Political Beliefs Are Statement About Values - Reacting to Others' Beliefs

Fruit of the Spirit from Christ Church Cathedral Dublin

I recently have been involved in some Facebook discussions (I know, I know) with people from my past who are libertarians or evangelical conservatives. I get pretty riled during this conversations, then sad that people that I once respected and liked are now so different from me. This is especially sad in the the case of Christians who fall in the conservative evangelical bucket, because we are supposed to have the same faith.

Why does this make me sad? Because I believe people’s political beliefs are a reflection of their values. My values come from my faith, which in turn comes from a mixture of deep Biblical study, reading the Church Fathers, experience, liturgy, community, and constant reflection. My faith calls me to find a balance between being kind and being prophetic - the Bible is pretty clear that sometimes these two can’t happen at the same time. Look at Moses at Mt. Sinai, almost all the Prophets, and Jesus when dealing with Pharisees and the moneychangers in the Temple.

When I see someone who is a Christian saying things that are obviously not Christian, what should I do? Jesus says not to judge others, but the better interpretation there is probably “Don’t condemn others”, not “Don’t evaluate others.” Paul lays out a process for discipline within a congregation, but it isn’t clear that the process works outside of congregations or in our distributed and connected world. The Prophets were not afraid to use harshness or hyperbole to call people’s attention to their errors.

So it seems like there are a variety of ways for me to approach fellow Christians who are not speaking and acting in ways that are aligned with the faith. They range from gentle, private conversations to public “calling out”. How do I know which one to use in different situations?

Right now, I’m looking at the example of Jesus. Generally speaking, Jesus is gentle to those whose sins harm mostly themselves. He is harsh with those whose sins cause others to suffer, like the Pharisees, teachers of the law, temple merchants, or Paul when he forbids Jesus from fulfilling his role.

Therefore, I am likely to speak harshly to those people, especially Christians, who speak or act in accordance with political beliefs that perpetuate the oppression of others. This is because political beliefs are a reflection of that person’s values. If they claim to be a Christian and don’t act in accordance with their faith, they are like the Israelites before the exile, the Pharisees, or the merchants in the temple.

Idolatry

“The Adoration of the Golden Calf” – Nicolas Poussin (1633-4)

The idea of idolatry is common to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Idolatry is when you place something other than God and his will as primary, both in private and in public. Almost anything can be an idol. Most people think about things that are also well-known sins, like greed and lust. However, things like family, friends, and productivity can be idols if you place them before God.

One of the most powerful idols is America. Hear me clearly: America is not inherently evil. I believe it has done an enormous amount of good in the world. Many of the narratives of America are compatible with my faith. 

However, current narratives around refugees and immigrants, and actions taken by people in power who claim Christ, are not compatible with my faith. It is not Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) to deny refuge for the poor and oppressed. People of faith who feel that national security comes before mercy for refugees and immigrants have made an idol out of their country. They have placed America above God. 

What is the right response? People of faith should respond in love, of course. But when we see someone making an idol out of anything, we are called to speak up. The most powerfully-worded versus in the Bible are those that speak out against idolatry. We should take the hint and speak out powerfully as well.

Protection from the Wolves

Fargo spoilers below.

I love the movie and television series, Fargo. The writing is excellent, the cinematography is beautiful, and the acting is top notch. But what I love the most about Fargo is the hidden gems that the writers put into the dialogue. 

The TV series is an anthology. Each season is mostly self-contained, with some random connections to the other seasons and the movie. In the first season, Billy Bob Thornton's character Malvo is a psychopathic (different from sociopathic) contract killer. He is traveling through Bemidji, Minnesota, on a job. His car crashes after hitting a deer, his target flees into the cold (and later dies of hypothermia), and he heads into town to get stitched up. 

While he is in town, Malvo causes severe damage. He murders two people, including the chief of police who is a soon-to-be father. It only takes Malvo a couple of days to turn the town upside down. He is a wolf among sheep.

He eventually heads to Duluth for another job. His actions in Bemidji follow him, though. Two small-town Midwestern police officers, one from Bemidji and one from Duluth, eventually catch Malvo's scent. He doesn't like this, and eventually follows the Duluth officer, a widower and father, to his apartment complex.

This is where one of those hidden gems lies. While Malvo is sitting outside the apartment complex, contemplating his upcoming killings, one of the residents knocks on Malvo's car window. The resident tells Malvo to go away. The apartment complex is a community. It cares for each other and protects each other from danger.

Up to this point, Malvo has terrified everyone he has encountered. However, all his encounters have been people who were alone: the man in a bad marriage, the police officer alone in the night. The apartment resident has the courage to stand up to the wolf because he is a part of a community. He isn't really alone. This minor, 2-scene, everyday guy is the only one in the series to prevent Malvo from creating destruction.

Communities can be dysfunctional. They can be abusive and manipulative, cold, unwelcoming, and harsh. When people don't follow lock-step with the wayward and crooked standards of the community, they are thrown out into the wild for the wolves to devour.

