Friday, October 19, 2007

Mixing Religion and Politics

Did you watch the Republican presidential debate last week? Were you aware they were even having a debate? I didn’t watch it. I’m not even sure which night they debated.


I haven’t watched any of the several Democratic debates, either. I don’t want to get embroiled in presidential politics so early. But the media and the candidates certainly want me embroiled! It’s been non-stop Hillary v. Obama; Giuliani v. Romney. Is Fred Thompson in or not? Will Gore step in at the last minute and take it away?

I voted for President Bush both times; but he made a better governor of Texas than president of the United States (I used to live in Texas, so I had him as governor). I most often have voted Republican; but while we had years of Republican control of the White House and Congress, they did little of what I thought they had been elected to do. So I am ready to tune out politicians. Special interests and my interests are not resonating with one another.

One part of this campaign season has interested me. Religion has gone mainstream. Faith and politics had been like mixing oil and water – ever since John F. Kennedy silenced critics of his Catholicism in 1960. But after Bush’s re-election in 2004, faith and politics have become inseparable.

Mitt Romney is questioned about his Mormonism. Hillary Clinton and President Bush are both United Methodists. Barak Obama grew up in Muslim-dominated Indonesia, but is a member of the United Church of Christ. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is an ordained Baptist minister. John McCain seems to vacillate between his Episcopal origins and current participation in an Arizona Baptist church.

I cannot recall knowing so much about a candidate’s religious affiliation – especially at this stage of the election process. So how much good has come from this knowledge? I’m not sure. While I know more about their affiliations, I am less clear about how those affiliations affect their behaviors.

I believe that one’s religious faith is core to who that person is and how that person behaves – or at least is SHOULD be. Political candidates are not the only folk who can be questioned about their faith and practice. All of us can and should be questioned – even if we only ask the question internally.

Politics – in its most simple definition – is the intersection of philosophy and action in a public setting. We have politics no matter where we go. Jesus said, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there also.” (Matt 18:20). That gathering of two or three (or more) is political. Jesus belongs in politics! Especially for those who claim to follow him!

When I finally decide to decide on a presidential candidate – how that person’s faith is lived through his or her politics will be crucial to my decision. But the presidential race is not the only race where religion and politics should mix. It should mix in the politics of my local church, in my local community, even in my local family! Who I am religiously should be reflected in who I am politically.

We make political decisions all them time – most often without realizing it. Did you ever drive through a stop sign? That was a political action. At that moment, you put your interests ahead of society’s interests. Society wants a safe driving experience for everyone. You wanted to get to your destination a little more quickly. You agreed to accept the risk of an accident (or traffic violation) in exchange for time.

Voting for political candidates involves the same principle. What do you put as priority – your interests or society’s interests? Where are they the same interests? Jesus tells us to always put others first – even at the risk of losing our lives as a result. “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?” (Matt 16:25-6)

My friends, Jesus is mixing politics with religion. Shouldn’t you?

Friday, October 12, 2007

I’m not a fax machine, but I can still receive!

My column in the local paper went through a "hiatus" as my column was lost in the shuffle for several weeks. I have made it my policy to not post online until after the print version has been distributed. Then things got very busy for me and I did not get this article posted for another week beyond its first published date. So without further adieu, here is the article that was first published Oct 5, 2007 in The Daily Sentinel:


I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I am old enough to remember what life was like before personal computers, fax machines, cell phones and the internet. But I’m young enough that I have used those technologies for almost my entire working life. They do so much for me: make communications easier; send information long distances instantly; store and retrieve data. But then things can go wrong. Sometimes the technology just seems SO DUMB!

Take for instance, the fax machine. It seems simple: I want to send a copy of a document from here to somewhere else. I have the phone number for the fax machine there. I put my paper into the sheet feeder (making sure I put it in the right direction!) and dial the number. I even remember to hit the green “start” button so that when the two fax machines connect, my document will start feeding automatically. I hear the numbers “dialed;” I hear the “sqeeeee-grshhhhhhh-sqeeeee-diiiiiit” that tells me the fax machines are talking to one another. I see the document start to go through the feeder. Success! I walk away to take care of something else.

An hour later, I come back and discover my document is stuck two-thirds of the way down into the feeder, slightly askew. I gently tug on the paper. It doesn’t move. I tug harder. It moves a little bit, but doesn’t come loose. I tug a little harder. The paper rips into two pieces. What’s left in the machine is now sticking out about one-sixteenth of an inch – nowhere near enough for me to grab it with my fingers!

So now I have a ruined document. I have no idea how much of it made it to the other end. And I have to break my machine apart to gather then other end of the paper. By the time I am done, that fax machine will never send another document again.

So why did it do that? What caused the paper to jam? Why isn’t the machine smart enough to holler “help!” when things started going wrong? Was it feeling neglected because I walked away? Did it decide to “get back” at me for not baby-sitting the entire fax-sending process?

It’s amazing how much we put human emotion and expectations on mechanical things. Social scientists call that “anthropomorphism” – an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics. Well, I say we’re only human and so we can only understand things when we try to humanize them.

I believe God created us with this tendency. In fact, I think it may be one of the greatest gifts God gave us. Genesis 1:27 says this: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

To coin a phrase, God “deifi-morphed” humanity – gave us something that allows us to recognize the divine in non-divine things. Now there are some people who have twisted that around to make it go the other way: humanity created God in its own image. But I don’t think so.

We have “made up” a lot of things about God. We often try to superimpose our definitions of what it means to be god-like upon God. And we often reject God because God refuses to conform to our nice little tidy definitions and expectations of what God should be.

But God did something more than just make humans in God’s image. God “anthropomorphed” into humanity’s image. The apostle Paul explained it this way: “Jesus Christ, who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore, God also exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phillipians 2:6-11)

I am so grateful that God created me with something divine so that I could recognize when God became something human!

I can project all kinds of human qualities on that fax machine, but it will never succeed in receiving them – and I will never become more fax-like in order to save it from destroying my documents. Maybe that difference between my actions and God’s action explains why I have a love-hate relationship with technology, while God only has a love relationship with humanity. When the fax machine doesn’t do what I want it to do, I end up breaking it and throwing it into the garbage. Thank God that when I don’t do what God wants, I don’t become garbage! And neither do you!!

Why not take a moment right now and thank God for being willing to fix you no matter how badly you are broken? God’s sending love from heaven to earth. To you. Will you receive it?