Voting against "Christian"

I'm trying not to pay much attention to the election today.  I'm not going to sit around and watch returns come in as I've done in past elections. I'll check in now and then and hope there's a decision before I go to bed.

Still, you can't be on social media and not hear some news about the election.  I already saw the results of one exit poll that claimed people who attend church weekly voted for Romney, 62-37 percent, while those who never attend broke 62-34 for Obama. I have no idea if this is accurate or if it portends anything about the final results. I am curious, however, about what this says about faith in Jesus and whether or not attending church has much to do with that.

As a follower of Jesus (admittedly not always a very good one), I have my problems with both candidates. Both went on and on about their concern for the middle class, presumably because that's where the most votes are. But neither said much about the poor, and that was one of the first things Jesus said his ministry was about, "good news for the poor."

In today's gospel, Jesus tells a parable about bearing fruit. He talks about a fig tree that has produced no figs for years. Unless you just happen to like the look of fig trees, one without fruit isn't worth much, and so this one is slated to be cut down.  In the parable, it gets a reprieve, but only a brief one.  It will get tender loving care, but it still needs to bear fruit, or it's a gonner.

It's hard to miss Jesus' point. We are expected to bear fruit. Attending church on Sunday is a good thing, but I don't think it's the fruit, or at least not the only fruit, that Jesus is talking about.  After all, his opponents were meticulous in their religious observance. Jesus expects us to worship God, but he expects more than that.  And I feel confident that the fruit he's looking for is not whether we voted for Romney or Obama.  Perhaps our understanding of how best to love our neighbor causes us to prefer one candidate over the other, but the notion that one candidate is the Christian candidate makes me think a lot of people have gotten confused about what that term means.

And so in the spirit of elections and voting, I'll make a motion to do away with the term "Christian." It's not an idea original to me nor is it the first time I've suggested it.  But I think it painfully obvious that the term, along with Sunday church attendance, often has little to do with following Jesus. And that is as much a problem for liberal Christians as it is for conservative ones. We both assume that Jesus is with us.  But very often, we need to be thinking about how we must change in order to go with him.

I went to my polling place today and voted for the candidates I prefer.  My faith figures prominently into my choices, but I don't think this means that people who vote opposite me are "un-Christian." And so I'm voting a second time today, this time against the label "Christian." (I know this is out of order from a parliamentary standpoint; no second, no discussion, but hey, it's all metaphor anyhow.) I'm still looking for a candidate that rolls off the tongue easier than "follower of Jesus," but I'm increasingly convinced it's time to give "Christian" the boot. 

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.