Spiritual Hiccups - Partisans, Ideology, Faith, and God

As events surrounding the debt ceiling played out in Washington this weekend, it was difficult to feel a great deal of respect for anyone involved.  We Americans have long had a great deal of faith in the "genius" of our governmental system, from the idea of checks and balances to the right to elect our own leaders.  Yet this system has failed us before in times of great crisis.  The Civil War is a horrible reminder of our political system's inability to deal with a huge, partisan divide.  In that case it made little difference that the issue of slavery provided a clear moral high ground.  For those with an economy built on slavery, it did not matter.  The South was even able to muster the Church's support.  (For those think that the Civil War was not primarily about slavery, read the secessionists' own writings.  They certainly seemed to think that it was.)

Making fun of politicians is an ancient sport, and ridiculing those in Congress has been around for a long time.  But form much of our history, and despite failures such as the Civil War, there still seemed to be an underlying faith in the system.  Yes, it had its flaws, but it was the best system in the world; freedom, democracy, and so on.

I'm not sure this was ever a good idea, but there was a time when many Christians understood America and its system of governance to be an instrument in God's hands.  There was divine purpose in it somehow.  But such notions are long gone, and their demise perhaps mirrors a growing cynicism about government.  But people need something or someone where they can put their trust.

Ideologies are popular with many.  There are ideologies left, right, and everywhere in between, although the ones at the edges often produce the more fervent support.  But the problem with placing faith in an ideology is that competing ideologies are, by definition, the enemy.  When an ideology becomes an article of faith, opposing ideologies can easily be seen as the anti-christ.

The attempt to brand President Obama as a Muslim is an extreme example of this.  Denying that he is a Christian helps confirm that he is not "one of us."  He is a "them" and therefore an enemy.

Politics has always been a contact sport, and partisan nastiness is nothing new.  But when there was a shared faith in the system, to some degree we were all on the same side.  Our differences were akin to Christian denominations where very different practices of the faith were still understood to be within the same family. (Although it's worth noting that when I grew up in the South, some conservative Christian camps sought to marginalize Catholics by insisting they were not really Christians.)  When there was an acknowledgement, however begrudging, that we were all on the same side, we could  be befuddled by the strange ideas of those who thought differently than us yet still assume that we shared many hopes and goals.

Curious that as a nation we seem to have become much more tolerant of religious diversity while becoming more strident politically.  And I fear that much of our religious tolerance is largely the result of faith becoming less important in our lives.  If the National Study of Youth and Religion is to be believed, faith has become a private, spiritual thing that does not have much impact on day to day living.  The study labeled the faith of American teenagers -- a faith transmitted to them by their parents and congregations -- Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, a vague, benign notion of God who is all for general goodness and fairness, who welcomes good folk into heaven when they die, but has little to do with the day to day.

My ramblings today are genuinely a "spiritual hiccup."  I started out reflecting on this morning's Psalm 62, on God as rock and salvation, a God who executes justice, who repays "all according to their work."  I was wondering where God was amidst the high level dysfunction on display in Congress, and somehow I ended up here.

I'm inclined to see the rise of faith in ideologies as a symptom of a Christian faith crisis.  We do not see God as an active player in the life of the world.  We may trust in principles that we understand to have come from God in some way, but God is not our rock.  A strong military, a pension plan, a good career and salary; now those are things that can secure us.

Neither do we really expect that God will in some way repay us for all that we do.  We're convinced that God is not too concerned about issues of daily justice.  The only real question is personal salvation.  Are you in our out?  Did you get an invite to the great, heavenly dinner party?  We don't seriously believe that God is going to intervene on behalf of the poor, oppressed, vulnerable, and outcast, never mind what the Bible says.

What is your rock, salvation, and fortress?  (And remember, in the Bible salvation is not about going to heaven when you die. It is about God rescuing you, healing you, restoring you.)  What are the things that you trust, that you believe in?  And are we in danger of our ideologies becoming our gods?

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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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