Tag Archives: Politics

July 4, 2011 · 8:04 am

The Fight for Ideas, The Fight for Survival

So I went outside for a couple of days, attacking a weed-infested garden tract in my backyard, and allergies rose up and hammered me toward a sinus infection, which I’m currently refusing to bow to. Perhaps it’s an appropriate penance for the sin of neglecting this nice little piece of ground that could be used to actually grow something either functional or beautiful if I’d put a little thought and effort into it.

So now I’m back inside, drinking lots of fluids, and reading through articles dealing with politics, economics, spending cuts and revenue increases and debt ceilings, and wondering who in the world really knows how all this works?   I’m a guy that reads on the right and the left and I find a lot of commonality in what I read.  Not a commonality of ideas, but of emotion and tone.   Lots of anger out there, lots of name-calling and shaming, lots of rolling of the eyes at the ideas the other guy has, and lots of prejudice and fear.   Could it really be any other way?   What the world needs now is love, sweet love, but I blogged yesterday about the various ways that word can be used.  Utopian dreams of everybody just getting along seem to me to be ideals that really ignore what both personal history and the history of nations demonstrate–namely, that we are people quite capable and willing to do whatever is necessary to have what we want.   Depending on your religion, we are sinners, out of balance, out of alignment, ignorant, broken, or not as far down the evolutionary path as we should be or will be.

In other words, something is wrong with us.   By us, I mean everybody, all around the planet, in every culture, in every nook and cranny of human existence.

To some degree that is a statement of faith, simply because I haven’t been in all the nooks and crannies, but even with the advent of the internet, I’m not seeing anything that would lead to me to believe there’s anywhere on the planet where the “something-is-wrong-with-us” isn’t a big part of the equation.

Ideas and battles.   Yesterday I caught the end of Glory, the great ’90s film about the 54th Massachusetts in the Civil War, the first black Union regiment to see significant action and prove to President Lincoln and everyone else that black soldiers were perfectly capable and willing warriors.   As I watched that great final scene, it occurred to me again that in the moment of battle, the emphasis shifts from the ideas the battle is about to the need to survive and win.   It seems to me that political discourse that I read and watch and experience has the pitch and tone not of reasoned discourse, but of trench warfare, where survival by whatever means necessary the goal.    We start with laudable ideas of service to humanity, and end up slugging it out in a ditch.

No surprises, I guess.   We shoot down, imprison, and crucify those think it should be otherwise.

But ideas matter, and freedom is sweet.   On this July 4th, I don’t really have a point to make, but I’ll just say this.  I am both extremely grateful for the battles that have been fought so that this life can be lived so freely in this place, and I am sad that we are as broken as we are.   Who will save us from this body of death?

No matter who you are, that question posed by the Apostle Paul is the question all humanity faces all the time.   Who will save us, answer the questions, find the remedies, provide the guidance, straighten the paths, and calm the wars?

As we stand before the big questions of the day, I just think a little humility is needed…

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May 15, 2011 · 7:37 am

The Questions, The Moral Fight, and Love

I don’t like politics.  Men and women struggling over power, wealth, and good.  Forces of human action contending valiantly and corruptly, if need be, to control, coerce, or more nobly, to free.   Senators beaten with canes in full view (see pre-Civil War politics), Congresswomen shot at close range in grocery store parking lots, and furious ill-will pretty much all around.

What is good?  It’s a simple question, really.  What are the conditions which make for health, life, possibility, and the cultivation of the good of the human?    Immediately–wouldn’t you know it–a bias is found in that statement that it’s the human’s good we’re after, which, someone argues, may not be the highest moral position.  What about the rest of the planet?  What about the stars?  What about macro and micro life forms and systems?   What about a thousand things in life’s ecosystem that are not human?  What about matter itself?  Energy?  Who are we to think that we homo sapiens are special?   Aren’t the human-centered folks arrogant and small, refusing to listen to the ongoing voice of discovery and guidance science affords?

The questions seem endless.  What do the temperature fluctuations in the earth’s weather patterns mean?  What is the story, and who gets to tell it?  What is the nature of family, marriage, and love?  Just what exactly, is a human right?  Who makes that list?  Where does it come from?  What is the best way for civilizations to negotiate the relationships between the powerful and the weak?   What is “the good life?”   What is the mix of chemical and spirit in the mass of innards held together by skin?  Where and who might God be, and how would we ever know?  Which religious book tells me the truth of life, and what might that truth be referring to?  What is the relation of what is with what ought to be?   What is the most trusted impetus for my action, appetite or ideal?  Whose “good” trumps?

