get political?
So by now you've heard of the "religious right", right? :) A name given to conservative Christians who are very political with their views and work together to get their voices heard by the government on certain issues.
I'm not at all opposed to Christians making their voices heard in government. We could stand to do more i think.
But to put it on the table, I get pretty uncomfortable with the "religious right" and the many movements of Christians trying to exert political influence.
Again, not because i oppose the idea of Christians in politics, but really it's because i wonder about the battles we've chosen to fight.
I think a good number of the initiatives being put forward by Christian groups at present are more or less good initiatives. But I wonder why it is that we can get millions of Christians fired up about protecting marriage (which again, i tend to think is a good thing) but can't get a fraction of those same people outraged about racial divisions in our country and ongoing discrimination against whole segments of God's creation. Or what about the way we treat widows and orphans, the poor and the alien?
When i read through the Bible there are MANY things about which God consistently "beats his drum" and yet when i look around the political scene today, i see Christians beating lots of drums, but conspicuously absent are some of those that God has been most passionate about since the beginning of humanity.
Isn't that odd? Does God care MORE about protecting marriage than helping relieve extreme poverty and exploitation? Does God care MORE about praying in schools or teaching creationism than he does about the growing numbers of people cast into prison and forgotten by society? Are school vouchers closer to the heart of God than the starving people worldwide?
If you looked at the things Christians get worked up about you'd have to say Yes to all of the above. But if you read the Bible, you'd be hard pressed to make such a case [eg.].
Again, let's not quit standing on those issues we love to stand on. But what if we stood on the things that not only get us passionate, but the things about which God tells us to be passionate?
something to think about.
posted by Dion @ 6/05/2006 06:56:00 AM
6 Comments
6 Comments:
It's good to see you blog again. Welcome back.
I don't think Christians get fired up about things because they have anything to do with God. Marriage, schools, and some of these other things they see as personal attacks on their lifestyles and God, also, happens to care about them.
They aren't chasing after Gods dreams but their own and using God as backup for thier own cause. If they were chasing after God they would be outraged about the poor, the hungry, and the hurting. They wouldn't just talk a lot about it either but go serve others to help combat these.
Amen, brother. Great stuff here.
Do Christian's outside of Western culture exhibit such symptoms? Is is something tied to a "free" media?
My idea is simply this: every day we are BOMBARDED with pessism, hopelessness, and cheats on the news. I just don't watch anymore... and while we all have individual responsibility why we're not doing more to help others, I wonder if many of the "civilized" Christians just have learned to not respond to all the "crises" they here about every hour - and simply miss the caring opportunities God made them for.
brett, you nailed part of this one... thanks for the input. i agree with the cynicism, pessimism, "everyone's a cheat" motif that's played over and over again in the news. Case in point, i open up detnews.com yesterday and the headline article is about a council woman who owns a bunch of junky lots in the city and how she is a hypocrite because she's come down on slumlords... is this REALLY a front page story? if so why? I mean if the lady is a hypocrite she should be called on it... but is there nothing more important in a metro of millions of people and in a world of billions?
So maybe you're right, we get skeptical or "compassion fatigue" on so many things, i KNOW i struggle with this... an earthquake in indonesia, "didn't we just have one of those recently?" it's so distant, or seems to happen so regularly, i turn off...but why is it that we can still get all fired up about the "other" christian issues out there...
I think maybe Matt is on to something about the attack on "lifestyle" I hear christian folk talking these days as if we are enduring a new persecution. I don't buy it, not yet. People in the first few centuries were threatened with death for their commitment to JESUS CHRIST... DEATH, because of Jesus... not the taking away of privileges based on certain issues. Today the hostility toward what has come to be a "christian lifestyle" might be annoying but persecution? c'mon!
But it galvanizes a group of people to play the "oppressed minority" card. it enables political leaders to use fear tactics to get people to the polls and vote some agenda that is supposed to be godly, at the very least, it's comfortable...
Bottom line...we are acting as if WE are the oppressed, the poor, and the helpless in society... we are pretending WE are victims and the cost has been to tread on the heads of the REAL victims, the genuinely helpless and poor and exploited.
We've politicized parts of our morality out of "christian conscience" but other parts of our mandate as Christians we've said are best left to the "private-sector" ... does that seem a little inconsistent to anyone else?
Amen!! It's way too easy to be passionate about a favorite cause and call it Christian citizenship, while leaving out other issues that God IS passionate about, but we don't choose to make part of our life in Christ. It's easy to take on someone else's campaign, but ignore the real people and their hearbreaking spiritual and physical needs all around us that would require us to give our personal time, energy, resources - even change the focus of our lives or or that of our own church - to make a difference. I guess it's called walking the talk (not just talking), eh? If we want to live Christ-like lives, we will live our lives with the urgency He modeled for the physical and spiritual rescue that love demands we offer to people around us every day. It's not a cause - it's living our lives in Christ. I think Christian citizenship can be a misleading idea when we don't apply the concept to our entire Christian walk.
c
I think people could get more fired up about poverty if it could be addressed in balance (i.e. "give a person a fish, or teach them to fish"), but thanks to groups like the ACLU this balance cannot be achieved. It seems we can only give the fish versus teach people to fish under the guise of political law and with such restrictions, it feels like a doomed proposition that simply becomes yet another entitlement.
As for racial divides, again I think people could get extrememly interested in this, but with people like Jessie Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton working diligently to keep their own culture shackled to a belief that they should have life handed to them because of historical sins versus working toward a better outcome with perserverence of positive attitude, the ability to influence seems way too daunting as well. We need more Bill Cosby's getting positive versus negative attention from the media for the incredible messages he is trying to instill into his own culture and people would rally behind him from all walks of life to support not only his message, but to overcome the racial hatred that some still possess. By the way, racial hatred goes both ways although you would never know that based on media coverage. This too influences some people to stay on the side line.
Interesting topic however, but filled with many slippery slopes that start out with a great message or proposed solution and winds up not helping in the long run. I think we have seen far too many examples of "Do Good efforts" that have turned out to be "nightmares" in the end. Wish I had a better attitude on this topic but organized efforts just seem to backfire in these regards versus the winning the little wars one person at a time through the sharing of God's infinite love and those rare moments when we as His children actually rise up and make a positive difference in the life of another person. Seems like a slow process but one that will ultimately achieve better long term results in the end.
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