The older I get, the less politics interest me. A man can only take so much of the same ol’ same ol’ before he finally rolls his eyes and turns to something more enjoyable, such as using sandpaper for a facial scrub. And this year’s field of candidates makes me want to reach for something with a coarser grit…
Politics-wise, I don’t have a problem with Romney because he’s a Mormon. I don’t think one’s religion should be a test of political capability, though this comes with the cautious understanding that religious worldview does impact political ideology. Though I must admit a sadness as I watch political rallies where Mitt stands ups and talks about how he will not take god out of government, and the huddled masses cheer with fervor. My guess would be, if you were to ask most of those cheering would self-identify as some type of Christian, yet they seem not to realize or care that this god Romney speaks about is nowhere even close to the God who is there. Yet, cheer anyway…
Also, I don’t get worked up one way or the other over whether or not any political party has a vague and general reference to god in their party platform. Let’s face it, the god most Americans follow is not the God who refuses to share his glory with another. The American god is more akin to an old grandpa with a long white beard, sitting in his chair above, and smiling at everything we do (thanks to Francis Schaeffer for such an image). It is a god more interested in our happiness than our holiness or even his own glory.
The God who will one day fill the whole earth with his glory as the waters cover the sea is not well pleased with vague and general references. He is pleased by the exaltation of his name through Christ Jesus—something politics is not going to deliver us.
All this to say, I find myself not fitting into either main political party nor caring to vote for either candidate. I am told that sometimes you just have to pick the lesser of two evils. I’m not sure how I can reconcile that with God’s command to “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).
This November I won’t be casting a vote either for Mitt Romney or Barak Obama, and here is why: the pro-life ethic that informs my conscious will not allow it.
You see, my candidate of choice must be unabashedly pro-life. The obvious aspect of this is, of course, the abortion issue. Obama fails that test, and Romney…well it depends on the fuzziness of what answer from what year he gave that you’re talking about. But abortion isn’t the only issue in my view of a pro-life ethic. Instead it expands to also include things like environmental policy, health-care, and gun-control.
The Environment. At creation, God made the earth for us and placed us on the earth in order to use and care for the earth. Its resources are there to help us grow as creatures who bear the image of God. But as our sin corrupted all things, sin also corrupted our attitude and work in regards to this. We are just as likely (more likely?) to abuse the earth as we are to advantageously and wisely use it. Let’s make no mistake about it—what we do impacts our environment. Even though God originally placed us in a garden and at his Kingdom come will bring us to dwell in a city, I don’t see slabs of concrete, piles of trash, and a haze of smog as part of John’s description in Revelation.
Pollution affects health. It also affects the environment. Breathing air and drinking water laced with all sorts of fun and nasty chemicals does our bodies no good. And the globe is warming. It aggravates me that so many Christians laugh at and mock something that is clear and plain. The average global temperature and carbon dioxide percentage are increasing. Yes, it is part of a natural cycle, but now in a post-industrial revolution age, it is also spiking in a way that it never has with a natural cycle. By adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, we increase the temperature. By increasing the temperature we add more atmospheric energy. By adding more energy, the “normal” weather patterns go crazy—longer, hotter, and more extreme summers, with shorter, colder, and more extreme winters. This also does us (and especially food production) no good.
If we’re going to rescue babies in the womb, we also need to leave for them a planet that has a healthy environment in which to grow up.
I don’t want a candidate who wants to increase oil drilling and create trans-America pipelines. I don’t want a candidate who will minimize environmental regulations on cars, factories, and so forth. I want a candidate who will work hard to fund research and implementation of clean energy sources, while fighting to increase recycling and reduce industrial pollution.
Health-Care. According to the Old Testament, one of the reasons God brought judgment upon various nations was their neglect and mistreatment of the poor and needy. Caring for the poor among us is a Christian thing to do, a church thing to do, and a government thing to do. If we are going to rescue babies in the womb, we also need to provide a culture where they have every opportunity to grow up healthy and strong.
This means I, as a tax-paying citizen, have a duty to help supply health care for those who are poor and cannot afford it. The health care bill has flaws, especially from a Christian point of view, but that doesn’t not mean it needs to be repealed; rather it needs some reformation. Providing insurance coverage to millions of Americans who formerly did not have it (especially those who could not afford it) is a good thing, and it is a pro-life thing. It shows that we care not just about bringing them into the world but also helping them be healthy in our world.
Last I checked, God is not a democratic-republic capitalist who said to us, “You earned it you keep it.” Rather, God is a monarchist who said to care for the poor and needy and always be willing to share. If we are going to live communally together as a nation, we should be more than happy to share with those who have-not.
(As a note with this, I think there is legitimate need for welfare, but we should not strive to be a welfare state. Part of provision should also be giving people the tools to help them supply for their own needs and grow to where they can also share with others.)
Gun-Control. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people…yeah, but guns make it a whole lot easier for the murderer to pull off his feat. I am not anti-gun; I have no problem with people owning a handgun for personal protection or a rifle for hunting. But why do we need the ability to buy bigger, faster, and more powerful weapons? Regulations including more and better background checks (such as stronger regulations on private gun sales), increased safety measures, and assault-weapons bans are good things.
In a desire to protect life, we need to desire to preserve life. Reducing one’s ability to instantaneously strip the life of another individual is also a pro-life concern.
I know people will disagree (I’m not sure which is more divisive, politics or Calvinism…), so feel free. But if nothing else I hope this will help us think a little more deeply about what it means to be pro-life.
Thank you for this post, MIKE.
“”In God’s Hand
is the life of every living thing
and the breath of all mankind”
(Job 12:10).
Amen, brother. Thanks for showing me that at least one of my brothers whom I presume to be to my right theologically pretty much agrees with me politically. Or me with you, whatever. Wanna bet you either won’t get many comments, or the viterol will really pour out?
John
Mike, it seems there a faulty premise in your argument concerning abortion. I would sum up that premise in your following two sentences.
Whether abortion is right or wrong and should be either legal or illegal is not contingent upon the other issues you linked it to. Your point also implies an unproven assertion that those who vote primarily on the abortion issue do not care about preserving life.
Abortion may be linked to the issues you state in another way.
Pollution does affect health. However, which party is absolutely going to do the best job in lowering pollution? I don’t believe either party has the corner on lowering pollution. Scientists cannot even agree on global warming and if it is a natural occurrence who is to say we can really do anything about it? Creation is dying everyday.
If we are going to attempt to restore health to our planet, we need to rescue babies from the womb so there is someone to carry out that work.
On healthcare you assume those who vote with a primary concern over abortion do not care for those who need healthcare. Can healthcare get down to anymore bare bones than preventing murder in the womb? Also, healthcare is not the same as health insurance.
You seem willing to overlook certain problems in the healthcare bill from a “Christian point of view” while challenging other Christians to not hold so tightly to their Christian convictions. Since when is healthcare a government thing to do? How much does the government have to take from others, such as the middle class, before those others can no longer afford to help themselves? Mike, are you willing to give up (if you have these things) your smart phone, home internet access, cable, etc. and give that money to the government?
If abortion continues then we won’t have as much need for a healthy way to bring babies.
The gun-control issue like most items in a consumerist society is merely a matter of degrees. You admit that some guns are okay, but disagree about how many and what types are okay. Also, those who vote primarily against abortion may not necessarily disagree with you on gun-control. IOW, it’s a non-sequitor.
In a desire to protect life, we need to actually have live to preserve.
My point, Mark, wasn’t so much to link abortion to these other things but to expand the thought of being “pro-life” beyond the “choice” debate. The over-arching idea, being that if we care for life in the womb we must also care for life outside the womb.
Concerning whether or not healthcare is a government thing…what do you do? I mean, clearly, God judged nations for their treatment of the poor and needy–does that not include the actions of that nation’s government? (And, btw, I didn’t say I was willing to overlook problems in the bill–I said it needs reformed, meaning: it has problems and something needs to be done about it, but I don’t believe extending coverage to millions of Americans is part of the problem.) I think the call to help the poor ultimately is three fold–individual, church, and government. The three together can accomplish way more than any one of those by itself. (which then it is probably a good thing I have a dumb phone and no internert in my house
).
