning behavior? Government has a budget to balance in order for its programs to run, and many would say that government exists also to protect its citizens. Government certainly may legislate public behavior for protective ends. Traffic laws are designed to curb behavior that might threaten the safety of others, but what about moral behavior? Is legislating personal or moral behavior part of a government’s role?

No. This doesn’t work. Laws wouldn’t eliminate sexual preferences and activities. Laws won’t ensure G-rated literature. Laws aimed at morality aren’t effective because morality occurs bottom-up not top-down. Morality is set in the home and in immediate social environments. Blacking out sections of library books won’t deter persons from wanting to read them.

So why do Christians want politicians who vow to do the impossible and legislate personal and moral behavior. Why do we Christians want to follow leadership that will enforce morality from the top down? Why do we look externally for others to embody our faith? Why is faith not enough? I think it’s because it’s easier to look for someone else to give us our thoughts, feelings, and values concerning complex subjects rather than expending the effort to discover what is right to think, feel, and value.

In the study of family systems they call it enmeshment when a member either blocks another member’s access to their own thoughts, feelings, and values. It’s also enmeshment when a member turns to another to give them their thoughts, feelings, and values. In doing this, the one with the other’s thoughts, feelings, and values looses their own identity in the other and becomes enmeshed with them. Enmeshment is a good picture of Christians in American. We don’t know what to think or feel or value, so please, someone else give it to us.

Christians in America, we need to learn to stand on our feet by our own strength rather than allows looking to lean on the latest church/media/political star. We need to regain our ability and willingness to think critically and bring imagination to the workings of our faith. The authority of the Bible gives us a foundation of what to think, feel, and value concerning so much in the experience of life. With effort, we won’t seek to empower others to legislate behavior, for we will find ourselves capable of both behaving according to our beliefs and truly loving those who behave and believe differently.

Doomsday 2012?

An article by the Associated Press discussed a recent attack by the conservative Christian Right group, Focus on the Family Action, against Barak Obama.  This attack went beyond showing voters Obama’s voting record on abortion or his healthcare plan or even his tax increase on people making over $250,000 a year; the attack instead attempted to give a picture of what America would be like in 2012 under Obama’s presidency.  In this future America is a stark contrast from what it looks like today. A radically different America takes shape in only four years of one man’s presidency.  Among the claims in the attack:

·         A 6-3 liberal majority Supreme Court that results in rulings like one making gay marriage the law of the land and another forcing the Boy Scouts to “hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys.” (In the imagined scenario, The Boy Scouts choose to disband rather than obey).

·         A series of domestic and international disasters based on Obama’s “reluctance to send troops overseas.” That includes terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that kill hundreds, Russia occupying the Baltic States and Eastern European countries including Poland and the Czech Republic, and al-Qaida overwhelming Iraq.

·         Nationalized health care with long lines for surgery and no access to hospitals for people over 80.

Carrie Gordon Earll, who is the senior director of public policy for Focus on the Family Action, stated, “If it is a doomsday picture, than it’s a realistic picture” as a reason for using this type of tactic so close to election day.  Focus on the Family Action also said that the overall reason for the article was to give the big picture of what America will look like if Obama wins the election.  Conservative Christians have been using doomsday rhetoric since the Moral Majority used it during the Reagan election in the 80’s.  Fear tactics are not uncommon during any election year; yet it seems that conservative Evangelicals are able to take this tactic to a new level when they use theological rhetoric in speaking to voters.

In this article two things struck me the wrong way.  The first is the audacity of Carrie Earll to say that, “If it is a doomsday picture, than it’s a realistic picture” and the second is that actually feel the need to use this tactic as a way to get young Evangelicals to side with them.  Both thoughts are wrong and they start to give the picture that conservative Christians just need to show a very radical future and people will start to see the errors of their ways and agree with their views.  It is also easy to see why this tactic has seemed to work in the past.  It’s hard to walk into a Christian bookstore and not see some book, DVD, or a t-shirt that has something to do with the “End Times.”  Many of my friends one time or another have gone to a “Hell House” (depicts what who is in and what hell would be like) or a “Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames” play or just read some or all of the books in the Left Behind series.  All of these sources use doomsday rhetoric as a means to show the audience what it might be like if they do not turn to God.  As a kid growing up in Texas this kind of tactic was common and easily accepted as a means to reaching the lost.  Preachers have been using hell’s fire and brimstone sermons for decades or more and for some they work. 