Narrative reality is all the rage.  We make everything up, we’re told, and I’m inclined to go down that road, at least for a good distance, agreeing.   Facts are what they are, but the meanings and stories about those facts are always up not only for discussion, but for war.   Such and such a budget deficit means liberals are weak-kneed, conservatives are devils, and independents are irrelevant.   Name-calling is everything, and who wins the battle of language…well, wins. Disagreement over best and Godly (as if there were such a thing) ways of living is bigotry and phobia automatically, and fair enough: when lives are at stake, blood letting seems to be appropriate, according to almost everyone.  Ayn Rand vs. Jesus, right-wing Jesus vs. left-wing Jesus, capitalism vs. whatever-else-anyone-can-think-of-that-might-be-better-than-the-free-market, and finally after all the battles, we die, and others rise to fight on.

I call it the human enterprise.  My bias is toward the human both biblically and experientially, and the rise of concern for the earth and its totality of inhabitants heartens me about the state of that same human.   What are we for?  What are we here for?  To do what?  To survive?  Thrive?  Do “good?”  Be fruitful and multiply?  Till and keep the earth?  Love?

I’m lamenting that life is a fight.  Frankly, I don’t like fighting.  Some people get excited by the rush of it, by the opportunity to win, the feelings of power and superiority that come with standing over the defeated, regardless of what the fight was about.  To my credit or shame, depending on which story you’re in, I’m not one of those people.

But there’s something wrong with earth and the human enterprise it hosts.   Few disagree.  And here is the crux of the matter: what is that “wrong” and how best to “right” it?  People have lots of names for it: imbalance, misalignment, brokenness, bad karma, evil, sin.   Whatever we call it, death is a force, “bad” things are everywhere, and to confuse things further, some things that feel “bad” are actually “good” for you.  But what can be worse than the core of who I think myself to be to feel “bad?”  As it turns out, that “bad” feeling in my core identity is the worst “sin” in experience, one not to be tolerated.   For after all, we are all miracles of God, or at least miracles of something, even if the something turns out to be little more than the universal nature of nothing in particular.   (Which of course, calls the miraculous into question.)

All of which comes to this banal statement: If you believe in something, put up your dukes.   Or as Jesus said, put ‘em down, and get ready to get hit.   We don’t get to not be in the fight.   My question the Apostle Paul, who said “We do not fight against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers…”, would be, “What is it about principalities and powers that cancels out the flesh and blood fights I experience every day?”  Flesh and blood and principality and power and spirit and mind and things visible and invisible is where the human enterprise is lived.   Paul also said, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  So I guess Paul fought in the flesh and blood, too.

Somehow, the way of the cross is not pacifist, but it’s chief weapon is not the strike of a raging blow, but an act of humble, sacrificial love.   And here’s the truth, sometimes that move of sacrificial love can break our hearts (almost) beyond repair, at least for this side of reality.   It ought not to be, but Christ proves it: he died alone, betrayed and truly forsaken.  The end.   Kaput.  Done.

Victory was on the other side.   Victory will always belong to the unseen side of things, to the Spirit of life, to the other side of death.

Let us now all stand and sing.

Faith is the victory…

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April 5, 2011 · 8:14 pm

Still in the Wake of The Civil War

Here’s an interesting question:  what types of ceremonies, rituals, and celebrations are appropriate for remembering the war officially known as “The War Between The States”?  (So said Congress in 1948, one reenactor pointed out to me last weekend.) Actually, Wikipedia refutes my friend the reenactor, saying Congress never officially legislated a name for the war.  I’ll bet I’ll come across someone soon who will argue the point.  Any takers?

Anyway, given the wide range of feelings Americans have about the war, I’m wondering what you think is appropriate.   There’s a great article about this over at Civil War Memory.  (Tremendous resource, by the way.)

I’m writing a play that began as a rather innocuous attempt to do something timely with Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, but the more I’ve read about the war, the less inclined I am to do something that simple and that straightforward.   The realization that the Civil War, the emancipation of the slaves, and the ongoing struggle of black Americans over the past 150 years, compels me to go deeper, rummaging around in the complexities of culture and skin color relations that still impact many of the simple human exchanges that mark day to day life in America.

Yesterday, I posted a list of things that were on my mind as a result of my reading over the past couple of months.   I’m not sure why this topic has seized me by the throat emotionally.   Frankly, I have been moved deeply by the stories of suffering, abuse, bravery, loss, compassion, and struggle that were a part of this great American upheaval.  I’ve learned about the all too real tension between Federal power and States’ rights.  I’ve been reminded again about the power of, well, power, especially economic and political power.   No wonder God is on the side of the poor, the weak, and the oppressed…who else is going to be on their side?  I’ve been profoundly reminded that evil is out there, and that the actions of a few can turn the tide of history for large groups of people.   I’ve been instructed on the intricate dance everyone dances as they try to get it right when talking about race.  Offense is always lurking, and I’m pretty sure that over the course of the next couple of years, as I explore this, I’m bound to offend more than my fair share.

