God & Politics
Who Would Jesus Vote For?
Their heroine was, of course, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin,
whose big hair and shrill voice made her sound
like every well-off stay-at-home soccer mom I’ve
ever met. I’m not a big fan of soccer moms. That
simply was not my experience. People who don’t
work have a very different view of the world
from people who do, from people who struggle.
They tend to get fixated on minutiae like when
are their neighbors going to mow their lawns and
what time the mail arrives. Soccer moms with
mini vans are not necessarily rich, but their
worldview is so different, usually so much
smaller than the planet actually is, that it
makes being around them a real chore. Having one
of these people take the oath of office of
president of the United States ranks among my
worst nightmares. Palin barely made it through a
relatively softball interview with ABC News
Anchor Charlie Gibson who, at times, spoke so
softly to Palin it made me wonder if he was
perhaps afraid of waking the baby. Palin
provided canned answers and campaign talking
points while running out the clock with useless
political filler. As expected, her grasp on
foreign affairs was quite weak, and, in general,
her replies seemed right out of the George Bush
playbook. While claiming the mantel of the
"change" candidate. Palin's feebly-defines
positions on key issues virtually mirrored those
of the current president, including the Bush
Doctrine of preemptive engagement, a question
Palin stumbled badly on.
Despite intense efforts to keep Palin separated
from the press (she has not held one news
conference and has yet to do the Sunday shows or
news magazines), the fourth estate is
nonetheless digging and digging hard into Palin,
doing what the McCain campaign should have:
Investigate To Discover ("VET" or "VETTING").
The picture that is emerging is a fairly uneven
one. Despite her claims to Christian values and
her giant Republican hair, her record and her
stated values don’t always add up.
Game Change: Palin's nomination shook up the race.
Nobody Doesn't Like Sarah P.
It is both her pregnant teen daughter who, for all we know, is
being forced into a marriage destined to fail—I mean, look at
that poor boy’s face—and the fact Palin went back to work just
two days after giving birth to a son who suffers from Down
Syndrome that causes me to question her claim to be able to be a
good mom and good veep at the same time. Marriage is a sacrament
ordained by God, not to be entered into lightly nor for the sake
of Palin's political campaign, but reverently, discreetly,
advisedly, soberly, and in the fear of God. Therefore, I am
persuaded the engagement is a lie. It is there for the campaign.
I believe her daughter's wedding hinges entirely on whether or
not the Republicans win the White House which, besides being
shameful ethics, puts the lie to Palin's claim to devout
Christianity as she exploits the sanctity of marriage for
political purposes. Of course, Palin's pregnant daughter is an
off-limits topic for this woman of faith, this paragon of
virtue. If Barack Obama had a pregnant daughter and had tried to
ban books and fire troopers and went back to work two days after
his Down Syndrome son arrived—this convention would be talking
about nothing else.
But Republican convictions are relative: that’s what I hate
about fundamentalism and, frankly, fundamentalists. If you
believe something, then believe it. The pregnant daughter forces
me to question what values, if any, are being taught in the
Palin home. If Palin’s values are her husband’s values, if they
are her children’s values. Sure, kids make mistakes—black teens
most especially. I am in no way judging the kid herself, but
it’s reasonable to assess what someone claims to be by the
evidence of their lives.
I'm not in the habit of quoting the National Enquirer, but it's
worth noting it was the Enquirer that broke the John Edwards
baby scandal among many others, and that the supermarket tabloid
has won most every lawsuit filed against it, making it the most
reliable cheat sheet on the racks these days. Palin headlines
the current issue which claims Palin had an affair, her son
Track has a history of OxyContin addiction, and pregnant
daughter Bristol was a pot-smoking libidinous partier whom Palin
kicked out of the house when she discovered the teen was
pregnant.