However, fear tactics do not show the whole picture and those who are affected by them trend to have a shallow faith.  This is why the tactic by Focus on the Family Action is not getting the positive feedback they desired.  Young Evangelicals, me included, are tired of being treated as if all that is needed is to see the big picture around us so that we would know what they know.  The reactions to this tactic will hopefully start to show this organizations that when they result to this act they will not gain the support they so desire.  If you cannot convince us by showing us the facts (hopefully listening to our facts too) then please accept our no and do not try to scare us into supporting you.

I’m Undecided.

Good news!  The New York Times tells me I’m not stupid!  Apparently undecided voters have been getting a bad rap in the media- mostly at the hand of comedians and rabid pundits.  Well, I’m taking solace in the Op-Ed piece “Your Brain’s Secret Ballot” in the October 27, 2008 edition.  The piece states neuroscientists have found that “Even when it takes no more than a second, decision-making is thought to involve two parts, gathering evidence and committing to a choice…”  These scientists also find there is a trade off in decision making as well, “Commit early and you can get on with your life. Take more time and you might make a wiser or more accurate decision.”  I’d like to think my undecidedness in next week’s election is that I want to make a wise decision and not merely procrastination. 

I’m an undecided voter.  And there a few of reasons for this. 

• I am not comfortable making a decision yet.  I still don’t know enough.  I know, amazing after 20 months of campaigning, but it is hard to see truth through all the campaign mud flinging and hyperbole. 
• “Twice bitten, once shy.”  I’ll admit it, I voted for George W. Bush twice.  The first time getting swept up in the evangelical fervor around him.  The second time holding out hope and almost in defiance of his detractors.  This time around I want to vote my faith, not fervor. 
• I feel a shift in my political beliefs as I am intentionally trying to view the issues through the lenses of my faith.  It is amazing how compartmentalized I have been and embarrassing as a seminary student that I have not done this before.  I still don’t know where this journey will take me or how it will influence my vote next week.  (Although, as I write this I have an inkling- uh oh, maybe I am becoming decided.)  One thing I do know for sure, the journey does not end in the voting booth next Tuesday or get tucked away for another four years.  This is something I intend to be intentional about.

Another publication gives me reassurance that I am not alone in my undecidedness and more importantly in my disenchantment with the way evangelicals have used their voice in politics in recent years.  The November 2008 Sojourners magazine has an article entitled, “The Meaning of Life”.  The authors interviewed several evangelicals across the nation and asking about what it really means to affirm life.  What the authors found is an expanded definition of what it means to be “pro-life” including poverty, environmental, peace, and health care issues.  With the abortion issue so volatile and in a deadlock for so long in our nation, these ideas are breathing new possibilities and solutions to the issue.  It is like opening a window you forgot about into stuffy and stifling room. 

I think many evangelicals are like me.  We’re tired of the same old answers, same old solutions that do not really work, the same old platform.  We are tired of being defined by one or two issues.  We are tired of the same voices speaking for us- voices that are not even speaking in their areas of expertise; we did not elect them and they do not speak for us.  We want creativity, to see the issues with fresh eyes and theologically reflective hearts.  We want to be freed from the myths that beguile Americans and see clearly what can be done in our society by those who have been romanced by Christ and His Kingdom.  I feel like I may be a little late in moving to this viewpoint, but at least I haven’t missed the boat.

Spread the Wealth?…or Opportunity?

