Politics

Even the Democrats…

On the way back home to Tennessee from a weekend getaway in Georgia, I saw a billboard that said, “Every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord …. even the Democrats.”

I think it’s safe to say that the providers of that billboard think that Republicans have done a better job of confessing Jesus as Lord than the Democrats. As a man that is homegrown in Tennessee, I am used to this fallacy and idiocy. During my 10-plus-year stint in Christian ministry, I encountered this fallacy again and again.

For instance, I remember an elderly, white, sister in Christ disagreeing with the sticker on my truck, which proclaimed, “God is not a Republican … or a Democrat.” She thought otherwise. After all, she had chaired the county’s Republican party. She had studied the Bible and attended a Bible-studying church. Surely, God was a Republican! Surely, Republicans were the God-party, the Jesus-party!

As a committed Christian, and as a man of committed Christian faith, I find such thinking idiotic and repugnant. And for several reasons. For one, if one simply reads the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, one will see that Jesus cared about a lot more things than abortion and homosexuality, which are the favorite whipping-boys of Republican (pseudo)Christianity. For two, Jesus did not align with any existent political party of his own day; to think that he would align with a single American political party of our day is nothing more than self-justifying, special pleading. We want Jesus to endorse us.

Third, Jesus advocated a distinct politic: he advocated for a new way to be human, and for a new way to do human life together. He showed that the Jewish political factions did not have the answer to their problems. He showed that the Roman political management of their world did not provide the answer to their people, either. Pharisees? Nope. Sadducees? Nope, again. Zealots? Wrong. Caesar? Not the lord. Again and again, we see Jesus and his earliest followers recognizing the shortcomings–and blatant evils–of the rulers of their day. They did not look to secular political authorities to deliver them … or anyone else.

And neither should we. Are the Democrats flawed? Sure. Are the Republicans flawed? Certainly. Is one party more “Christian” than the other? Hardly. Have the Democrats confessed Jesus as Lord? As a political party, No, even if individual party members have made such verbal statements. Have the Republicans confessed Jesus as Lord? As a political party, Nope, even if individual party members have made such verbal statements. After all, if the Republican or Democrat parties were to confess Jesus as Lord fully, both of their agendas would wind up crucified, just like Jesus was. Right?

Bible, Humanity, Race

Race, Scripture, and Science: A Brief Thought

On the heels of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, and its call — among other things — to keep fighting against racism — I recall some anti-evolution attitudes I have encountered among my fellow Christians, as well as antagonism I have personally received as a Christian who thinks that evolution is a good scientific theory. I recall these things on MLK Day because I have known Christians who have claimed that evolution undermines the value of human life and calls for the kinds of immorality displayed in racism.

On the contrary, if you study some of the history of interpreting the Bible and interpreting science, you will find that both the Bible and science have been interpreted to support racism, and to oppose it. I invite you to engage, for example, this excerpt from a book by Ron Cole-Turner, my doctoral professor and advisor:

“In the United States, many who embraced traditional Christian theology or Biblical literalism objected to evolutionary theories, polygenic and monogenic alike. Our theories of human origins, they insisted, must be based on the Bible. The distressing thing is that in the end, it really did not matter whether one accepted polygenism, monogenism, or a literal Adam and Eve. Each view was interpreted to support racism.”

Ronald Cole-Turner, The End of Adam and Eve (2016), pp. 134-135
Ronald Cole-Turner, The End of Adam and Eve (2016)

The context for this excerpt is that, in the late-1800s and early-1900s, there were people in the United States of America who used science to justify racism, and there were Christians who used the Bible to justify racism. In other words, it did not matter whether one appealed to science or one appealed to the Bible; if you wanted to justify racism, you would find a way to do so, even if it meant using God or scientific study to justify your beliefs.

Ron Cole-Turner’s discussion is based, in turn, on his interaction with another worthwhile read, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion, and the Politics of Human Origins, by David Livingstone (Johns Hopkins, 2008).

David Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors (2008)

A corollary of the foregoing is this: if you think that the Bible, or a particular — or so-called “literal” — interpretation of the Bible, is the solution to racism, think again. Scientific understandings of human origins will not, in and of themselves, end racism. Biblical literalism will not, in and of itself, end racism. Ending racism is a deliberate and conscious decision on the part of people who have become convinced, for whatever reason(s), that racism is a human contrivance and construct that lives on the lies we feed ourselves about being better than others.

Bible, Meditations

Hope: Delusion? Strength? Weakness?

In the movie The Matrix: Reloaded (2003), the character dubbed “The Architect” says the following to Neo when it becomes clear that Neo is about to make a seemingly unrealistic choice in hopes of saving the woman he loves, Trinity, from imminent and fatal danger:

“Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.”

My previous post on hope got me thinking more about the wisdom of hope. Proverbs 13:12 casts hope within the framework of wisdom, and proverbs as a genre are very compressed, inviting readers to sit awhile and unpack the meanings and lessons on offer.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12 NRSV

Implied in this proverb, it is wise to accept that sometimes hopes go unfulfilled, and sometimes they come to fruition. This is life. It is what it is. There is not necessarily anything wrong with the world just because our own particular hopes get delayed or destroyed, no matter how devastated we may feel in response. It is also wise to welcome our heart-sick responses. Emotional response is not necessarily unwise.

But all of this has to do with how we handle the hopes we already have. If The Architect of The Matrix is right, however, then perhaps we should not let ourselves hope at all. Maybe hope is a delusion. Yes, it gives us uncanny strength, but it might also blind and weaken us, driving us to spend our powers on things for which we cannot guarantee the outcomes. Better to play it safe and conservative, to focus on outcomes we can predict, control, and guarantee.