I do think many if not most of those who are anti-abortion are also pro-preserving life. I think, though, we are inconsistent in our application of that ideology.
If you’ve got John Farris and Ls’* patting you on the back about this, you should know there’s a problem.
Saying that God expects us to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves does NOT mean that God expects us to do so through government mandated socialized medicine.
Saying that God expects us to be good stewards does not mean we are to be good stewards through namby-pamby liberal environmental whackjob policies. It certainly doesn’t imply or suggest that the government gets to make the call as to what’s too much or wrong or whatever.
Gun control–there’s nothing wrong with the government making laws that don’t violate the constitution. I don’t see anything in the constitution that forbids owning an assualt rifle, but I’m perfectly ok with those being banned for ownership by common folks. Not really too upset about this one.
So, being anti-socialized medicine and anti-envronmental whacko policies is not inconsistent with being pro-life. There is never a biblical mandate or justification for voting demoncrat–ever. Not.Even.Once.
I’m hardpressed to find a biblical mandate or justification for voting republican either, Joe… I prefer to judge each candidate on his/her views not whether an R, D, L, I, G or whatever follows their name.
Except that a candidate that tags one of those letters on his/her name is committing to support those principles.
It’s no different than expecting someone employed/funded through the SBC to agree with the current BFM: to run with the D means you agree with that party’s platform, which is an anti-life platform.
So while that doesn’t make the R party an automatic vote, it makes the person who runs with the D automatically disqualified. Because the way the system works, even if the individual D you put into the Senate claims to be pro-life (or the House, or wherever), that individual provides their party with one more vote, and that party-line vote makes the difference in who chairs what committee, who controls the House/Senate agenda, among many other things.
I long for viable, credible other parties in the US because that will shift how this works. But as it stands, that’s the impact. While “vote the candidate not the party” sounds lovely, realize that you are electing a ruling party whether you intend to or not.
Never said there was a biblical mandate to vote R. I just said there is NEVER a justification to vote D. Not once. Ever.
If the Second Amendment was only about hunting or personal protection from criminals, then you’d have a point about weapons types.
It’s not. It’s also about the government knowing that there are armed citizens who will stand for freedom. Keep in mind the immediate spark for the Revolutionary War was not taxes or religious freedom. It was the move of the British to seize the arms of the colonists. That was why the Redcoats went to Lexington and Concord.
What do think a tyrannical government would fear more: a group of citizens with single-shot hunting rifles or a group of citizens with semi-automatic weapons? My guess would be the latter. And while there are high-profile crimes committed with semi-automatics and high-capacity magazines, the bulk of crimes committed with guns are not those crimes. The statistics are about neutral before, during, and after the Clinton Gun Ban from the 90s–and whole states with strong state laws still see major crimes.
It’s not just about the rifle for hunting or the handgun for personal carry–it’s about whether or not villages and towns and cities are able to stand for freedom just as we had in 1775. Or shall we trust that the power of the government will never need restraining? There are no truly temporary taxes and there are no temporary restrictions on freedom–once you pay more of the one and adjust to less of the other, it only gets worse.
So are you planning to vote?
David,
“”"So are you planning to vote?”"”
Yes, Dwight’s going to give me a ride to the polls.
Sorry, I thought that question was for me.
Mike,
My question, by the way, is not just a rhetorical question, and it is directed to you. I share some of your concerns myself, and am trying to figure out what I am going to do on election day.
David, sorry…
Vote, yes. Cast a vote for every position? No. I don’t have time to dig in and research every candidate for every position, state, local, or national. And since I don’t fit either major party or either party’s platform, I don’t do straight up party voting.
In the past if I haven’t researched the candidates or don’t like my options, I leave that spot blank.
I’m looking into the smaller 3rd party options for the president (some people call it throwing your vote away, I call it voting according to conviction and values–and no 3rd party is going to become a legitimate force until a significant portion of the population actually starts voting for one, I figure you gotta start somewhere), but the ones I’ve run across so far are either pro-abortion and/or pro-legalizing drugs I don’t care to see legalized, so they don’t work either. I might have it figured out what I’m doing for the presidential vote by november…
If you find someone, let me know. So far, I have not been able to find anyone that would meet your criteria. Or mine.
I almost cried when I read your blog. But then I remembered.
This is what I gave up three years and nine months of my life in uniform so long ago to preserve. The right of every American to have a voice and to speak his or her beliefs in a free society. Even when those Americans take opposing political positions from me on almost all issues and especially want to tell me which guns are permissible for me to own and which ones aren’t.
You have a right to speak out. It’s your constitutional right. You even have the right to be wrong.
But I wish you would give a little more thought to the way you go about telling those of us who have put it all on the line for this country that we are somehow not to be trusted with semi-automatic rifles that resemble the fully-automatic ones we carried in the Hills of Korea, the Jungles of Viet Nam, the Desert of Iraq and the Mountains of Afghanistan. You insult our character and the memory of all our fallen comrades.
Jim,
I agree with you completed and thank you for your service.
I did not carry an automatic weapon — unless you count a submarine fired nuclear missile.
They still don’t trust me to have one of those at home.
Jim: I’m really conflicted on this issue. I believe in the constitution and the 2nd amendment. I have a case full of guns, and had a good time last weekend shooting my son’s new pistol.
But there is something seriously broken in this country, in this country in particular, when it comes to firearms. I’m sure stuff happens elsewhere to a certain degree, but nearly every single day some nutjob with a gun kills a bunch of people and I just don’t see this kind of thing happening elsewhere. I just don’t know what the answer is (other than the 3rd great awakening Dr. J is always talking about).
Bill Mac,
It is our Justice system that is broken. A man kills a multitude of people in a theater in Colorado and we the people will spend millions on his trials over the coming twenty years.
Speedy punishment is the answer to gun crimes or any crime. It’s what our founders had in mind, but we have made prolonging punishment a national pastime.
Jim,
I’m all for speedy punishment for such killers, but other countries, most with a far more lenient justice system than ours, don’t seem to have the gun violence that we do. I think they are two separate issues.
Mike said: “I don’t want a candidate who wants to increase oil drilling and create trans-America pipelines.”
Why not? I drive over two major pipelines (Texas to NJ or somewhere) every day. Drilling has a very tiny footprint compared to, say, solar or wind power generation. For lack of alternatives, oil is the major economic foundation of our industrial base. A better argument than yours is that the poor are harmed far more by environmental regulations that suppress driling than they are helped by any small marginal benefit to the environment, a presumption not well established anyway.
Mike said, “…as a tax-paying citizen, have a [Christian] duty to help supply health care for those who are poor and cannot afford it…”
Another way to say this would be “As a Christian I have a duty to support the government in forcing citizens to give up the product of their labor so that the state may satisfy a third party interest group even if those goals are objectionable.” To simplify, you support government taking money from me to pay for the contraceptives, abortions, sex change operations and other things I would judge objectionable?
Pro-life ethic? Consider this: “Obamacare will provide coverage for abortions, despite the president’s commitment that it would not” a statement judged by PolitiFact Georgia to be “mostly true. ” It’s complicated but if you are serious about abortion, you would probably want to take time to sort this out.
http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2012/sep/24/karen-handel/karen-handel-lays-out-case-against-obama-others-ne/
Every position supported in the original post except abortion demands increased governmental regulation and bigger bureaucracy and represents a bigger tax burden on an already overtaxed and over-unemployed nation.
I don’t think this country can afford it!
“This means I, as a tax-paying citizen, have a duty to help supply health care for those who are poor and cannot afford it.”
One of the difficulties I have with the health care debate is I cannot understand from whence arises the duty to provide healthcare. If it is a Christian duty, then we as the church have the duty to provide health care. Once upon a time in America churches provided hospitals until government began to mandate the types of services hospitals must provide (e.g. sex change operations, abortions). Government muscled its way in and churches left because the decisions over the care they felt compelled to provide was taken from them. If we have a Christian duty to provide health care we must do so with compassion and with an eye to the humanity of each person. Our duty arises out of love and a desire to be a witness to God. It is a position that will always push against secular (and now post-modern) government.