John McCain made a campaign stop in Dayton, Ohio on Monday and spent a great deal of time during his speech highlighting the distinction between his and Obama’s views regarding the redistribution of wealth as a solution to our nation’s woes.  Ever since “Joe the Plumber” took center stage in the McCain campaign as the poster boy for the average American in need of lower taxes, Obama has been branded as a neo-Marxist whose evil plan is to take away Americans’ money and give it to…the poor.  The accusations are certainly interesting.  Last week, a reporter from the Dallas Morning News sent some pretty direct questions to Joe Biden that linked Obama to Marxism and Socialism, leading the Obama campaign to cut off the station from future interviews:

And John McCain, in his Dayton speech, literally referred to his opponent as “Barack the Redistributor.”  The discussion (as much as we can call politcal discourse a “discussion”) has managed to highlight the key philosophical differences between the Democratic and Republican parties: does it help everyone more when the government ensures our wealth is shared with the “less fortunate,” or should we trust in the generosity of the American people to give to the poor on their own?  McCain put it this way:

[Obama] believes in redistributing wealth, not in policies that grow our economy and create jobs. He is more interested in controlling wealth than in creating it, in redistributing money instead of spreading opportunity. I am going to create wealth for all Americans, by creating opportunity for all Americans.

For evangelical Christians, the question is an important one, particularly since most who identify themselves with evangelical Christianity also identify themselves with the “opportunity spreading” Republican party.  I just had a conversation the other day with a sincere and informed pastor who asked, “Why does caring for the poor mean you have to be a Democrat?”  Arguably, the connections are a little easier to find.  The Jubilee passages of the Deuteronomic code that called the nation of Israel to periodically cancel all debts and redistribute the wealth to ensure no one got left too far behind certainly seems to allow for a little government intervention in the process, beyond just creating jobs and hoping the poor “catch up.”

On the other hand, the conservative agenda for creating wealth too often gets a bad rap and should not be overlooked.  I believe that fundamentally it is what created this culture of opportunity and it is, even for Democrats, what sustains it.  Taxes on small businesses are particularly dangerous and have the potential  to dramatically and quickly increase the number of unemployed and uninsured.  Still, playing on the fears of Americans still haunted by memories of the threat of Communism is unnecessary.  Marxism is the monster we’re all still afraid will come out from under our bed if we fall asleep.  Call me young and naive, but I seriously doubt we’re in danger of that in any form.  The entire world, not just the United States, has seen the failure of redistribution in its extreme, of unchecked government intervention, of the death of hopes and dreams and oppportunity.  To link any U.S. political candidate in this day and age to that sort of political philosophy is truly a joke, and it’s no wonder why Biden responded the way he did to the reporter who tried.

Still, the legitimate concern underneath the slander remains: what’s the best way to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens?  Can the American people be trusted to share the wealth they make with the opportunities they receive?  Is opportunity enough to ensure “the least of these” make it?  Or, are we asking of the government what we should really be asking of the Church?  If the government doesn’t help spread our wealth to the poor – or even if they do! – are we, as followers of Christ, willing to radically share our wealth with those who need it?  Are we willing to bring them into our homes, to share our meals, to help them find jobs, to affirm their worth and identity as fellow humans?  Are we willing to allow them to interrupt our lives so that a kingdom community can break through?

Whether Barack the Redistributor or the McCain of Opportunity wins next week, these questions will remain for Christians.  We must continue to ask how the government should best redistribute wealth, but me must not ask them to do it for us.  The way of Jesus is more personal and risky than that.

Pro-Life Hypocrisy

A couple of days ago I posted this sentence as my Facebook status, “Eric is saying if you’re Pro-Life you should be Pro-Life in every aspect. This means anti-death penalty, ANTI-WAR, and anti-assisted suicide.”  I got a lot of response from it; some agreeing, some disagreeing and some confused on whether this view is Democrat or Republican.  To me, it’s neither Democrat nor Republican, it’s Christian.

 

I personally believe it’s hypocritical to be Pro-Life and not against the rest of these issues I listed.  Genesis 1:26a says, “Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…”  and Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created humankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”  Life has value not because a person is good or bad but because that life (every life) is created in God’s image.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a baby, a serial killer, a dictator, a Christian, a Muslim, a senior citizen, “The Enemy”, an atheist or a friend.  But let’s put some faces on the image of God; Sudom Husain, George W. Bush,  Britney Spears, Joe the Plumber, Timothy McVay, Osama bin Laden, Bono, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Paul Newman, Adolf Hitler, John McCain, or Martin Luther King Jr.  These people were all, whether you like them or not, created in God’s image.