As an aside — or perhaps not — I am reminded here of the well known “Serenity Prayer”: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I pray this prayer often.

But might it be wise to hope?

Perhaps it is wise to perceive that the future is open before us — to a certain degree, at least — and that there is no guarantee that bad things are going to happen. Next, our world seems highly contingent. Perhaps, then, it is wise to recall that each action we take may alter the choices that others make, and that therefore one deliberate good act can ripple outward into the future to elicit other good things.

Perhaps it is wise to enact the belief that God is living and active, and that God may choose to be involved in our lives in a way that opens up new possibilities. That is, there might be more than just human players involved in the web of actions that ripple through our world.

Perhaps it is wise to guard one’s emotions from giving the victory to despair and despondency (both of which I have felt over and over again, by the way). Despair and despondency demotivate and de-energize us, and threaten to make us passive and acquiescent, and maybe even slothful. (The biblical proverbs have a thing or two to say about slothfulness.) Some things in our world are not as they should be, and it will take active, non-accepting, and resolved energies to make changes for the better. We just cannot achieve justice without hope.

Perhaps it is wise to see to it that we have friends in our lives who promote hope in us. I tend to be a cynic by nature; if I only welcome my fellow cynics as friends, I might be a fool who engages in confirmation bias. (Might as well only have friends in our lives who are of our political persuasion, right?) It’s easy to feel right when we’re surrounded by “Yes” people: people who share our attitudes and beliefs already. Thus, it is hard to give hope a chance if no one else around us does. (As a corollary, it might be you who is the hope-bringing friend for someone else, so you might be called upon to be the encourager.)

More could be said, no doubt. But I end by returning to The Matrix. As it turned out, Neo acted in hope, and it gave him the strength to save Trinity, despite The Architect’s assurances that Neo would fail. The Architect, whose eloquent vocabulary suggested intelligence and wisdom, wound up being exposed as a fool. Neo took a chance with hope. It was wise that he did.

Bible, Meditations

Hope

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Hope is a concept or attitude with which I’ve struggled for years. As in, I have often found it hard or unnatural for me to take hope as a basic and ready attitude or posture toward the future. Had the Apostle Paul written (in 1 Corinthians 13:13), “Now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is hope,” I’d be screwed as a Christian!

Recently, I have come to wonder if I resist hope so much because I’m trying to protect myself from feelings of disappointment. If I hope for something and it doesn’t come about, then I’ll have to deal with myself feeling sad, empty, rejected, and let down. Maybe a hope unfulfilled will erode my motivation and energy. And so, I think I’ve often enough adopted cynicism as a more fundamental attitude in order to protect me from feeling so many unpleasant things and having to face the future unmotivated.

Now, don’t get me wrong: cynicism can be fun. But, I think my mental health counselor is right: I need to give hope more of a chance.

Hope behind Bars

While in jail a couple of years ago, I got a Bible from the commissary. It was a paperback King James Version. We were during the height of COVID, and my first two weeks had me in a quarantine jail pod, where I spent twenty-three hours a day locked in my cell. I decided to pass some of that time reading through the Bible, starting with the book of Proverbs. Sure, I had read the book often enough, given my background, but it seemed like some of the proverbs were hitting me a little differently in the confines and culture of my jail cell — perhaps none of the proverbs more than this one:

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick:
but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.
Proverbs 13:12 KJV

For someone who already struggled with hope, this was a time in my life that threatened to invalidate hope even more. And here I was, reading a proverb that expressed my own experience of hope, my own heart sickness. Perhaps I felt some companionship. And maybe that’s what some of the biblical proverbs are trying to do; some of them simply state the way things are, without giving any explicit instruction or guidance on what to do, or whether anything can or should be done at all.

Wisdom about Hope

In addition, maybe there is wisdom in knowing that it is a part of life for hopes to go unfulfilled, and that it is natural and common to feel heartsick when they do. That is, there is nothing foolish about feeling depressing emotions when our hopes fail to come about.

Perhaps there is also wisdom in realizing that we simply do not and cannot control enough factors of our lives to guarantee that our hopes will come about. Our hopes depend inexorably on things outside of us. And so, hope itself has a way of confronting us with our own powerlessness. We simply cannot make trees of life grow at will. We might plant seeds that fail to germinate, or that die or get snatched up. We might water some existent trees that show promise and health, only to face a drought that dries up or a disease that sickens the trees that might have been.

That is, perhaps there is wisdom in acceptance: acceptance of the way things are, of the way hopes can go, and of our heartsick responses. Interestingly enough, I think my tendency toward cynicism has been aiming at this same goal of acceptance, but from a different angle. Cynicism accepts that things often don’t turn out the way we want, but has been expecting this failure all along. Hope pushes us to believe that good things are possible, to act toward the fruition of those good things, to expect good things — and then, yes, to be ready to accept shortcomings or outright failures, and to accept our depressed feelings, knowing that the future continues to come at us, and while we can’t control or guarantee everything, we do have some say, some choice in how we posture ourselves to move into that future.

Perhaps, then, there is wisdom in giving hope a chance.

Uncategorized

Daniel Gordon 2.0

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I’m back. Or so I’d say to my former readers. A little failed auto-renewal after a change in the credit card of record. A little expiration of site hosting, and some blog site deletion (and consequent loss of years of blog posts). But, okay. I’m still here. For interested readers, anyway. Stay tuned.

And, oh yeah: Happy 2023!

A Christian thinker reflecting on life, faith, science, and other interesting things