Values and the presidential election…a bit of irony
Here is my column from this week’s Greenville News. I rarely write about politics, so I hope you either enjoy, or are angered by, this departure. Edwin
Someone recently asked me if I watched the debates. ‘No,’ I said, ‘debates make my stomach hurt.’ I don’t watch things that cause me too much emotional engagement. I used to watch the show ‘E.R.’ My wife Jan suggested I stop. I would usually turn it on before going to work night-shift in our emergency department. I would then shout at the television, saying things like ‘There’s no way! Nobody does that! Put in a chest-tube!’ She said I became a bit too ‘agitated.’
The presidential and vice-presidential debates were much the same. And at 44-years-old, I really don’t need to elevate my blood pressure unnecessarily. So I didn’t watch the debates. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking a lot.
I don’t generally write about politics, but I made an interesting observation recently and I thought it was worth sharing. First, I’ll tell you what bothers me and then I’ll move on to the good news.
As a Christian conservative, (no surprise to any reader of my column) lots of issues in this campaign trouble me. I’m troubled by the way the media has ceased to ask hard questions of its favorite candidates, and has utterly failed to hold them to any kind of realistic, critical accountability.
I’m frustrated by the way conservatives have consistently failed to put forth interesting, dynamic candidates. Oh, for a Republican Obama! Where is our orator? Where is our champion? McCain may be solid, and trustworthy, but on the ‘thrill scale,’ he’s only a few steps above Bob Dole. Sen. McCain is a skilled, intelligent individual; but lacking in charisma. That’s a problem in political climate that exalts form far above substance, and entertainment far above understanding.
Mind you, I don’t have a problem with the left; least not the traditional left. That was the left, the liberality, which lifted Western mankind above slavery, serfdom and layers of oppression. That was the left that protected children and believed in freedom, equality and fairness. Those were the liberals who held to the common rights of all men to be left alone. No, those guys I like. They were our ideological ancestors as Americans.
The left that makes me stare at the ceiling at night, and that keeps me from watching debates or reading polls, is the left that considers all wealth (except that derived from entertainment, athletics or liberal industrialists) to be the product of oppression and theft.
I’m angered by the left that considers the traditional family a quaint anachronism to be quietly swept away in favor of new, radical definitions. I’m worried by the left that screams diversity but insists on absolute uniformity; that shouts down opposition with profanity. And I’m terrified by the left that happily justifies not only abortion but euthanasia; partly because it believes humans are bad for the earth.
That’s the left that wants with all its heart to push Judeo-Christian faith to the margins of society, where it will be labeled and stored as a charming habit from antiquity; or perhaps a disease of unenlightened minds.
But even as I’m anxious and avoiding television, I’m encouraged. This election gives me an odd, secret delight. That’s because agenda of the left, or at least the nobler part of it, comes straight from the Judeo-Christian belief system. We might say that Moses and Jesus were the original liberals; and conservatives, too. They taught us things that both parties need to keep in mind; things like the relevance of God’s law, the worth of every human, freedom with restraint, love with responsibility; grace with repentance.
Concern for the poor, racial and sexual equality, kindness to foreigners, peace, justice for the widows and children, free will, limitations on the power of government, the very concept of a moral duty to other humans, these were not scientific discoveries of the enlightenment. They were, and are, the inheritance of Judaism and Christianity, bestowed on the world by a Creator deeply interested in mankind; by a redeemer actively seeking the broken and lost.
The most delicious irony of all our American politics is that without a revealed duty to God and man, neither the right nor the left would have anything to say except, ‘get what you can, when you can, however you can, and everyone else be damned.’
Those of us on the right sometimes need to be reminded of the value of mercy. But the left, the true American liberal movement, just needs to be ‘baptized.’ To a frustrated conservative like me, that’s some hopeful reassurance.
An interesting post.
I mostly agree with your post (possibly a surprise, given that I’m a liberal Canadian[and therefore probably a Communist] ex-Pentecostal), but I will play devil’s advocate a bit.
I am perplexed by the vitriol expressed by many Rebulicans when talking about the Democratic tax proposals. What happened to Biblical ideas of “the love of money is the root of all evil,” “sell all you have and give it to the poor,” “it is harder for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven,” and “they shared all things in common”?