 

Some people are pretty upset about the new movie W. because director Oliver Stone, who is known to be very liberal, presented President George W. Bush as a real human being with struggles that we should sympathize with.  I agree that George W. Bush is a horrible president but he’s still a human being and I applaud Oliver Stone for presenting him as one.  I think we loose sight of truly following the way Jesus when we stop looking at people as created in God’s image and start seeing them as something else.  Shane Claiborne says in his book Jesus for President, “If you want to see the image of God, look in a mirror.”  I agree with that statement, but I would add, “or look at the person sitting next to you on the bus.”

 

David Bazan sings in his song Backwoods Nation sarcastically, “Calling all rednecks to put down their sluggers. And turn their attention from beating the buggers. To pick up machine guns and kill camelfuckers, backwoods nation.”  I find it interesting that some (not all) of these people that want to kill these so called “camelfuckers” are some of the same people that are Pro-Life.  I just don’t understand it.  Especially, when Jesus said in Matthew 5:44, “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…” and the writer of Proverbs 25:21-22 says, “If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat; and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink; for you will heap coals of fire on their heads, and the LORD will reward you.”  I don’t believe it’s our job to kill “good” or “bad” people.  I believe it’s our job to love them and see them as a creation of God, in His image.  This is one man’s opinion, what do you guys/girls think?

 

Manufactured Versions of Reality.

The book, Modernity and the Hegemony of Vision, is a collection of essays that explores ethics, power, and knowledge in an effort to understand the hegemony of vision. Given the influence of modernism, attention is given to ocularcentrism and the nature of visual understanding in modern thought. The essays include both affirmative and negative viewpoints regarding the idea that thought is predominantly influenced by what the eye sees. The following is quoted from the current issue of Christianity Today, and I think it suggests the impact of creating “image” and that as Christians, we are not immune to it:
“Reagan, who was divorced, did not attend church, and gave less than 1 percent of his income to charity, hardly delivered on any of evangelicals’ expectations as president, William Morris noted in a CT article after Reagan died. ‘What Reagan did give evangelicals, in great abundance, was sympathetic affirmation in the form of photo ops. For many, that was enough.’” … “Northland Church senior pastor Joel Hunter [said] ‘Pro-lifers of both parties can support Sen. Obama on the basis that more lives will be saved than if they had just taken a moral stance hoping to overturn Roe v Wade.’ The reporters on the press conference call were incredulous and kept pointing out that pro-life Democrats had lost. But Hunter and the others were insistent. They hadn’t lost. The had been included.” Christianity Today, October 2008.

I believe that our American culture is indeed very influenced by what is seen, and that the sound-bite nature of our news media exacerbates the condition. I am professionally a visual communicator and teach graphic design, so I know that visual information can impact viewers. I am concerned that as we “consume” (goods, information, music, etc.) we are using our “eyes” as the primary source of information, attempting to decode signs and signifiers that can be culturally misleading. I know that while my students are very bright, they do not like to read – in the form of books nor online resources.
I happened to listen to the last presidential debate on the radio. While I could ascertain an amount of enmity between the candidates, I was not aware of the many gestures and postures that each candidate displayed. Only after the debate, did I learn of how the images that each candidate portrayed on television influenced peoples’ reactions, not unlike the Kennedy-Nixon debates. Indeed, last week the Los Angeles Times reported “Not since the Kennedy-Nixon race has television played such a significant role in a presidential election. The ‘Saturday Night Live’ skewerings, the David Letterman-John McCain feud, the political meltdowns on ‘The View,’ the Gov. Sarah Palin interviews, Obama’s World Series lead-in (if there’s a Game 6) and, of course, the debates. … If you think this is all silly and unimportant, then you haven’t been paying much attention to American culture. The Obama campaign knows its strengths enough to make the extraordinary purchase of the half-hour leading up to a World Series game. … the McCain campaign hasn’t been very smart about television in general.” (Los Angeles Times, Friday, October 24, 2008. page E1)