But communities can also be extremely powerful and nurturing. They can provide safety and identity. People who are in genuine, loving community with one another aren't threatened by the wolves. They don't fall easily for charlatans or demagogues.

So I wonder how much of the dysfunction in our world is due to there being too many dysfunctional communities, too many outcasts, and too many wolves. How much of the hurt in our world can be healed by forming the right kind of communities, the ones built on love, trust, and justice tempered with mercy.

It starts with us. In our families, our churches, our schools, our social clubs, and our Facebook groups, how are we treating each other? How are we treating those who are different from us? How about those who disagree with us? How do we treat those who are poor or oppressed? How do we treat those that have made mistakes?

The truth is that communities can transform even wolves. We use wolves as a symbol for wilderness or danger but our dogs, the animals many of us love more than people, were once wolves.

Better Together

Photo by Andrew Greenberg

I had to unfriend someone on Facebook yesterday. He was one of my college roommates. He posted that he was happy that the Affordable Care Act is probably going to be repealed. 

Many of us want to maintain relationships past the point of sustainability. Some will say that it was petty to remove my former roommate from my list of Facebook friends. It is only Facebook, right? Others will say that I should have tried to do what I often challenge others to do: fight for those hard relationships. Do the hard work of persuasion.

However, there are limits. Sometimes specific relationships aren't worth the effort. Sometimes I am not the person to do the work of persuasion with a person. In this specific situation, I have not communicated with him in several years. We do not live close together. Any communication between us would have only served to harden his opinion and raise our mutual blood pressure levels. That's because I have a belief that he and I do not share.

I believe that we are all better together. When we share our burdens and joys with each other, the burdens are lighter and the joys are more powerful. I am a person of faith, a Christian, and this idea is central to that faith. I will do to you what I would want you to do to me. I will not do to you what I would not want you to do to me.

There is another idea in our culture, though. It says that the only thing that matters is me, and maybe my family and friends. Everyone else is a danger. Everyone else matters less. My job as a person to is lift myself up at the expense of you and yours. This is the thought of libertarians and those who follow Ayn Rand. I have another word for it: selfishness.

People will tell you that selfishness is part of who we are as humans, and that we can't get rid of it. They say we have to develop systems to manage the selfishness. They rely on the assumption that people's nature cannot change.

They are wrong. People are capable of enormous growth and change. This knowledge is at the core of my faith, and of many other faiths. The book of Deuteronomy gives us a vision of a sacred society in the vision of Israel, especially in Jubilee. At the core of this society is the idea that we are not our own. Our possessions are not our own. They belong to God and to the community. In the book of Acts, we see the early church giving freely of their possession to those in need. The community of Christ gave freely so that the burden of one become the burden of all, and therefore became light. "Many hands make for light work."

Skeptics, especially those within Christianity, will tell you that Jubilee never happened and that the practice of the early church was unsustainable and unscalable. They will tell you that God is showing us the ideal, but doesn't actually expect it to happen on earth. It will happen in the New Earth, where all evil is banished.

I don't believe that. I take Jesus seriously when he says in the Lord's Prayer, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Our job as people of faith in this world is to work to make this world more like heaven. We are expected to bring about the kingdom, not to survive until God smashes it down on this world.

If those who resist this, who claim the name "Christian", were being honest, they would say, "But I don't want to do that. I don't want to work towards that world. I'm not there yet." If someone said that to me, I'd hug them, because very few people are willing to say that out loud. After I hugged them, I'd say, "We all have to eat our vegetables, whether we want to or not." To do otherwise would be to surrender to selfishness, to greed, to sin. 

Strategy and Humanity

Faith in Texas Planning Meeting

Over the past few months, I've had the opportunity to see firsthand the work that Faith in Texas is doing to make Dallas a more just place. Tonight was a planning meeting for the group to discuss the upcoming legislative session, amongst other things. 

When I started doing political campaigns, one thing I noticed is the attitude that many operatives have that winning is everything. No one ever advocated violating the law. It was ok, however, to push staff and volunteers past the point of burnout. It was ok to speak in unkind ways to others because nothing mattered except for winning. Many talented people have been forever turned off from civic life because of their experiences with political campaigns. That is a shame.

That is why I appreciate community organizing groups like Faith in Texas, as well as the other non-profits across the nation that are associated with the PICO National Network. They manage to balance the need for clear wins and clear progress with the need to humanize the work of social justice. In other words, they believe the ends are just as important as the means. 

This is something that our society doesn't do well. All you have to do is read Facebook or YouTube comment threads to realize that people don't care about how they say something. We are not great at civil disagreement. Don't get me wrong, I believe there is a place for strong, assertive, prophetic speech. However, as I taught my students when I was an educator, the audience matters. You won't change hearts and minds with aggressive speech unless you have a relationship with your audience. Most of the time, honey will catch more flies than vinegar.