If the duty is civic, then we merely provide a service and we put health care in the hands of the smart people who will reduce it to formulae, criteria, and algorithms cobbled together into iron-clad rules and regulations. Government seeks its own ends and its ends tend to be uniformity, conformity, and power. Uniformity and conformity in the sense that the smart people will reduce health care decisions to rules and regulations where one size fits all regardless of the human cost. Power comes in because administrators follow the rules and regulations which decide the outcome regardless of the human circumstances (how many times has someone in administration told you: the rules say we must do it this way?).
Every time I think government sponsored health care is a good idea, I think of Sarah Capewell and her baby. It is a sad English story (which you can google) where a local medical council said that if a baby was born after 27 weeks (I forget the exact number of weeks) then it is a premature baby and will be given medical care. However, if the baby was born short of 27 weeks, it was deemed to be a miscarriage. This way of thinking is, of course, typical of the rule-making of health care. – one size fits all, no risk for the decision maker. Sarah’s baby was born in a hospital a couple of days shy of 27 weeks. As the baby was held by his mother, gasping for air, and trying to fight for life, no one in the hospital would touch the baby. After about 5 or more hours the baby died in Sarah’s arms. When this situation came to light, all the government spokesperson would say is that the situation should have been handled with “more sensitivity” (whatever that means).
Government run health care is also about power: the power to control lives which can be used to increase dependency (thereby assuring votes) and chill dissent (i.e. if you have cancer and are dependent on government for care, are you really going to publicly criticize the politicians who can take it away?). Do not think for a moment that this idea is lost on “caring” politicians.
I believe God has instituted government to maintain the public order and foster a proper and decent civic morality. I do not think capitalism is God-breathed and it really has nothing to do with the so-called health care debate. I think well meaning Christian people think that by providing healthcare through the government is somehow establishing justice when what we really want is healthcare provided with love, compassion, and a sense of our human fellowship which are things government will never provide because government, after all, is not a person; it is a merely a means for the holding and using the police and law-making power to maintain some sense of order (it is the only way government knows how to act). I understand how easy it is to just turn it over to government because the job seems larger than each of us but we have lost something as the church if we do so. We are about being the shining city on a hill; not government.
I guess my point is simply this: do not confuse government mandated healthcare (in whatever form – either government run or operated by government rules and regulations) with love, compassion, and caring. Besides, do you really want a government infused with post-modern sensibilities using your tax money to provide services that are inherently sinful? If you do not think such a thing possible look at the indirect tax in the governmental mandate requiring insurance companies to provide contraceptives (to maintain the hook-up culture), abortificents, and sterilizations “free of cost”. That is what I struggle with as a Christian: how to care for those who are needy but do so with the love that is necessary to redeem us (in spirit, in community, in body). I simply do not see health care as a religious duty which is met by sending in my tax money and letting some administrator determine how it is used through rules and regulations. I also do not see it as a civic duty because it is not a matter of citizenship (i.e. how we act towards each other in civil society).
If you want the government to provide compassionate and loving health care the answer, of course, is for the government to provide resources to those who can give the best care (churches, other caring people). But in our post-modern nation we have built a government that will not touch anything God influenced with a ten-foot pole. I, for one, would like to see the church active again as a witness instead of ceding more and more “compassionate” services to the government and just worshipping and sending out missionaries. Maybe that is why they are calling it the “freedom to worship” now?
Mike,
Well, I don’t where to start. I thought I was reading a blog article on the Huffn Puff for just a minute. I can’t believe that you have bought into the liberal rhetoric against the pipeline. Currently we have no viable, on line fuel options so fossil fuels will continue being our primary sourse of fuel for years to come and we have to have pipelines to move crude to the refineries. The bottom line is that we need jobs and we need to do everything we can to keep the supply of oil flowing.
I actually agree that we have a Christian obligation to provide for the poor. You did realize we were doing that before Obamacare? As a matter of fact it is conservative Christians who give the lion’s share to organizations that provide relief for the poor.
And your gun control views will do absolutely nothing to take guns out of the hands of criminals. You or anyone else has nothing to fear from law abiding citizens being armed. So our fellow citizens in South and West Texas should be allowed to have handguns for home protection while drug cartels have assault rifle? Mike, you don’t understand the thinking behind the 2nd amendment. In south Oklahoma we use assault rifles to rid us of our feral hog problem. I personally own an AK and it was given to me by a deacon. I’m not a member of a militia and I’m not looking to kill anyone, but you’re blowing this one out of proportion. More people are killed every year in car accidents but your not for banning them.
Jim,
You wrote, “One of the difficulties I have with the health care debate is I cannot understand from whence arises the duty to provide healthcare.” If you are seeking a Biblical mandate, I suggest two passages: first, the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-28, Matthew 22:34-40, & Mark 12:28-31), and second, Luke 12:48b (“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”) Does that not apply to our responsibility to those less fortunate financially, especially when the Old Testament prophetic passages about caring for the poor is added?
You then said, “If it is a Christian duty, then we as the church have the duty to provide health care. Once upon a time in America churches provided hospitals. . . .” Here I tend to agree with you; but even though many states today have one or more Baptist hospitals, the support given them by state as well as Methodist, Presbyterian, and Catholic ones, denominational support is usually little or no more than a chaplaincy program. Which means, I believe, we have failed miserably in this area.
You then added to the last sentence, “. . . until government began to mandate the types of services hospitals must provide (e.g. sex change operations, abortions). ” I have frankly not studied this in any detail, and if you have, then I bow to your research. While I am sure that are various requirements that hospitals must meet in order to receive funding from stae and federal sources, as well as insurance reimbursement, and to simply remain open, I was of the opinion that Baptist and various denominational groups backed off hospital funding not primarily because of this but because of finances–that they could get more funds from those sources than they could from their denominations. If that is so, it is again our failure. Why not fully fund a hospital so that it is cutting edge medically without it having to get funding elsewhere? I suspect it is simply having the will to do so, and putting our money where our mouths are.
John
John,
To me the question really is: “What is social justice?”. The heart of social justice as I see it is the working out of love within a larger community (ideally one that looks to God for guidance and leadership) and love can only become evident when it is given by each one of us (through our individual and collective acts). Social justice ought to flow like a river from the actions of individual Christians and the church as the Body of Christ. Thus, when I help the indigent (which, for example, I do by providing pro bono legal services to the needy and I do that on a regular basis) there is a both a connection and a conduit for love to pass and be seen. In other words, whether I act individually, or cooperatively (e.g. the World Hunger Offering), I am motivated by love, love is given, love is seen, God is revealed, redemption (from pain, suffering, or hardship) is made made manifest, and God is ultimately glorified and praised.
That is how I understand the verses you quoted and referenced. Paying my tax bill and then letting government take care of something strips the undertaking of love. That is clearly revealed in the way government administers “benevolence”: it makes the amelioration of pain or hardship a matter of right, not of compassion. Part of what we need to do is pay closer attention to how government packages its so-called “human services”. For example, government calls health care a right, exacts the money to pay for the satisfaction of the right (under threat of confiscation of property and imprisonment if you do not pay your taxes), and then expends money to uphold the right as an act of entitlement. Thus, there is no love, compassion, or even sense of community; it is just a question of having a right and then having your government satisfy the right.
We are not drawn into community through paying taxes and having our large, impersonal government provide services to the “needy” (however that might be defined); we are drawn into community by what we do and why we do it – to our family, to our neighors, to our community, and to strangers (i.e. the “Good Samaritan”). I do not believe that Jesus taught that taxes were the means to show love.
If we, in fact, lived in a Christian nation, we could hope that our tax money would be used in ways that evidence – and make manifest -love. But we do not and it is clear that we are in a time when our society, culture, and government is working hard to strip all religious expressions of true Godly love from the public square.