Christ’s message, and the practice of the early church was definitely suspicious of wealth, and could probably be characterized as socialist. Christ calls us to economic sacrifice, at the very least, to help the poor. It is always ironic to me that religious conservatives who want to ban abortion are also the ones who want to cut welfare and kill criminals. Where is the love?
Christ’s message was, as you point out, a message of social justice for widows and orphans. But it was also a message of economic justice! As St. James points out, it doesn’t matter if you take care of matters of the soul, and ignore food and shelter; you will have failed to live up to Christ’s example. And as Christ himself said, “where were you when I was hungry, needed shelter, needed clothes?” As this parable indicates, Christ considered damned those who did not take care of the economic needs of the poor.
If Christian conservatives ignore economic justice, then they are cherry picking the feel good, no-action-required parts of Christ’s message.
Dear Beach Bum,
I think you’re right about several points. Christians have a duty to meet the needs of the oppressed, the poor, the sick and all the rest of society’s lost and broken. I just read the parable of the ’sheep and the goats’ to my children last night. It’s a powerful warning to ‘be about the work of the kingdom.’
On the other hand, the tacit assumption that increased taxes will automatically go to the poor is, as you know, far from true. Taxes go to good programs and ridiculous programs; the madness of our recent economic bail-out is evidence, given that there was some $150 Billion in pork in that bill. I may want to be taxed to help the poor, but the taxes that pay that behemoth won’t necessarily accomplish anything but re-elections.
There is another assumption you make: that Christians, who are opposed to increased taxation, are not already giving. I go to a very active church where much money is given to the poor, locally, nationally and internationally. Good friends of ours are missionaries in Zambia; they are successful business owners who donate not only their money but their very lives to others.
Some recent research suggests that social/religious conservatives give considerably more to charity than average social and religious liberals. Admittedly, I haven’t read the studies so they may be flawed.
Personally, I’m fine if we stay where we are. I home-school my children, and still pay property tax for the education of others. Most home-school families are probably content with the same. We don’t want a voucher, since it allows government into our education, which is working just fine. So, I’m funding my own kids and others as well. Likewise, I’m paying for my children’s health-care, including one child with diabetes. I give to the church, I give to my family members when they need. So, by resisting increased taxes (wherein someone else determines how to do ‘good’ with my money), am I actually failing to follow the Biblical mandate?
I think conservatives are also sketchy about whether increased taxes really help the poor or just keep them in poverty. I mean, from the standpoint of the ER, I see lots of families on welfare for multiple generations, because they can get by due to government aid. Have we helped them?
You’re right about the early church; they were very socially conscious. In fact, that was one of the factors that made the church grow so exponentially in a hostile setting. They cared for their own, and embraced all, in the name of Christ. (There were also wealthy members, whose contributions to the cause were doubtless helpeful). But, they did not ask for any government intervention. They did it themselves. Christ calls us to give, but did not say that it was up to political processes to meet the needs of the community.
Can we do better? Absolutely. Do Christians focus, sometimes, on the wrong things? We can. But even as we give, we really don’t want to give anymore to government than we have to because we already have a higher compulsion to serve; and taxation is not intrinsically connected to that cause.
Thanks for writing!
I look forward to hearing from you again,
Edwin
There didn’t have to be 150 billion worth of pork on that bill, but the House Republicans wouldn’t vote for it otherwise. The Democrats would have passed the original bill (which contained No pork), but didn’t want to do it alone, lest they be blamed for the negative consequences of rushing the legislation through without imposing many rules on the recipients of the bailout money.
So now we have financial institutions using taxpayer money to provide bonuses to their employees, to the tune of 6-7 billion per company. That’s an example of redistributing the wealth upward.
The tax package Obama promotes only allows the current tax break for the wealthy to sundown, returning them to Clinton administration rates. This is nowhere near as draconian as the 70% tax imposed prior to Reagan.
McCain wants to tax middle class Americans receiving insurance benefits, as well as their employers, and redistribute the money to big Insurance companies. How is that fair? McCain also proposes even larger tax breaks for the wealthy, who are not struggling financially, along with tiny tax breaks for the middle- and lower classes who are.
And who is advocating euthanasia? I haven’t heard that one yet.
This didn’t start out to be a partisan response, but I think what you are seeing from the far left is a backlash against the far evangelical right, who want to impose their values on the rest of us via legislation. We would do well to ignore both extremes.