Glossolalia and Partisan Politics

I had just finished writing yesterday's post when I heard that the Republicans had "blinked." A default was avoided, and the government shutdown would be ending. All that pain, all that rancor, all the damage to people's lives and to the economy, and nothing really had changed.

I had just finished writing about the Apostle Paul's insistence that the good of the whole had to be considered above personal edification. Speaking in tongues was all well and good with Paul, but not if that little moment of personal, spiritual ecstasy did nothing to help others. And he continues such thinking in today's passage, "Let all things be done for building up."

Yesterday I was thinking about how church fights over worship style too often neglect Paul's advice, with "What I like" becoming the final arbiter of what should be done. But as soon as I heard about the default being averted, it struck me how this was even more so for many in Congress.

Perhaps this is simply the ugly side of American individualism, but we seem to have more and more difficulty as a culture putting the good of the whole first. "Let all things be done for building up" is not a mantra that will win many elections.

But what I find even more troubling about all this is how some, who seem the least willing to consider the good of the whole, trumpet their faith. Some incredibly immature, hateful, and destructive things were said and done in the name of righteousness. Surely Jesus weeps.

I offer no easy solution. But perhaps it wouldn't hurt if all our political leaders read Paul's letter to the Corinthians, listening as though it had been written specifically to them.

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