As for the hospitals, I live in Oklahoma and with the exception of a small free Methodist hospital and the Catholic health care system, there are no longer any Christian hospitals. I was on the board of the last Baptist hospital owning entity when it was transferred to a secular not for profit entity. The reason given was that we are being compelled to do things that we considered sinful (by the way: I voted “no” but lost). Catholics have a different perspective because they consider themselves a secular power co-equal to secular government and which secular government ought to support (remember: we have an United States Ambassador to the Vatican). Now even Catholics are having problems with governmental mandates that require them to act against conscience.
We have an obligation to promote social justice, ameliorate hardship, heal sickness, and uplift the needy. In my opinion we do not do that by paying taxes; we do it by our actions, just like the Good Samaritan.
I do pray this helps clarify what I am trying to say which is simply: government cannot love and we, as the church and individual Christians, must love.
JIM,
I appreciate much of what you wrote here.
Christian people ‘in communio’ have an unbelievably exponential power to serve those in need and those who suffer,
and yes, it is done as an expression of God’s merciful love.
I see your point. Do you think that you (or me, or us, whomever) can convince the 10 to 16 million Southern Baptists, and the 40,000 plus SBC churches to do likewise? And if not, can we be content to watch those who are in need, and tell them, “Help’s a coming–just be patient!”
It does, though, get complicated when we ask if the ethic of love is mentioned by the Old Testament prophets who were so concerned with justice, or if their concern was simply and wholly justice. And must we restrict the scope of Luke 12:48 to the church only, or is it a general principle applicable to human life and therefore to asll its exercise, including government? If the former, are there those who would use this as an excuse to protect their wealth against taxes?
John
John,
As to your first point: I think to get Southern Baptists to see the imperative of love as social justice and as a renewed witness and activity in the world, we will need to:
A. Get Over It. We will need to get over our outrage at no longer being the dominant cultural force we used to be. In the very near past our society was Christian, if not spiritually then certainly culturally and ethically. For example, it used to be Christmas Break in schools, crèches were everywhere, and Christmas specials were all over television; Good Friday was a holiday and school cafeterias served fish sticks on Friday because Catholics had to eat fish on Fridays. We no longer are culturally Christian; we are now a postmodern society. We are fighting lost battles over Gay Pride Month and prayers in schools and whether we have the right to say “Merry Christmas”. Instead of seeing the possibilities of a new (and, I believe, more Godly) witness to our society, we are still fighting a failing rear-guard action to bring it all back like it was. Once we accept that we are now “resident aliens” (as Peter described the Christian community in the Roman world) once again, we can move forward.
B. Government is not Christian. Once we could at least say that our government reflected our culture. Thus, we could turn things over to government and believe that our Christian values would be the basis of our government’s actions. While I don’t think that was ever completely true, it certainly seemed that way. However, government is no longer infused with Christian “values”; it is infused with postmodern sensibilities arranged around the identification of “rights” and the protection of those “rights”. While our government is not necessarily hostile to the church (although it seems like hostility to us), our government will no longer be supportive of the church. Instead, it will seek to protect and advance various religious and secular viewpoints (bordering on religion belief and fervor) as the protector and guarantor of all “beliefs”. I can give a lot of examples but the one that comes to mind is that in the footnotes to the California U.S. District Court decision upholding Proposition 8, there is a harsh statement that the Court finds that the Christian church is harmful to the homosexual community. Thus, we need to see government clearly and not expend all of our efforts in trying to compel a return to Christian “values” through law.
C. Stop Religious Consumption. During my lifetime I have watched the church change from an evangelical emphasis to a consumer emphasis. By “consumer” I mean we seem to join churches that meet whatever spiritual need we might have, be it a great preacher, active and relational Sunday School Class, the popular Youth ministry, etc. We no longer see church as a community of believers, bound by our familial ties in Jesus, and called to be the light in the world. While some younger church members are beginning to move in this direction, I am afraid the older members (of which I am one at 65) tend to want a comfortable church providing just the right sermons, singing just the right hymns, maintaining the right order of service, and doing the right ministries (mostly to its members). We need to become, like Peter says, a holy priesthood, a chosen people, a holy nation.
In short, we need to become the church in the early years of the church when we saw love clearly and lived our lives as a continual outreach. We were the ones who demonstrated love and acted in ways that people saw as counter-intuitively good. We were Christians and we loved Jesus and we saw the world as lost but a world which we could change by letting it see Jesus in and through us. If we can catch this sense of community and witness again, we can return to love, in word and deed.
As to your second point: A society arranged around Godly principles and manifesting love would be ideal. However, to be truly good the society would have to see God as the source of love and the motivation of our actions manifesting love. Thus, our government would both support and reflect love and we could participate through taxes which would be more like offerings than legal levies. Wealth would not be an imperative because, after all, wealth is merely pride seeking security. It would something like the New Jerusalem where there would be no light because the Lord God will give us light and will wipe away every tear from our eyes. There would be peace. I simply do not see that happening in this postmodern time, especially in government. As I said before, we live in an age where “needs” and “beliefs” are defined as rights so that there is no connection with love (or God), as if these rights are a matter of natural law. Thus, as currently constituted, our government cannot help us manifest love; only the church can do so. I wish it were otherwise.
Jim
Oops: not “upholding” Proposition 8 but “striking down” Proposition 8. Long day and I am tired. Sorry. Jim
As it so happens, I agree with your A, B, and C. The question is: how? Until there is a way to accomplish it, big so what?
Please pardon me; I have some sort of bug, and feel like something the cat drug in. Consequently, I really understand how that answers my second point. It probably does, but my brain is so aiddled right now, I cannot see it.
John
John,
I pray you are feeling better.
I typically write here in order to put my thinking into words so I can clarify and, at times, solidify my thinking. Here are some additional thoughts:
A. I have read a lot over the past couple of months that it is our Chrisitan duty to support the Healtchare Affordability Act (i.e. “Obamacare”). The verse usually used is found in Matthew and is the one that says as you do these to the least of us, you do it to me. I have been struggling with that line of thinking because Jesus wants us to show love and government simply cannot, or perhaps will not, given the demands of administration and politics. Anyway, it has made me see that there are some things we ought to be doing as expressions of social justice as love and one of them is healthcare. If what we want is to truly ameliorate and heal, love and and compassion does it better than the mechanical provision of very precise and mathematical application of the so-called “science” of medicine that must be used by administrators because they cannot quantify and mandate love and compassion. Thus, I see government regulated (or run, for that matter) health care is not social justice as sought by God. It is also true that it is better than nothing. However, I still cannot support it because it will diminish our efforts if we try (e.g. love and abortion do not mix and government will mandate the latter and must dismiss the former) and it seems we have a responsibility to do more than just vote, assess and pay taxes, and just hope it all works out for the best.
B. I have also been contemplating the sermons I have heard over the last couple of months. Our pastor retired so we have been going through the weekly preacher although we now have an interim. The sermons have mostly been about what is wrong with the world without any appreciation as to why it is that way. Yes, what is wrong with the world is “sin” but we need to appreciate what has changed, why it has changed, and what it means for the church. Not much said about that so we just curse the darkness or pep up our songs, go informal, and break into ever smaller groups in order to become a bit more relational (whatever that means). Thus, until someone starts to talk about the cultural/philosophical/societal shift and does something more than see/curse the symptons, you are right: it is a big “so what”.
C. The answer, I think, lies in ministry. I am hopeful because I am beginning to see churches find little niche ministries within their communities and actively pursue them. For example, there are churches assisting in the care of single mothers, the homeless, victims of human trafficking, and what I tend to call “down and dirty” ministries that march into the darkness, fight back with love, and stick. These are the actions that do advance social justice through love and have a profound impact on lives. If each church did at least one of these ministries, we could make an impact and once again be the bright and shining city on a hill. Our church is still caught in what I call “sanitary” ministries where we go do something (e.g. clean up after disasters) or take a 2 week mission trip. Nothing wrong with these ministries but they are too clean and too temporary. It is like we can go out, do something good, and then come back to where we were. These ministries do exhibit love but are the not the kinds of things that build the local community of church and the larger fellowship of the Body of Christ. I see “down and dirty” ministries as activities that do advance social justice.
