In my latest debates over my developing beliefs in the area of politics, I've run into an unprecedented amount of opposition from those who I thought trusted my reasoning ability. Indeed, I am continually amazed at just how quickly people's opinions can turn when I stop saying what they want me to say. But no matter, I still love those people, and very much hope they will not reject me for straying from the Republican party. It would be nice if they would consider what I have to say, like they did when I wrote under the name "NeoFascist?," but my greatest concern is that they would not turn me away based on my political beliefs. It has always been my policy that personal politics mean nothing compared to friendship, for I have met a great many people that I do not like from every political party, and some that I do like from every party as well. I would hope that no one who reads this would judge me based on the fact that I am not a member of any political party; indeed, I can see no shame in standing alone, if one has the stomach for it.
I have spent a while trying to convince people that God might be best glorified apart from the Republican party, but it seems that I was operating under the assumption that my point of view would be respected thanks to my past writings, and my committment to follow wherever my search for truth has led me. This assumption appears to be wrong, so I think it might be time to back up, repeat myself, and defend the thought process that has led me to believe that perhaps politics is not the answer to all of society's problems.
My questioning of Republican ideals began when I, as a Christian, decided that it might be a good idea to do all I can to lead people to Christ. Being the rather contemplative person that I am when confronted with a task, I began thinking about how best a person might be brought to Christ; I remained stuck there for quite some time, having been a Christian all my life, and not knowing what it is like to come into the faith from the outside. However, it seemed quite logical that if any Christian wants to spread the Gospel, he would start by ensuring that what he says would be heard.
A clever first step, and one I was quite proud of. Assuming a person is a Christian and understands the Gospel, the first step in spreading his message is to figure out a way to get people to hear it. Now, many Christians at many different times have used many different methods for getting their message to the world. Some of them might put their message in music that sounds suspiciously like some popular band. Others might decide to broadcast their message on television. Still others might write books, or blog (as I do). It seemed to me that there was no shortage of ways to get people to hear what one has to say; ways that ranged from interesting to attempted sneakiness, which simply makes one look desperate (yay, Relevance). Indeed, when it comes to shouting loud enough to be heard, it seems that Christians have all their bases covered.
So where are all the converts? It seems to me that there are quite a lot of people who are not Christians... people who may or may not believe in God, but seem to take an unbelievable amount of joy from the fact that they are not Christians and do not like Christians in the least. My first reaction, back when I bought the Republican party platform hook, line and sinker, was to view such people as the problem, and debate them until they were nothing but a quivering pulp. A good intellectual pummelling was what was needed to quiet those sinners down so that other sinners could hear our message, I thought.
Slowly, the sheer absurdity of such a belief sunk in on me. I was so focused on getting my way, and making the other side sit down and shut up that I had forgotten that they were the very people I was trying to reach. The people I was arguing with were as much in need of the Gospel as anyone else, and they had been hearing my message, and the messages of other Christians for a very long time. But they weren't converted.
So it seemed that making oneself heard is not all that is required for reaching someone for Christ. I puzzled over this for some time, until I realized that the problem wasn't that these non-Christians couldn't hear me... it was that they weren't listening. So I thought I'd (yet again) argue them into listening.
That didn't work. No matter how hard I tried, and no matter how many debates I won, I was amazed to find that non-Christians would not listen. So it was back to the drawing board for me, as I thought intently about what it would take to get them to listen to me. Now obviously, I am not them, so it was rather hard to figure out what I could do to get them to listen. So my first step was to see what other Christians were doing to get the World to listen to their message. It seemed that the tactic of choice among the majority of Evangelical Christians was to hide references to the Gospel in talk about Harry
Potter, The Matrix or Survivor/Big Brother/Fear
Factor/Elimidate/Extreme Makeover, and hope that this presentation of the Gospel was sneaky enough to get somebody saved.
This clearly wasn't working. Somehow, I found myself unsurprised by the fact that non-Christians don't want to listen to us when we insult their intelligence by trying to lure them into a church building to "get saved." So I determined that Relevance wasn't the way to get non-Christians to listen to my message.
As I struggled to think of a way to present the Christian message in a way that sinners would listen to and appreciate, I was struck by something quite obvious: I was every bit as insulted as the non-Christians were by so-called "Relevance," and I tended to listen more to preachers who did not restrict their sermons to sports analogies and Disney movies, so perhaps it could be said that non-Christians would be more likely to listen to a message that I would listen to. That is to say, perhaps they'd listen to someone they respect, presenting a message that doesn't try to be sneaky.
This belief was backed up by a passage from First Thessalonians 4, a chapter which partially details the Christian life. Verses 11 and 12 say this:
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
So maybe it is a good idea to win the respect of those who do not understand our beliefs, I thought. From there, the question is what on earth will they respect?
I'm not entirely sure of the answer yet, but I can tell you part of it. Many of them don't respect most Evangelical Christians. Many more don't respect the Republican Party. What they DO respect is a person who cares about the pain they're experiencing. As unbelievable as it may seem to the Republican Party, those who oppose Republicans are entirely capable of respecting and considering an alternate point of view, if the person presenting that alternate point of view first proves that they are capable of caring about someone who isn't exactly like them.
Consider Christ's actions. Everywhere He went, He drew followers, but He did so by first caring for their physical needs. Once He had done that, the person He was helping would begin to trust Him to care for their spiritual needs as well. This is only natural; a person who is in sin is only a physical being, knowing nothing of the spiritual. Their physical and emotional world is all they know, and that world is full of pain. Now we come to them preaching about a spiritual world, in which things we know to be joy and peace are seen by those outside our faith as pain and suffering, and we expect them to listen to our message as though we have proven ourselves trustworthy. Indeed, we have no right to expect anything other than the scorn of the World until we have proven ourselves trustworthy to them, by caring for their physical and emotional pain as Christ did. Once we have done that, then they will begin to trust us with other aspects of their being; when we have proven trustworthy with what is physical and emotional, then the World will trust us in the things which are spiritual, things they cannot yet see or feel.
