Spiritual Hiccups - I Assume I'm Right

In the current partisan bickering in Washington over raising America's debt ceiling, there seem to be different sets of assumptions at work.  One side assumes, with near certainty, than any new tax or even eliminating any tax break is anathema.  The other side assumes that we have a debt problem only because we cut taxes during George W. Bush's presidency, and if we put those revenues back, there would be no problem.  And both side assume, with absolute certainty, that the other side is not only wrong, but delusional.  In such a climate, compromise is virtually impossible because it involves caving in on your "principles."

All of us walk around with a significant number of assumptions.  It would be hard to live normal lives if we didn't, if every day was a completely blank slate and we had no template to work from, no notions of how we should respond, no framework with which to categorize and make sense of what was going on around us.  Trouble is, as necessary as assumptions and templates for living are, they are always provisional, often need adjusting, and are sometimes totally wrong.  Yet in today's political climate, my assumptions often take on the aura of religious convictions.  And with the total triumph of individualism in our culture, my own tastes and personal assumptions often take on this same aura.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus calls Philip to follow him.  Philip in turn tells Nathaniel about Jesus, but Nathaniel's response is, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  Everyone "knew" that the Messiah wouldn't come from there. 

And in Paul's words to the Roman Christians, he warns them about passing judgment on their fellow believers.  That seems to me another way of saying that our assumptions, including our religious ones, are provisional, that they are never The Truth.  And Paul writes in another famous letter that "We know only in part."  Our truths are always incomplete, and in the meantime, we are to rely on faith, hope and love, with love trumping all else.  (And the love Paul speaks of is not romantic love but the love most clearly modeled in the self-giving life of Jesus.)

Huge numbers of those doing the bickering over the debt ceiling want to claim the label "Christian," and even to apply that label to our nation.  Yet surely no one would characterize their bickering as marked primarily by faith, hope, and love, with love being the greatest. 

I wonder what our life together would look like in church congregations, in communities, in business, and in politics if the only assumption we were certain of was love?

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