D. There are things we need to compel government to do because only government can do it. A good example is immigration reform. I have worked with undocumented immigrants. They have made tremendous sacrifices (leaving home and larger family, risked death in the desert to arrive, live in fear of discovery, and work at a disadvantage) to come here and be a part of us. How we treat, accept, and welcome them is something that can only be done through government because it is a national and legal issue that can only be addressed through law. To work for social justice through law is an activity that requires Christians to influence government. I just do not believe health care is one such issue and is why I disagree with Brother Bergman that while Obamacare is flawed from a Christian point of view, we should nonetheless support it. Nothing we do will ever make government run/regulated healthcare good, compassionate, and loving. Nothing.
This post will be late, no one will read it, but it has helped me. Thanks for letting me write – and read what others have to say.
Jim
a slight correction . . .
Catholics were not required to eat ‘fish’ on Fridays, no . . . just abstain from meat out of regard for Friday being the day of Christ’s crucifixion
(but we did eat a lot of fish . . . I haven’t been able to stomach a tuna burger since I left school)
Recipe for tuna burgers?
tuna fish mixed with barbeque sauce on a toasted roll
(it tastes like it sounds) you have to be really hungry to eat it
One thing I know for sure is that Obama is gung ho in support of abortion. I did not vote for him in 2008 for that very reason, and I will not vote for him now for the same reason. Romney is fuzzy, but he is the only option. If I do not vote for him, that is one less vote that Obama has to worry about. It isn’t that I have confidence in the Republican Party: I do not. It is the fact that I literally don’t have a viable option. I am reminded, however, of the fact that when Jesus was born Bethlehem’s stable, Augustus Caesar sat on the throne of Rome. Guess who really ruled the earth and every one in it.
I disagree on all three points.
1. If more wells are drilled or the Keystone XL pipeline is built, how many people will die from that? 0.
So, this is not a life-or-death situation and “pro-life” is an inaccurate categorization of it.
By the way, much of this kind of thinking arises out of an urban view of nature. Nature is not clean. Oil is natural. It comes out of the ground. It comes out of the ground whether we do anything to drill for it or not. Ancient Babylon used petroleum-based asphalt in the construction of the city, which they obtained from the numerous places where petroleum just oozes out of the ground uncommanded. The La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles are just one example of a place where God created an oil spill. The effort to cleanse the earth from petroleum is like the effort to cleanse forests from forest fires.
2. Health Care. Everyone in the USA already has free access to health care wizardry that the Old Testament Children of Israel would scarcely be able to distinguish from witchcraft.
People talk about “Health Care” as though it is a product. It is not a product; it is an entire shopping mall full of products. The liberal “Health Care” utopia is nothing less than the suggestion that the shopping mall should always have the newest products available for everyone for free. It’s just crazy—absolutely crazy—to speculate that, the moment someone invents something new and expensive, having it immediately becomes an inalienable God-given human right for every person on the planet.
Simple rule for me: If my great-great-grandparents didn’t even know that it existed or was possible, it’s not a fundamental human right for me.
3. Gun-Control: Actually, it is an historical fact that the advancement of weapons technology has coincided with a REDUCTION in the brutality of mankind. Do you realize what people DID to one another before they had guns? People were drawn and quartered. People were broken on the wheel. People were skinned alive. People were led out of the ruins with fish-hooks through their noses. People were boiled alive in oil.
If we didn’t have nuclear weapons, how likely do you think it would have been that the USA and the USSR would have avoided open warfare in the 20th century?
And so, the premise that, bereft of guns, people wouldn’t be able to find ways to be brutal and lethal toward one another, exemplifies the historically-thoughtless naïveté that underlies so much liberalism.
“Simple rule for me: If my great-great-grandparents didn’t even know that it existed or was possible, it’s not a fundamental human right for me.”
Hi BART,
Our family is medical for generations, going back to France in the times of Louis Quatorze (the Sun King) . . . (we have record of an ancestor who was a court physician). The newest physician in our family is my nephew, a Navy doctor serving in San Diego.
Thing is, there is a gift for healing in my family, not ‘supernatural’ but present as a natural calling to medicine as profession. . . a desire to use God-given abilities in the medical field has been generational.
I know you feel as you do sincerely, and I can respect that because I think you speak from an integrity, sir;
but I know this:
my family would disagree with you from their ‘heart’:
a story:
our mother’s family is from Plymouth, N.C. and many are buried in the Episcopal Church graveyard in that lovely town. About fifteen years ago, my parents and my siblings went to stay for a weekend near Christmas time to visit family, so as to complete as my one of my mother’s bucket list wishes.
My brother, a pediatrician, was with us to watch over Mom’s health on this pilgrimage and we all went to the church-yard to view the stones recording family names . . . my brother drifted alone to a corner of the graves and stood there with tears in his eyes . . . I went and stood beside him . . .
he was looking at the stones marking the graves of babies and small children who died generations before . . . and he said, ‘what I know today likely could have saved these babies’
The desire to help sick people may be itself some kind of God-given gift which doesn’t ask:
what does this suffering person have a ‘right’ to?
In my brother, I saw evidence that day of someone whose desire to help sick children cut deeply into the core of who he was, as a part of his ‘calling’ in this world.
That’s how I know there is another side of the story of the ‘rights’ of those who suffer and of our abilities to help them. I, too, honor my brother’s integrity, as I respect your integrity in how you see things.
But know this: not all people see it as you see it.
And many of them, too, are people of faith, called to serve in their way in this world.
God bless . . . here’s hoping that there is room in this world for more than one perspective on the ‘rights’ of suffering human beings. I think there is room. I know there is.
This is what I wanted to say, but couldn’t come up with the words to say it. Dr. Barber, I don’t know nothin’ about no role models, but you’re mine.
Bart. I don’t like to agree with Joe because it just spurs him on.
But I have to agree that I think that is a very insightful post.
I may take a slight detour from your proposal that fundamental rights were ” frozen” in our grandparents or great grandparents day.
For example advances in health care should accrue to the masses if they become commonplace. Now does that apply to something like a heart transplant? I’d like to hear your perspective.
When does a common practice become a fundamental human right, if ever?
Frank,
I think that fundamental human rights are things like “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” These things are things that we have directly from God unless someone interferes to remove them from us.
A heart transplant, on the other hand, is neither something that I have naturally, nor is it something that I generally can fashion or obtain for myself. If I will have it, some other human being will have to provide it for me. I do not believe that I ever have any fundamental human right to the labor of another person.
Now, here’s where we may be missing one another a little bit. Let’s ask a different question: Not “Do I have a right to this?” but “Is it right for me to give this to a person who needs it?” Moving from the noun (right) to the adjective (right) changes a lot of things, I think.
I believe that it is right for people to look for opportunities to be generous toward those who are in need. I believe that it is wrong for us not to be generous. Generosity is generosity precisely when we are giving to people that which it is not their right to claim. And generosity is a good thing.
If I am able to pay for someone else’s heart transplant, it might be right for me to provide it for them. I believe that there are occasions when it is absolutely the right thing for a community to come together and provide something like a heart transplant to people who are in need.
So how would you deal with this issue: a rich person gets a life-saving service but a poor person does not. What services then should be “basic” services since obviously according to hour definition none of the services are “fundamental human rights.”
This is the issue driving health-care reform and driving it all over the road I might say.
How would you answer the challenge to your view there are “no” basic health-care services that are fundamental rights?
A heart-transplant may be an extreme example. How about the fundamental right of a child to be treated in an ER for a broken arm. I see this as “fundamental” in accord with our democracy. You seem to say, it’s a gift that richer people can bestow on poorer people if they want to, but if not, the poorer person is on his own to raise the money.
If I am getting you correctly, that seems patently unfair and unChristian to me.
If I take your view of fundamental rights: life, liberty, etc., then if a hospital has the means to give life (ei. a heart transplant) then they are obligated to do so–buy your definition.