This is where I began to consider leaving the Republican party. I am a Christian, called to exhibit active compassion and gain the respect of outsiders, and I began to realize that I could not do either as a Republican, at least not as well as I could from outside the party. You see, I can find very little real compassion in the Republican party platform; it is all about telling people how wrong they are, how they shouldn't be doing what they're doing, and how they should really be doing things our way. I find little compassion with the way the party handles issues like abortion, gay marriage and illegal immigration. Instead, I find a lack of forgiveness and concern for people who are in sin. It is as though the Republican party has taken it upon themselves to punish sinners, because God can't be trusted to do that Himself. Maybe it isn't our place to pass judgment on women who have abortions; maybe it's just our job to help heal the part of her that caused her to need an abortion. Maybe it's not our job to keep homosexuals from having relationships, or getting equal rights from a secular state; maybe it's just our job to love them, and perhaps eventually show them that they are not living as God would have them. Maybe it's not our job to deport people who immigrate here illegally because they can't get in legally; maybe it's just our job to keep out as many illegals as we can, and turn the rest into productive citizens.
All these things are more compassionate than standing around on street corners shouting about how abortion is murder, homosexual activity is wrong, and illegal immigrants are stupid and should be deported. Maybe abortion is murder, and maybe homosexuality is wrong; heck, maybe illegal immigrants deserve to be deported. But we as Christians are not commanded to punish those who do wrong; we are commanded to gain their respect, and let Christ change them from the inside out.
It is no use saying that democracy excuses us from our obligation to gain the respect of outsiders. In a representative democracy, the deportation of an illegal immigrant by your elected representatives is the same as if you had done the deporting yourself, because you used your vote to influence the government to punish someone you couldn't bring yourself to punish. The same goes for abortion; many wish to end abortion, but can't bring themselves to do anything about it, so they just vote to make it illegal. If that's compassion, then I imagine football coaches will all be sitting on Jesus' lap in heaven. To exhibit true, active compassion would be to help the woman considering an abortion to find an alternative that is good for the child AND the woman herself. This would require legislation as well as active involvement in the lives of such women.
And again I say, I see very little of this active compassion coming from the Republican party. There are a few beacons of hope, most of whom work in abortion clinics or are just open-minded enough to realize that homosexuals are in fact still human, but the majority of Republicans seem to be blissfully unconcerned with being truly compassionate. They do not vote with compassion, and they do not show active compassion in their everyday lives (unless, of course, the occasional "aww, that's sad" counts as compassion). This isn't to say there is no truth within the Republican party... I do respect their efforts to live righteous lives, but their expectations of sinners do nothing to help them come to Christ.
Meanwhile, I've noticed that there is a more active sort of compassion coming from the Democratic party. It's a sort of compassion that gives of itself (or others, if we're talking about government welfare), and does genuinely care for the physical wellbeing of others. However, this sort of compassion is no truer than the Republican sort. While Republicans exhibit a sadly passive kind of compassion, doing little of consequence to solve society's problems, Democrats exhibit an active compassion with no direction but emotion, and no concern or understanding of that which is spiritual. The Republicans' compassion is the compassion of a Christian who has forgotten what it was like to be lost (and thus is of no use to the Lost), while the Democrats' compassion is the compassion of one lost person to another, which is active but offers no real help (thus it too is of no use to the Lost). Thus I do not wish to claim either party. Both hold a kernel of truth, but both are incapable of helping those in need of a Savior.
Now, there is an alarming number of people out there who would say that since I'm not a Republican, that means I must be a Liberal and a Democrat, thus I am not worth listening to. I've been over this before, but let me reassure you one last time, I am neither a Liberal nor a Democrat. I accept the Bible in its entirety, as it is literally and contextually read, and I do not believe that morality is in any way subjective. So there, I'm not a Democrat. But I'm also not a Republican. I'm a Christian, plain and simple, and that alone is enough.
So I began looking for the best way to bring people to Christ, and I reached a conclusion that placed me outside Republican party lines. Am I wrong for not sticking with a party? No. I'm not here to please men. My purpose is to glorify God; that is why we are all here, and it is the noblest cause conceivable. I maintain that God is most glorified when a person comes to be by saved Christ's blood, as it is a testimony to the infinite goodness and grace of our omnipotent God, and I believe that if we are to concern ourselves with bringing others to Christ for the sole purpose of God's glory, then we must sever ourselves from any school of thought that emphasizes something other than glorifying God. If that means leaving a political party, then so be it. That's what I did, though that may or may not be God's call for other Christians.
But whether you find yourself on the right side of the aisle or the left, if you are a fellow Christian, do not condemn me for standing in the middle. I am firm in my convictions, and my beliefs do not change with the wind; I do not stand on the fence, except to proclaim the silliness of having a fence at all. For though we are flesh and blood, our fight is not against flesh and blood, so it is quite unnecessary to separate ourselves from other flesh and blood that we might shout at them from the safety of our own side about how wrong and sinful they are. That isn't Christlike, and it isn't right. Christ didn't cut anyone off from himself; He got his hands dirty helping all those who would accept his help, whether they were gentiles, Roman soldiers, or adulterers. He did not condemn those who sinned... He cared for their needs and helped them stop sinning, not by force or legislation, but by inner transformation.
Maybe we should try that sometime. Who knows, Jesus might have actually known what He was doing.
Imagine that.