My concern is not that we not have access to visual information but that our culture learns to take steps that leads to more reflective opportunities for thoughtful decision-making. And that even, if we continue to value the “hegemony of vision” that people learn to decode the visual information that they are partaking of. As David Dark writes, “… we’ve found ourselves in a cultural climate that appears increasingly unlikely to promote the skills required to think coherently about ourselves or to properly converse with each other. The trouble with a sound-bite culture that resents complexity and lacks the patience to listen to (ore read) any account of people, places, or events that doesn’t somehow prove we’re in the right is that is eventually becomes a sort of playback look playing over in our heads even when we aren’t tuned in to television, radio, or computer screen. … popular media culture in America … views thoughtfulness as a weakness … militant ignorance passes itself off as integrity …” (The Gospel According to America, 29)

$10 billion a month… to bin Laden’s buddies?

“While I was looking at these destroyed towers [by a US-aided Israeli bombardment] in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women.  …  If Bush says we hate freedom, let him tell us why we don’t attack Sweden, for example.  It is known that those who hate freedom do not have dignified souls.”  (BBC, “Exerpts: Bin Laden Video,” October 29, 2003, as quoted in Jesus for President, 280.)

One of the ideas Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw emphasize in their book Jesus for President is the fact that when you respond to violence and hate with an illogical demonstration with love, you throw your enemy off.  It’s hard to predict what exactly will happen next–but rest assured, it’s unlikely to be the same as if we were both playing the retaliation game.  Given our inexperience with such nontraditional methods, it might be worth testing out.

So what are the craziest almost-not-but-maybe-barely-feasible ideas you can come up with to surprise bin Laden with radical love toward the Islamic world?  (Right now we’re supposedly spending about $10 billion a month in Iraq and Afghanistan…)

Here’s a mere half year in of possibilities:

$10 billion in January: Providing 90.9% of the aid needed annually to achieve universal primary education by 2015 earns an A.

$10 billion in February: Giving $500 to 20 million entrepreneurs lacking access to credit.  (I messed up my math on this one, so at first I thought this would be helping out 10-20% of the 1 to 1.9 billion Muslims in the world… but if we made it $100 each, I guess we could help 5-10% of the poorest people?)

$10 billion in March: Provide 100% of the funds needed annually to have clean water and sanitation for everyone in the world by 2015.

$10 billion in April: Or if you’re someone that likes the idea of money going directly into people’s pockets rather than the government, we could always give an additional $313.58 to the 31,889,923 residents of Afghanistan this year.  It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it would nearly double the per capita GDP (from $350, or $733 PPP).

$10 billion in May: We could also give $5-10 to each of the 1-1.9 billion Muslims in the world.  Hmm… maybe we could buy them each a T-shirt or cake or pretty tea cup (tea is popular in Northern Africa, I know– I’m not sure where else).  Or among a small collection of goodies we could send them each an olive branch or a dove or something…  hmm…

$10 billion in June: To get an inside view of Islamic countries throughout the world, we could spend $45,000 (well over a necessary salary, travel expenses, etc.) to send 222,222 representatives to various locales to hang out and get to know Iraqi, Afghan, etc. people as people.  Alternately, we could always fund programs like, oh, say, maybe study abroad for college students?

What other ideas can you come up with?  How do you think bin Laden would react?

Silence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

My knowledge and understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is very limited. Quite frankly, when someone talks about the matter, headaches start pressing on and I just want to put my mind to something simpler, quantum physics or something. I wonder if the candidates feel the same way or at least know that many voters react like me. In addition to the complexity and lack of success in previous attempts to resolve the conflict, there are probably not many votes to win from constructive proposals for the Unites States’ role in resolving the conflict.

In the three presidential debates the discussion on Israel has been limited to the necessity of stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Both candidates strongly supports the right to existence of the State of Israel, and rightfully sees it as an imperative to stop Iran—whose president wants to extinguish Israel—from developing the means to do that.