I’m struggling for my position as it may be evident. You have sparked a thought in me but it isn’t quite clear yet what it is. Thank you for your gracious and helpful words thus far.
Frank,
I like the approach that led Baptists in Dallas to develop the Baylor University Medical Center and, consequently, to develop Blue Cross. Christians generously act to provide basic health care to people in need. They also act to help people to take responsibility for preparing and insuring against unanticipated losses.
The Christians of Farmersville (if we know about it) are not going to allow any child in our community with a broken arm to be unable to go to the ER to get medical attention.
We do this not because we think that children have the right to X-rays and casts, but because we know that it is right to help a child in such a situation and because we wouldn’t want to live in a community in which people harden their hearts to such needs.
When I grow up, I want to be a Calvinist version of you.
I have friends who suspect that I AM a Calvinist version of me (i.e., because I won’t sally forth to war against Calvinists).
One matter: unless things have changed since I had any direct involvement–and they may well have–ER’s only have a legal obligation to stabilize a patient, and to treat them to that extent. Used to, at least, they did not have an obligation to extend that treatment any further. In years past, when I was a police officer, I have seen people given emergency treatment, then sent away, with wounds, broken bones, etc., and certainly not to treat any underlying issues, diabetes for instance, because they lacked health insurance.
John
I think Bart makes some excellent points here.
Bart… thanks for the disagreement, now I’m going to briefly disagree with your disagreement…
1) The oil-thing does impact the issue of life. Even though spills are relatively rare, more drilling, more pipelines, etc., provides more opportunities for spills. And regardless of that, a stubborn continuation of the use of gas-powered combustion engines keeps adding pollutants into the air. As society advances, the number of cars world-wide advances with it. Simply put, to continue to depend upon petroleum for energy needs, continues to add pollutants to our environment. As such, we increase the risk and occurrence of what would otherwise be preventable diseases–everything from certain birth defects to certain cancers.
As good stewards of God’s creation it should be abundantly clear to us less pollution = better environment to live in = better overall health conditions. It might not be an immediate life or death issue, but it is a life issue.
2) Health Care. Revelation gives us a wonderful picture of an eternal God-given utopia under the prefect reign of Christ where all sickness, malformation, disease, and death is vanquished. Jesus gave us a foretaste of that through healings and raising the dead. And with that we have the commands to care for the poor, needy, sick, lonely, etc.
In our context, as I expressed in the opener, “Obamacare” is flawed, especially from a Christian PoV. It needs reformed. But within the broader idea we find the core of wanting to provide as many people as possible with the best possible access to that which will provide for their health care needs.
As we live in this already/not-yet age with the world still under sin’s curse and corruption, and the taste of a kingdom to come of perfection in everything (including health)… we should be doing all we can to not just provide people with life but with the best quality of life. It is a practical outworking of redemption as we look forward to kingdom come. And I think we do it best when we involve all our spheres–individual, church, and governmental.
Will we achieve some utopian dream? Of course not… but nor do I think we should scoff at the idea of trying for a better and more universal system–instead, I think we should go all in and do our best to improve the quality of life.
3) Gun-control. Okay, so we’ve reduced brutality. Great. But it hasn’t helped us reduce the overall number of people who die needlessly at the hands of others. Guns have a legitimate purpose. We live in a country with constitutionally-guaranteed rights of gun ownership.
The point of my post wasn’t let’s make all guns go bye-bye, nor was it to express the idea that if we take away guns we’ll magically change human nature.
But certain guns have their own added brutality factor to them, and while they might have some legitimate purposes, they really don’t serve to do much overall in the way of helping us in everyday life.
My point was, to help protect life, let’s restrict the more brutal guns and require the best checks we can on people’s backgrounds before we sell them guns (no matter the sales context). That doesn’t make people “bereft of guns.”
Leave aside whether burning oil contributes to global warming. Anyone been to China? A perfect example of what burning oil does. I guarantee your eyes will start to burn before you get out of the airport. Tiannamen Square is 500 yards long, and you cannot see from one end to the other. The air is thick enough to chew.
Well, Mike, in one thing we are agreed:
We both define “briefly” in similar terms!
It’s kinda like how Paul starts Philippians 3 with “Finally.”
And I think we do it best when we involve all our spheres–individual, church, and governmental.
Thank you for your opinion. However, asserting that we are biblically mandated to work out taking care of the sick through government is not proving from scripture that we are to do just that.
Joe… we have places like 1 Timothy 6 where it instructs us as Jesus-following individuals who have wealth to be generous and ready to share. We have places like Acts 2 & 4 where we see how the church as a whole rose up to care for the poor among the body.
We also have places like Ezekiel 16:49-50 where God calls out the guilt of Sodom, saying, “She and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.” Obviously, according to Genesis, that abomination greatly included their practices of sexual immorality, but God says that isn’t the only reason I destroyed them–they had the means but neglected the poor and needy.
In Amos 4:1-3, as God is declaring judgment upon Israel he includes how they treat the poor and needy… and you see the same Isaiah 10:1-4, etc.
God judges both individuals and nations; Jesus will rule as King over individuals and peoples. The reasons why God judges are many… pride, godlessness, idolatry, sexual immorality, treatment of the poor, widowed, orphaned, and needy.
Granted on the one hand, we have some of the best medication and treatment options in the world. Our affluence spurs research which results in quality care. On the other hand, though, we have a lot of people running around not getting treatment for certain diseases and sometimes even minor things that later become major issues, because they cannot afford treatment and care, or the insurance to help cover it. Why should that not be a national concern for us, as much as ending the plague of abortion should be?
And none of those things you mentioned prove that God wants us, like you obviously do, to adopt socialized medicine where everyone gets the best of everything free. Even if abortion weree not an issue* there would still be no justification for voting Democrat.
*Abortion being illegal and people with an unwanted pregnancy having to take their life in their own hands to end it–what a wonderful thought.
Christiane,
(For whenever your comment shows up over here.)
It is evidence of how this kind of conversation can run off the rails that you have misunderstood me so fundamentally. I’m thankful that your nephew, and many other caring professionals in the medical field, have a powerful desire to give good health to people as a part of their giftedness and calling.
But, that which is a fundamental human right is deserved, not given. To pretend that there is a fundamental human right to…say…an MRI is to suggest that your nephew is really not generous at all. What he gives is no longer a gift. Rather, if in any circumstances he ever fails to give away his services for free, then he is evil, if he is withholding from someone one of their fundamental human rights.
Let us acknowledge the work of your nephew and others for what it is: He gives people (GIVES people) out of his generosity that which is not their RIGHT to DEMAND, but that which he wishes to give them.
Hi BART,
I am misunderstanding you. I’m trying.
All I know is that all we have to give is that which was given to us from God.
The MRI equipment was developed in ‘our’ time by those who were gifted with the capacity to do the job. I’m not sure how we draw a line properly in the Christian world about the ‘rights’ of suffering people, BART. That is where I get hung up.
I think what makes us ‘human’ is one thing;
and I know what makes us Christian is something more, not something less.
Our civilization has grown in the ability to help suffering in this world, and I think this growth of knowledge has happened by the grace of God.
If I am right: how then are we, as Christians, to act towards suffering when faced with our power to heal in one hand and our power to deny care in the other?
We stop by the side of the road today to help the fallen with vastly different powers of healing . . .
do we engage with the injured based on their ability to pay,
or on our ability to help?
Ethically, maybe we do need to catch up with the technology.
We are Christians, but we don’t have donkeys to put the injured on, and we don’t take them to a place where oil is poured on to their wounds . . .
but we are STILL Christians, Bart.
How NOW do we live?
It’s certainly the author of this blog’s right to vote for whomever he chooses, or not to vote at all.
But reading this analysis is really sad because the author is so confused by the short comings of the candidates that he is paralyzed into not showing up at the polls.
Most high school seniors I know have a more firm grasp on what they think makes for good government and which candidate will move us toward that end.
This author is unable to draw distinctions and make the judgments necessary to cast an informed vote.