Looking at the GOP love fest, all I saw was an ocean of white
folks gathered to attack a black man. Now, mind you, had Hillary
prevailed, they would have likely been even meaner. But the
conservative rhetoric was so phony, so plastic, and so
selective—these folks celebrating—applauding—Palin's pregnant
daughter as some paragon of virtue, applauding her for an
unquestionably selfish act (and a likely cry for help: the
underage daughter of a sitting governor having unprotected sex)
and dragging this equally stupid and selfish teenage boy into
the glare of the national spotlight—then applauding them?!? The
GOP apologizing to them, falling just short of giving them a
medal?! This stuff was just shameless. These people
are…Christians? This is Christian conduct?
This is why people scoff at and dislike Christians: the
inconsistency of our values. If that was Barack Obama’s pregnant
teenage daughter, these very same people would be going to town.
They would shame her, exploit her and drag her through the mud.
Barack Obama could never have won his party's nomination with an
unmarried, underage pregnant daughter. He could never get the
Republicans to shut up about it. Nobody would be applauding her.
These Republicans are hypocrites. These so-called "values
voters" are hypocrites. They see what they choose to see and
apply their so-called values selectively, in ways the benefit
them. And their defensive stance about how inappropriate it is
to ask Palin if she can be vice president (or, potentially,
president) and raise her kids at the same time exploits the
ignorance of their conservative base. Palin has sneered back,
“Well, I’m a governor raising five kids…”), a claim that
entitles us to question how good a job she’s doing. Also, if you
don’t want us to make inquiries about your pregnant daughter,
stop trotting her out for applause and bows every chance you
get. Bristol, Palin’s daughter, appears to enjoy the
attention—which may have been what she’s wanted after all along,
but it’s impossible to say. Any insight into her or her
boyfriend/shotgun-fiancée (whose MySpace page was coincidentally
taken down shortly after the Palin nomination) is blocked.
There’s an awful lot of lying
going on. Even ultra-conservative Fox News and Karl Rove, the
legendary Republican strategist responsible for some of the most
vile campaign tactics in modern political history, has said
McCain's ads go too far. Oh, I have no doubt there’s a bunch of
lying going on across the aisle in the Obama camp, too. But the
GOP thing is just so full of dog biscuits that it stinks up my
room watching it. McCain seems to have arrived at the conclusion
that, yes, he can win this thing, but he'll have to win dirty.
He won't win on his ideas or his vision, he'll win only by
making us afraid of the Other. He is running a cheap,
disingenuous campaign of smears and lies. Christians backing
this candidate simply because he's pro-life while choosing to
not see how slimy and underhanded his campaign tactics are are
just kidding themselves. "It's our Christian duty," I've been
told, to support conservative candidates and to push for change
in government. Jesus Christ did not once try to ban anything. I
mean, the Romans were crucifying thieves for Pete's sake. Did
Jesus organize a temple boycott? Did He petition the governor?
Did He print up campaign bumper stickers? Jesus did not try and
change the government. You want to fight abortion? Create
disciples. Stop trying to do at the ballot box what you've
failed to do in the pulpit. The politicization of religion has
nothing—zero—to do with Christ or His ministry. There is
absolutely no biblical model for it. And voting for someone we
know, for a fact, is ethically disingenuous on the basis of
Christian duty is entirely wrongheaded.
I have this neighbor who has this huge dog that barks
constantly. But when I complain about the dog’s barking, the
neighbor becomes argumentative and hostile. He claims his dog
doesn’t bark, a claim that’s difficult to hear over the dog’s
barking. The dog barks so loud and so much that I have to
actually go sit in my car inside my garage with the windows
rolled up in order to talk on the phone. Seriously. And this guy
routinely dumps his huge, barkity-bark dog out in the yard, gets
in his car and drives off. It is, perhaps, the most selfish
behavior I’ve ever seen. Beyond that, he’s gone door-to-door,
rallying the neighbors against me, successfully painting me as a
bad neighbor, essentially because I complain about his dog. One
woman stood outside my house yelling, “Why don’t you just move!”
In four years, none of them—not one—has ever asked me my side of
the story. They just took this guy’s word for whatever and
decided to hate me.