Both candidates not only acknowledge the right to existence of Israel but view Israel as a very important ally and partner. On the McCain campaign’s official websitehis views on the conflict is symptomatically filed under “National Security”; the emphasis is on the importance for the American people with little concern for suffering Palestinians or Israelis (www.johnmccain.com). When talking about the Middle East the emphasis is also here on the Iranian threat but McCain does spend a few words on Palestine. McCain hopes “the talks between Israel and the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will yield progress toward peace,” but does not mention any involvement from the US. I cannot find whether McCain an independent Palestinian state. (

Obama says he will work towards a solution with two states living side by side in peace (barackobama.com). Like McCain, Obama does not mention any plans for specific US involvement in the peace-making, but “he will encourage the strengthening of the Palestinian moderates who seek peace.” Excuse me Obama, that statement has about as much substance as a Miss America contestant advocating peace to the world.

I believe the peace process needs the muscle of Uncle Sam leaning onto both parties of the conflict to move anywhere. I urge the next president to line up with other nations and actively work for a two-state solution. But there is a major problem: in a democratic election in Palestine the terrorist organization Hamas came to control the Palestinian parliament. Western democracies usually talk with legally elected governments, but don’t negotiate with terrorists. So how to deal with Hamas? It looks like both parties recipe is to do nothing, just wait and hope that some non-terrorists will win the next election.

I believe this is indicative of how counter-productive the label “terrorist” can be. An organization can be both a political party playing by the rules of a democracy, and have a history of horrible terrorist activities. The terrorist-label divides the world in black and white, but that is not how reality works. Hamas is probably not very trustworthy, but I am not satisfied with the candidates not being willing to get their hands dirty and engage in peace-making between Israel and Palestine.

This Side of Heaven

KCRW ran a fascinating interview on Sunday between Kurt Anderson and Sarah Vowell, a historian who has just written a sardonic little account of Puritain origins in Massachusettes Bay colony, which points out how many of their ideas are still floating around in the words of contemporary American politicians and politicians-elect (KCRW hasn’t posted their archive of the interview yet, but here’s NPR’s interview with Vowell, and a great little excerpt from her book: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95469284). A particular section of the excerpt caught my attention. It is a colorful comment on how the “New Isreal” myth of America typified by Reverend John Cotton’s sermon, “God’s Promise to his Plantation”, has directed much of America’s foreign policy for over two centuries:

“By the time Cotton says amen, he has fought Mexico for Texas, bought Alaska from the Russians, and dropped napalm on Vietnam. Then he lays a wreath on Custer’s grave and revs past Wounded Knee. Then he claps when the Marquis de Lafayette tells Congress that “someday America will save the world.” Then he smiles when Abraham Lincoln calls the United States “the last best hope of earth.” Then he frees Cuba, which would be news to Cuba. Then he signs the lease on Guantánamo Bay.”

Sarah Vowell is raising a powerful point here. Isn’t it ironic that a nation which prides itself so much on the separation of church and state, still operates so obviously out of this heavily theocratic mindset? Do we still believe that America is God’s nation on earth? Do we as Americans have a special calling, as George W. Bush would say, “from beyond the stars” to spread freedom and democracy and peace and justice and liberty? If so, where is this calling from, what is its nature, and how are we to go about enacting it? Is our idea of freedom, peace, justice, and the rest, even similar to that of the world’s? To God’s? I think its time to make some tough decisions, and some practical measures regarding this ever prevalent “New Isreal” myth.

As Robert Jewett explains in his book Mission and Menace, it was the millennial mindset of New Engalnd Puritans, which placed America at the apex of God’s true intentions for his earth, and “gave to all succeeding American events a continuing cosmic importance” (Jewett, 30). Though Jewett shows how the Puritain’s theocratic project in New England was quickly dissolved in favor of religious tolerance, implicit is the idea that many of their theocratic arguments and tactics have survived (in perhaps a more secular form) in the American civil religion “to this day” (Jewett, 43). Thus when Barrack Obama, echoing Lincoln, makes the secular patriotic claim that America is the “last best hope on earth”, he is perhaps relating more to “American Fundamentalists and Islamic and Israeli Theocrats” (Jewett, 43), than he could know, or would probably be comfortable with.