I don’t understand the swipe at Francis Shaffer? Can someone help me here?
And I also don’t get the bitterness about his belief that most Americans don’t believe in the right kind of God, or something like that.
Again, it’s his vote. That’s the beauty of democracy.
Funny, when I read someone who professes faith in Christ and believes that “pro-life” means anything other than “anti-abortion” and tacks on all these unnecessary left-wing positions claiming that they are part of a comprehensive pro-life position, the word “beauty” isn’t what comes to mind.
Well, Louis,
Speaking for the author. The author is not paralyzed about showing up at polls, the author is dissatisfied with two-sided politics that push to the extremes and leaves few, if any, candidates that combine a robust anti-abortion stance with an equally robust pro-care-for-the-environment stance, etc.
The author also did not take a swipe at Schaeffer, but thanked Schaeffer for the cultural image of god he described in the chapter “The Echo of the World” in the book Death in the City. Schaeffer happens to be one of the author’s favorite writers.
And it’s not a bitterness the author has about the cultural image of god in America, it’s a sadness. Most people want a god who affirms them in their own natural state, they don’t want a holy and righteous God who stands in judgment against sin and calls them to repent from their sin/current course of life and turn to faith in Jesus–denying themselves, taking up their cross, and following him.
The sadness is that we tend to cheer whenever a politician who has a completely twisted view of god mentions he won’t take god out of government; and we tend to cheer whenever a political party makes a vague reference to god in their party platform. The God who is there (another Schaeffer term) is much more glorious, true, and awesome than the vague generalities of the god of American culture and politics…
Our nation needs the Gospel, desperately.
It’s worth noting that Francis Schaeffer did more to kick-start evangelical environmental engagement (and no, not the Cal Beisner consumption over conservation environmental thinking) than any other person.
It’s also worth adding that for many decades now, African-Americans in the South and Hispanics and Native Americans in the Southwest have viewed issues of “environmental justice” as both civil rights causes and part of a pro-life ethic.
Exposure to toxic and hazardous waste doesn’t exactly do a body good.
I’m not laying this charge on all dispys, but I think overall the prevalence of dispensationalism among evangelicals contributes to a certain laissez-faire attitude towards things like health care and even more with the environment. And of course evangelicals have always had a tendency to conflate Christianity with Republicanism.
What a causal, contentious, tenuous, over-broad, spacious (do you want more adjectives here?) assertion. Do you have proof for you charge or is it your desire to cast aspersions on all theological positions which you obviously do not hold? Not much grace here huh?
Have a blessed day!
Rob
Being anti socialized medicine and anti environmental-whack job policies is not being laissez-faire as you contend. And while God is in no way a Republican, He is anti-abortion and as the Bible clealy shows, He doesn’t support any left-wing positions.
Joe: I think it is a knee jerk reaction in many cases, especially with environmentalism. Most evangelicals, for obvious reasons, are also Republicans. This makes Democrats the enemy (in a sense). Therefore whatever the Democrats favor, Christians automatically think they have to oppose. This plays out fine in some cases like abortion, gay marriage, etc. But since most environmentalists are also Democrats, we think we have to oppose everything they are for also, and although some of it falls into the category of “whack-job” not all of it does. And I think this attitude is magnified by dispensationalism. After all, if Jesus is coming back any day, then how we treat the planet doesn’t really matter. That’s primarily where my laissez-faire comment is coming from, not so much about health-care. I’m not a fan of Obama-care, especially with a son who is a newly minted physician. I would really like him to be able to pay off his enormous loans.
Here’s my thing about the environment–I think we ought to take care of where we live because, well, if our planet gets to looking like a global sized version of a house on Hoarders where are we going to live? I mean, we need clean air and clean water. But that doesn’t mean we have to go along with the cap and trade garbage our president wants us involved in nor does it mean we have to regulate businesses to the point that they can’t make a profit and therefore employ people. We need to protect wildlife and not just slaughter animals for the heck of doing it or destroy places where they llive just cause the NFL’s not worth watching with replacement refs. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use reasonable means to get our own oil out of our own land by drilling, building pipelines, or whatever.
Personally, I agree with you that if someone takes the idea “Well, it doesn’t matter how we use our natural resources. Jesus is coming back soon” they have taken a wrong view of our stewardship of what God has given us.
I think it is hugely hypocritical to insist on using oil, but also insist on getting it somewhere else. But I think we also should be straining every nerve to find some better forms of energy than fossil fuels. We’re a smart country with a lot of smart people. We could do it if we really wanted to. But I don’t think we really want to.
No it’s not hypocritical, given the fact that we have no viable options currently online and it doesn’t look like we will have for quite a while. In the meantime, our oil supply is a matter of national security and economic survival. We need to drill more and we need additional pipelines to supply our refineries.
John: I’m not sure but I think you missed my point. If we insist on burning oil, we ought to get and use our own. I kind of think you are saying the same thing.
“And I think this attitude is magnified by dispensationalism. ”
Poppycock and nonsense. Dispensationalism painted in your way would mean isolation – the selling of all goods and waiting on the porch for Jesus to return. I don’t oppose the Democratic party because they are environmentalists. I oppose the party because they advocate death for the unborn and want me to pay for it. The rest of your conjecture is your own speculation of how those who hold to a dispensationalist eschatology (you can hold to the rapture and millennial reign without being a classical dispensationalist) view the planet and its care. How about this – we support the poor to be able to drive cars, keep electricity in their homes, and work for their families at a wage that will maintain these basic American necessities. They will not if electricity rates go sky high and gas becomes unaffordable because government starts regulating to an extreme the means in which we extract and manage energy (done so without any appreciable benefit to the environment). They will also not be able to keep their job when their employer lays off people because the regulated and exorbitant cost to maintain healthcare. Those who care for those of less means ought to consider all angles – and not blame people who have a different theological tenet which has nothing absolutely to do with anything under discussion.
Grace,
Rob
Bill Mac didn’t pull out of thin air the link between environmental exploitation and dispensationalism. That subject has been studied extensively by sociologists and theologians alike since the days of Lynn White and especially with the nomination of James Watt as Secretary of the Interior during the first Reagan term.
I have data from my own research on the environmental attitudes of Southern Baptists in Texas – surveyed pastors – that directly connects dispensational theology to an ethic of environmental exploitation. Conservative evangelical scholars will acknowledge that this ethic or perspective certainly exists, it’s just a minority perspective among evangelicals.
In the case of James Watt, I’ve yet to be convinced that his dispensational theology had much if anything to do with his environmental views. His environmental philosophy seemed to be influenced by the secular “wise use” movement of that day. Watt erred in making a couple of comments that suggested otherwise.
I have a personal story that fits neatly in here. Whether you want to categorize it as “confirmation bias” or “failing to comprehend the Law of Large Numbers”, it goes something like this:
I wanted to play soccer at San Gorgonio High School after returning from Indonesia and after moving from a previous high school in Texas that didn’t have a soccer program. It was my senior year and last chance to do things like that. My brother–two years younger–also wanted to play.
our first assignment to even try out for the team was establish a running program. Now before that even happened, we had watched in awe as we drove in past Palm Springs into the great purple haze of the Los Angeles Valley and its extremities. Then we played pickup basketball at the house of the Chairman of the Deacons who made the initial contact with my dad for the role he had with the church. By the end of the game I was puffing and wheezing but I chalked it up to being out of shape.
As Jeff and I started trying to run to get into shape at a nearby track, it turns out the puffing and wheezing didn’t stop. We realized it was pollution causing the problem and questioned the wisdom of continuing.
I’m not a hardover environmentalist by any means. But when you look at the history of efforts in the United States to tend to clean air and clean water, you have to acknowledge we generally succeed at making things better, not worse. You could take issue with whether the current administration’s effort to end the use of coal generation as we know it is taking it “too far”. But you won’t go to a major city like Houston or Los Angeles (or even Inland Empire stops like San Bernardino, Riverside, and Fontana) and claim they’ve gone “too far” in reducing pollution yet.