This is what politicians do. They cause the problem. And when
you call them on it, they become hostile and argumentative, then
attack you for pointing out they’re the ones causing the
problem. Then they go door-to-door rallying the angry mob
against you for daring to point out they’re the ones who caused
the problem. It is, in the end, desperately selfish and childish
behavior. These people are lying. These people are evil. As
Christians, we’ll hear appeals, mostly from white evangelicals,
to vote our convictions—which usually means abortion, gay
marriage and stem cell research; the same three phony issues
that got George W. Bush re-elected. White evangelicals voted for
him based on that stuff, turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the
ethical and moral failures of the Bush administration, the lying
that led to this mess in Iraq and last week's near-collapse of
the U.S. economy among many, many other failures of the Bush
administration. My dog doesn't bark.
Personally, I’d tend to encourage people to vote their
convictions as well, but in a different sense: vote for the
candidate who best personifies those qualities of Christ. Vote
for the candidate who lies less, who is less mean, who is less
ruthless. Who is kinder. Who speaks to our hopes and not our
fears. My bumper sticker might read, “Vote For The Grown-Up.”
Will Obama pass the Galatians test? Probably not. I'm not
talking about a moral test, I'm talking about personal qualities
indicative of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And they will
know you are my disciples by the love you show one for another.
It deeply concerns me that people, including blacks voting for
Obama just because, are content to put image over substance.
These folks are ready to put a second-rate vice president a
heartbeat away from a 72-year old four-time cancer survivor who
shouldn’t be playing golf, let alone running for president. A
man running around with placards reading COUNTRY FIRST, but
whose selection of a reportedly vindictive soccer mom as running
mate was a clearly political decision, one that can and will
cost the Republicans big if this thing goes south. John McCain
has every GOP heavyweight he can find out in front of cameras
lying. Lies that will come back to haunt them come re-election
time. “Sarah Palin is qualified to assume the office of
president.” A lie. And most of these Republican pundits are so
clearly uncomfortable defending her, you can all but see them
seething at McCain for having put them in that position. In the
selection of Sarah Palin, nobody, and I mean nobody, believes
John McCain put country first. He put himself, his candidacy
first.
Christian conservatives, still playing the
anti-abortion-anti-gay-anti-stem-cell pedal on the organ, seem
energized by Palin, whose policy positions—the little we know of
them—do not measurably differ from those of President Bush. This
woman is, clearly and obviously, an onion. A naked emperor. If
her name was Bob, nobody would even be talking about her. Bob
Palin would never have been selected as a running mate—Bob Palin
would have been laughed out of the room. Palin's gender,
therefore, is the central reason for her selection. And the
McCain campaign asserts, at every opportunity, that her gender
is an issue that is off-limits. It is, in the end, the only
thing about Palin that in any way explains McCain's bizarre
choice.
She is a political prop used by a desperate John McCain who
cannot campaign effectively without her. And I've got
conservative Christians running around with silly hats and
McCain/Palin placards gleefully supporting this just because
these people are pro-life. This is a 72-year old man who looks
tired all the time. A man whose ethics have gone south as he
lies and connives his way into the White House. Our Christian
duty is not necessarily to support the candidate who claims to
have our values. Our Christian obligation should be to support
the candidate who is most like Christ. I was once a huge John
McCain fan. I'd have voted for him had he won the GOP nod in
2000. But this John McCain, this 2008 John McCain, makes me so
ashamed. I'm not sure how he sleeps at night, and I'm not at all
sure what my conservative brothers and sisters in Christ are
thinking as they blindly back anybody at all who opposes
abortion, missing the much larger picture of a nation in crisis,
facing challenges of a kind we have not seen in generations. Not
to mention McCain's complete lack of personal ethics, values,
and the real likelihood of you folks voting in John McCain but
ending up with Suzy Homemaker as the next president of the
United States at a time when nuclear conflict and economic
collapse are both very real possibilities.
Seriously, what on EARTH are you people thinking.
In What Respects, Charlie? Palin tries to bluff her way past Gibson.
Being A Moron Is Not Biblical
It’s interesting how conservatives brand anyone who disagrees
with them a “liberal,”
as though there were only the two extremes to public opinion.