I’ve also been challenged to look around me, and see where injustice of this happening right now, today, and how I’m being called to respond to it.  I applaud the shift in many Christian cultures (you thought there was just one?) toward social justice and an awareness of serving the whole human being.  At the same time, I stumble over the question of Jesus and Paul glossing over the slave culture and torturous capital punishment cultures of their day.  They did not rail against Roman civil and military authority, instead going after religious leaders and the problem of the hypocritical heart.   The transformed heart, of course, transforms everything.

Anyway, back to the first question:  should we celebrate this war?  And if we at least commemorate it in some way, how would you suggest we go about it?   Will you remember it?  Attend any events?  And if you do, what are you most interested in commemorating?

Another thing I’ve learned?

Most of us just don’t care that much.   I certainly didn’t.

Maybe we should…

 

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September 15, 2009 · 6:40 am

Reluctantly Asking the Health-Care Questions

Here’s a question: what does Beauty have to do with the health-care debate?

I’m not much of a political animal.  Whether that’s a badge of honor or shame depends on who you talk to, but it’s getting harder to avoid getting drawn into the “debates” (read mud-slinging) about health-care, economics, race, and other areas of social concern and justice.  My reticence about entering these discussions is two-fold: 1) Too often, such “discussion” descends into language and tone that is neither informative or anything close to beautiful.   Anger–make that fury–seems to be the prevailing stance, with people talking over each other in embarrassingly rancorous behavior.  2) I just don’t know enough to contribute to the discussion meaningfully, though why that stops me is unclear…ignorance doesn’t seem to stop anyone else.  And in saying that, I recoil–here I am throwing my own mud less than a half-dozen sentences in.   “Ignorance” is a tacky, mocking word in the above sentence, and I used to make me feel better about my own position.  I may not know much, but at least I’m willing to admit it.

That’s called being proud of your humility.

See, I hate these discussions.

But someone very close to me is now being impacted by this whole health-care thing, and as they say, all politics is personal.  (Does anybody say that, or did I make that up?)  So I find that I’m going to have to marshal my personal resources to do some learning.  The questions about health-care are daunting: is access to medical care a basic human right?  Who is a society responsible for, and how far does that responsibility reach?  What is the moral imperative of a statistic like “24.9% of the people of Texas are uninsured?”  What role does individual responsibility play in the long-term outcomes of life?  (This is the “it’s your own fault” argument, implying that when someone lands in the ditch by their own machinations [taking who knows how many other people right into the ditch with them], their own machinations have to get them out, thereby allowing me to keep my machinations for myself.)  What is “stupid” poverty, especially in America?  (It’s easier to identify in developing nations.  [Or is that statement an indication of some kind of hidden upper-class bias?  Aaackk!  There's no escaping it...])  What are the national values that are reflected in the answers to the above?  (See Newsweek’s article–No Country for Sick Men–about how the decisions nations make on who gets health insurance coverage reveal their national value and character.)  How best are Christ’s values lived out in the midst of these questions?   And questions like “Who would Jesus Insure?” [and here, and here, and here, and here] seem near silly, especially if you believe that the Kingdom of God is somehow diminished by the uneasy mix of faith and politics we’ve seen so often in recent years, on both right and left.

But here’s the thing, in my view: life–the human experience–is one.  What I mean is that our values, what we cherish, what we believe (or don’t believe), what we hold to be good, true, and beautiful–all this, as they say, will out.   The philosophical debates, the ideas that stand behind these dramatically practical issues (real people with real names with real families that watch them suffer die over these things) will inform every category of our lives.  Even if we are divided (“Life is NOT one”, someone retorts.  “Don’t you realize we live in a time of deeply fractured experience?  Don’t you realize we live on the other side of the fall?  Life is NOT one…we are broken.”), that very dividedness will permeate each category of life.   Religion (or call it “faith” if you don’t like the word “religion”), politics, entertainment, relationships, morality, sexuality–all of it flows from what’s inside our totality, our combined heart, mind, soul, and strength.

This whole thing is challenging me to rethink some very basic values.  And though I called it near silly above, I can’t think of a better person to ask about all of this that the Christ.  So I’ll be working on that in the next few days, because I’ve got some decisions to make about the best ways to help those I love–some of whom I know, some of whom I don’t.

So now, I’m out of room in this post, so the first question I asked–what does Beauty have to say about all this–will have to wait.  But I ask in the spirit of knowing that Truth, Goodness, and Beauty have always stood together.  And no doubt Truth and Goodness are at the heart of the debate, so Beauty has to be lurking, wanting to have its say, bringing its own insight.   And I don’t hear anyone else talking about it in those terms, so…

…another day…

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