A dose of widespread, popular, even-handed historical acknowledgement is what is needed here, resonant somewhere between Howard Zinn and my third grade Social Studies teacher. We need to change the stories that our story-tellers are telling, from our grade school book reports, to our pundit’s campaign speeches. An authentic, humble, rational view of ourselves, might just help us actually be that city on the hill we are always claiming to be. It might show that we are open to critique, open to our own fallacy, and willing to make some real concrete decisions about who we are as a people, and what our actual place in the world might be.

When we propel the “New Israel” myth we are silencing the voices of the genocided people groups whose land we work, play, and build on every day. We ignore the slaves on whose backs our entire civilization has been built. We uncritically allow public policy which infringes on our personal freedom, and foreign policy which infringes on public accountability. Most importantly, perhaps, like a church which decrees it’s own spiritual infallibility, we inhibit our own ability to acknowledge error, and propagate positive change.

In Sarah Vowell’s KCRW interview, she says that Thomas Jefferson is a perfect embodiment of our national identity. He is a secular King David, a man who can pen what is perhaps one of the most beautiful statements of equality in history, and yet rape one of his own slaves. It’s time to get off of our pedestal. It’s not about being down on America. It’s not about being pessimistic about either our roots or our future. Rather it’s about being honest. It’s about seeing this place we live, not as a city on a hill, but as a city. Tony Campolo is famously quoted as saying, “we live in the best Babylon in the world, but its still Babylon.” Great. Its good to love America. Lets just be careful on which side of the eschaton we place it.

Life Lessons from Calvin and Hobbes

 

Last night, as I was strolling along the sidewalk, I was thinking about the definitiveness with which people can say, “Republican,” or, in turn, “Democrat.”  I was thinking specifically about my family, and how, in this upcoming election, they make it seem so simple.  They say that there is a right way to vote and a wrong way to vote.  Period.

There is something about the effect of this that sits terribly wrong with me.  If there is a right and a wrong way to vote, that can be equated to a right and a wrong person to vote for.  Now, there is nothing that I see inherently wrong with that.  But!  If you begin to head down this road, isn’t it awfully easy to turn these candidates into good and evil?  And this is what I see happening during my family’s political discussions.  There is a candidate that is riding in on his horse, prepared and able to sustain our great country, and there is a candidate that is creeping in the back door, ready to devour any semblance of goodness and purity.  We have moved from critiquing the act to critiquing the actor, from despising the book to despising the author, from throwing out the food to throwing out the chef…from hating the belief to hating the person.

And then I ask myself, ITSTJWBLTR?  Is This Something That Jesus Would Be Likely To Recommend?  That’s my lame attempt at spinning a cliché.  I’m sorry.  But really…Did Jesus, the greatest teacher on morality, ever attack a person based on something they did or someone they had become?  While not being tolerant of the wrongful actions in one’s life, he seemed much more inclined to simply love on them.  Sharing a meal is not something you readily do with a person you hate.  Instead of showing disapproval for the person, he said love them and instead of teaching us to fix people, he said to leave that up to God. 

But, I wonder, if John or Barack showed up on our doorstep, with what kind of attitude would we treat them?  Would we invite them in with a genuine hospitality and lovingness or would we begrudgingly serve them warm tap water and stale cookies?  And to make this more evident, what will we say when asked, “What do you think of the election?”  Will we criticize the policies or the person?

In his fabulous book titled The Gospel According to America, David Dark writes, “The biblical witness, in my view, is a countertestimony to all our antihuman reductions as it calls us to pray for, love, and radically seek the welfare of anyone we’ve come to view as the enemy.  And God’s faithfulness to all generations will always surpass whatever we think we know about people and what they deserve.”

I remember this Calvin and Hobbes comic from the good ol’ days.  

If Jesus cannot teach us something, maybe Calvin can.