I think part of the problem that evangelicals traditionally have had isn’t necessarily just dispensational theology. It is fundamental faith that God is too big for us to screw up the world we’ve been given. Would anyone really disagree with my claim that we’ve now successfully tested that hypothesis and proven it isn’t true? And, therefore, some amount of environmental focus is a necessary ingredient in our national political conversation.
How much? Well, we have these things called “votes” that permit us citizens to instruct the government on how much. The courts might on occasion overreach and the executive branch might occasionally over-regulate, but generally speaking the voters have the final say should they choose to exercise it.
P.S. It arguably isn’t a lack of my God being big enough as much as that he put in place an ecosystem that is impacted by human behavior. While it is a resilient system, he apparently chose not to design it to be beyond being affected and therefore our actions matter and we are accountable to God for them.
Greg: Good points. I think the line of thinking goes like this: Environmentalists think if we don’t stop polluting we will destroy the world, but since I know the world won’t be destroyed until the rapture, and since I won’t be around to care after the rapture, environmentalists must be wrong.
But like the genie said in Alladin, you’d be amazed what you can live through. It isn’t necessary to destroy the world to make it a miserable place to live. When I first visited Houston, I wondered why it seemed cloudy all the time. And as I said, try visiting Beijing or Shanghai if you want to see the effects of burning oil.
Bill Mac,
Do you believe in the 2nd Coming of Christ? Don’t you believe that He could be coming any day? Dispys believe in protecting the environment, we just don’t believe in worshipping it.
John: Yes, Yes, and I’m not so sure.
Bill Mac,
According to your own words you meet both criteria for having a “laissez-faire” attitude concerning the environment and yet you don’t have that attitude. Yet you feel a need to broad brush a theological perspective as having that attitude. I’m sorry brother but that’s just nonsense.
John: Just because I believe Jesus could come back any time doesn’t mean I think he will. I lean towards post-millenialism and so I think the Gospel will largely triumph in the world before Christ returns. But I’m not too dogmatic about it.
Obviously I can’t speak for all dispys but neither can you. Having been one, and being surrounded by them, this is my observation.
Bill Mac,
I realized calling your comment “nonsense” was not a good thing to do, I’m sorry. The truth is I’ve always found your comments very thoughtful. We just disagree on this, that’s all.
John: No offense taken. Thanks.
“evangelicals have always had a tendency to conflate Christianity with Republicanism.”
Not so. In fact, in the case of the SBC, if we spent another century voting exclusively Republican, including periods of time in which we consistently elect nothing but Republican secular office-holders as the officers of our convention, then we will have achieved balance for the lock-step, yellow-dog Democrat 130 years of our convention.
And prior to Roe, I think you’d find that other evangelical denominations, as well, have been aligned with the Democrats.
If you’re looking for people who are willing to change their party affiliation based upon issues, rather than to be blindly loyal to one political party, then you’re looking for people like the SBC, who made a major party switch over principled issues. Liberal denominations have been in lockstep agreement with the Democrats for a long time, and will continue along the same path.
Mike:
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you were dissing Schaffer.
I agree the nation needs the Gospel.
I just don’t think that politics is the way to bring the Gospel to the nation. So I am not disappointed when the theological views of politicians don’t express a full throated endorsement of orthodox Christian theology. It has never really, truly happened. I am not waiting for that to happen. I am not expecting that to happen. I am not disappointed when it doesn’t happen.
I do not object either when in a diverse electorate or group of people there is a reference to God, or at least the aspects of God upon which we all agree. Civil religion, as it is called, is dangerous, and has to be watched. But it is not all bad. The church will always be called to fill in the picture and make corrections, when necessary.
I see the involvement of Christians as being absolutely necessary. Not because we are going to get everthing we want. We are going to hopefully influence things for good in the political process.
I, too, bemoan the cheesy attempts to turn the phrase “pro-life” into something it’s not. People who believe that unborn humans should be allowed to develop and be born call themselves “pro-life” because they believe in life for that unborn humanity, as opposed to those who either argue for the option to kill the unborn humanity or engage in that.
I believe it is perfectly consistent to argue that an unborn human ought to have the right to grow and be born and not killed, and at the same time question or disagree with this or that social program or environmental initiative. Arguments for those programs can stand on their own merits without trying to glom on to the “pro-life” moniker that is used in the abortion discussion.
There are many issues like this. I agree with the constitutional guarantees of trial by jury and a defense. But that doesn’t mean to be “truly” in favor of that, I must also be in favor or free school lunches and after hour programs at school at taxpayer expense on the grounds that it will make people grow up to be less likely to commit crime.
I understand why those in favor of abortion rights try to make such a silly “thou must be consistent” type of approcah (so that “pro-life” means you must endorse all of the political programs I think are good).
But I don’t understand why thinking people have to get sucked into it.
Let each idea stand on its own merit.
I share your disdain for both Romney and Obama. The issues you mentioned are debatable:
The Environment. I agree we should take care of it. The big problems we’ve seen lately with oil drilling, however, have more to do with the extreme measures the oil companies have to take to meet government regulations. The Gulf issue we saw a couple of years ago, for example, wouldn’t have happened if they would have been allowed to sink a well in shallower water. We do much more with oil than simply turn it into gasoline to burn and we should be prepared to lose anything we make out of plastic or rubber if we kill oil production. That includes the technologies that we otherwise consider to be “clean”. It’s amazing how much of those technologies require petroleum-based products.
Health-Care. Without government mandated health-insurance the law already requires healthcare to be provided even if the person can’t pay. So those of us who can end up paying extra to cover the cost for those who can’t. The thing that will give more people better choices in their healthcare, especially better elective preventative healthcare, is a healthier economy. Any form of government healthcare is a drag on the economy if only because of the additional bureaucracy it creates. Government jobs seem like worthwhile jobs, but we need more people creating GDP and less people creating governmental overhead. More per capita GDP results in better healthcare all around.
Gun-Control. I don’t own a gun. I’m in a low-crime area, relatively speaking. I can generally leave valuable items lying on my front porch and they won’t walk off. Hey, I have an unsecured wireless network at the house and no one comes by and uses it without anyone knowing it. But this much is certain: people don’t’ mess around because they know that I could have a gun. In fact, my father-in-law, who lives in our basement, does have a couple of guns. I don’t know if his ammo is any good. He hasn’t shot them in a few years. But the obvious fact is that only criminals have illegal guns. Control guns too much and only the criminals will be armed. The police? Sure they will have guns. Usually, the situations where criminals employ their guns against people who are not police are when the police aren’t there at the moment. It doesn’t make sense to deny law-abiding citizens the right to adequate measures of self-defense against lawbreakers.
On the international stage, the reason gun-control is being pushed is because it’s hard to take the freedoms of a self-governed people away if they are armed and capable of self-defense.
And what happens when a government becomes the enemy? Should the Jews have continued to be killed in Nazi Germany? Yet the French Resistance was beneficial in helping us stop Hitler. Even still, from a Christian standpoint, there is a tension between Paul, who spoke to Christians who were being put to death as he himself was in chains, who said we should submit to our governing authorities, and Bonhoeffer who was killed for fueling rebellion against the Nazis.
So I observe that what will happen may not be what should happen if people feel threatened. For this reason, I hold that it is better to vote for an individual who will protect the rights that people have rather than seeking to stem them. It could get very ugly quickly when many otherwise law-abiding, patriotic people are made criminals with naught but the flourish of a pen.
I do not disdain Romney. He seems like a decent man.
I disdain his religion and believe it to be false and dangerous. I wonder whether he will be committed to the principles he now espouses (fiscal conservative/pro-life, etc). I don’t find him overly inspirational or anything.
Of course, Obama is a decent man as well, he just has heinous and destructive policies.
So, for me the choice is clear. Obama has to be defeated so I will vote for a candidate I may not be enthusiastic about, but one who will at least not carry on the scary policies of the current president.
Plus, I shudder to think what will happen if Obama gets to appoint more Supreme Court justices and we get more wild leftists on the bench.
Nightmare.
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