I'd have to sit and think awhile about whether or not I’m a
liberal. I have fairly strong conservative views and fairly
strong convictions. So strong, in fact, that when I see people
lying and harming others, I tend to point that out. The problem
I see with most Christian conservatives is they think in these
absolutes: black and white, right and wrong, liberal and
conservative. And so they’ll turn a blind eye and deaf ear to
corruption and caprice because, to many of these people, there
is no alternative. The overwhelming number of these people see
an extremely dangerous and complex world as a single
issue—abortion. Gay rights comes a close second, but for many
conservative Christians, the entire world is about abortion
rights and Roe v. Wade, and they have allowed that tail to wag
the dog for decades, with Christians voting, time and again, to
bring unscrupulous and, in the case of George W. Bush,
dangerously unfit people to power simply because to their minds
there is no other ethical option: white/black. Truth/lie.
Good/evil. Conservative/abortionist.
When asked, Jesus said the greatest commandment is this: to love
God with all of your heart, and to love your neighbor. In God's
eyes, there are no big sins and little sins. Sin is sin. Doing
harm to your neighbor is just as big a sin as abortion. Turning
a blind eye and deaf ear to s nasty and divisive campaign just
because the guy is a conservative or that he's pro-life is
inconsistent with the biblical model: sin is sin. But we
Christians routinely excuse one sin (meanness, intemperance) for
another (abortion). This is a guy who sins. A guy who lies. Is
he better or worse than the other guy? Only God knows. What I do
know is the offensive tone of his campaign does not, in any way,
display the qualities of Christ. He is not, in any way, the
"Christian candidate" or "God's man." God's man will have God's
qualities.
I tend to beat on Church Folk a lot here on the PraiseNet, but
it is in fact white evangelicals who are the most dangerous
people in America. Extremist, “light switch” thinking in severe
moral absolutes properly defines fascism. It is the Christian
equivalent of what the Nazis did in World War II, boil down
complex questions of society into simplistic, child-like slogans
and prosecute those ideas with religious fervor. The evangelical
political movement is also dangerous in that it is inconsistent
with the personal example of Jesus Christ. It is a bunch of folk
helping God out by enforcing God’s law on their community. Which
misses the point, entirely, that we are no longer under the Law
but under grace, and our responsibility to God is a personal
one: to not sin ourselves and to make disciples of men (and,
presumably, women). I might be missing a point, here, but I’ve
found no biblical model for the political actions of the
religious right in this country, and absolutely no biblical
support for voting for bald-faced liars simply because the
bald-faced liars claim to be pro-life.
I also find no scriptural support for being a moron, for being
led around by your nose and told who to vote for by church
elders. For being lemmings, marching in step toward the cliff,
pulling levers for conservatives just because that’s what they
claim they are. The world is a much bigger, much more complex
place than that. God is a much bigger, much more complex God
than that. His creation is a much more wonderful and varied
mosaic than that. Narrowing your thinking to severe either-ors
insults and, in many ways, blasphemes God. To blame God for your
having voted twice for the worst president in modern history is
simply ludicrous. Ignorance is not a quality of the indwelling
of the Holy Spirit. Changing society at gunpoint—or by
legislation—is not what God has asked us to do. He’s asked us to
be witnesses for Him. To change the world one disciple at a
time.
All the rest of this noise is so far off the mark, I rightfully
question the motives and, frankly, the spirituality of those who
perpetuate it. Such politicization of The Gospel is an offense
to the cross. Lacking a biblical model of Christ Himself, it is,
by definition, antichrist. Does that mean we do nothing, that
anything goes? No, of course not. It means try the spirit by the
Spirit [I John 4:1]. It means examine the whole candidate: his
record, his motives, and, yes, how he conducts his campaign.
Then, sure, vote for Obama if he’s earned your vote. Vote for
McCain if he’s earned your vote. But, if you are marching in the
name of Jesus, please stop marching like lemmings.
Christopher J. Priest
21 September 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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