Christian Politics and Policy

Disclaimer: Yeah, I know this will rub a lot of people the wrong way – that’s politics. Let’s discuss civilly and reasonably.

I’m going to take a rather bold (stupid?) shot at constructing a political platform based on Scripture – because I’m unsatisfied with the whole platforms we currently have. In other words, I can only cherry-pick positions from the major American parties, and I’m not even sure they have everything I need.

Let’s immediately admit the ideas we won’t entertain, before we start getting nasty over them. If we run into a mutual refusal to agree, we must suspend either disbelief or discussion. By that I mean that we can still discuss while qualifying with “assuming that you’re right,” and maybe we can even show the out-of-bounds issue to be irrelevant. We also must use discretion regarding what belongs in this discussion and what merits a new one, or belongs in another existing one.

Personally, I refuse to back down from Sola Scriptura, the doctrine that the Christian Bible is true in an obvious way from Genesis to Revelation. While I have my doubts and intend to resolve them, this is not the appropriate forum for that. I’m also closed to certain beliefs which fall within that; I’ll present them as we go along. (My hope that I’ll actually have anyone to discuss with is about as ambitious as this post’s purpose, considering how infrequently I post.)

Now, let’s start at the beginning. Mankind is both inherently beautiful and inherently flawed, being created in God’s image and having infected ourselves with sin. Our objective is to magnify God’s likeness and make our flaws as inconsequential as possible. The entirety of Scripture shows that we will never be fully successful, and what success we see will be attained by God’s grace alone. So, to rephrase the objective, we must accept and apply God’s grace at every opportunity.

Obviously, the fundamental and most significant expression of grace is salvation. Thus evangelism becomes the core of this platform. More correctly, this platform becomes a consequence of the Gospel. The more people repent and believe in Christ, the more society will experience grace.

I know that last version of the objective is very politically incorrect. “What, he wants to Christianize the world?!” Yes, and no. The popular concept of Christianization (the Crusades, Inquisition, etc.) is extremely distorted. Proper evangelism is dramatically different from this, being founded on analogy of universal experience with basic Christian theology. See Christianization for a more in-depth contrast.

Now, back to the objective: This means that current Christians are to exercise the fruits of the Spirit, all of which are manifestations of grace, in all capacities and toward all people. This naturally has modern political implications, and just what those are is the subject of this post. (I didn’t include the spiritual gifts because they apply very little to government policy.)

Following the Wikipedia link above, does anyone know an issue to which we can apply the fruits? I’ll be updating this page with more examples as the thoughts and time come to me. By the way, do you think each issue should have its own post and link from this one, or should I keep them here?

Political Discipline

I get disgusted by how loyal politicians, including pundits, are to their party fellows in light of error. Sometimes this error is just a result of poor research (e.g., Ann Coulter). At other times, it incriminates the author of being deliberately deceptive and requires a public apology (e.g., Sean Hannity). In all cases, politicians forfeit credibility when they refuse to call their party fellows out. Ironically, one website which has a policy of never doing so is the media watchdog MediaMatters.org. Wait a sec… Even watchdogs need watchdogs?

Scripture gives procedures for discipline within the Church, designed to keep it pure. I propose that the political arena should have a similar code. This would reaffirm the duty of participating politicians to call each other out, privately or publicly as the case requires, across party lines. But more importantly, politicians must call out errors which come from within party lines. Admittedly, bias may hide some of these errors, but that’s beside the point; we must alert each other to what we do see, including those who claim to abide by such a code but appear to be either lazy or selective about enforcement.

It’s been some time since I joined the Governance Wiki for this so here’s the URL for the category we’re working in, followed by the introduction URL:

• http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Category:People
• http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Using_Giki

Political Correctness

All over the world and throughout history, those in power have tended to do horrible things to everyone else. In the modern western world, those in power are often in, or are at least supported by, the majority. So members of the majority (i.e., whites) have taken upon themselves the noble cause of regulating their fellows. Opportunists, however, have ironically manipulated this trend to gain power for themselves. And now we see a curious phenomenon: A large portion of the majority combines with minorities to make a new majority, which goes under the liberal banner. And this new majority then uses politics to oppress the rest of the original majority; this brand of politics is known as political correctness.

This goes hand-in-hand with the previous point in that, if a sizable majority of whites would denounce each other for prejudice, anti-majority prejudice might be rendered baseless. But we do all of society a disservice when we over-zealously search for and counter prejudice, because this actually nurtures the same prejudice. I have no doubt that the white supremacist movement has benefited from affirmative action and taboos against such legitimate actions as calling certain blacks racist or using accurate racial terms to describe minorities.

In case you would like a concrete example of this phenomenon, see this video, whose earlier comments reinforce my previous point about nurturing prejudice.

War

To begin with, I don’t believe the Old Testament is a valid source of war policy. God is forming Israel into His ideal bride, and war is one of His primary tools. However, the war front is now only in the spiritual realm, not the physical one. Not to mention that I don’t like that aspect of Scripture in the least, although it does make a good analogy for modern experiences.

So where does that leave us? I think groups of people are subject to the same moral standards as individuals, so just war theory must draw on morals pertaining to violence. Violence is not forbidden by Jesus (Luke 22:36; John 2:15), but it is certainly discouraged in general. Indeed, loving our enemies could improve foreign relations drastically; I wonder how Iranians would react if we were to help them construct solar energy farms to replace the need for nuclear energy. Would anti-Western propaganda still work? What if we tried helping citizens to non-violently topple dictators rather than killing some while doing it on our own? Or maybe we could even lessen our general involvement in the politics of other countries; that alone might save what little reputation we haven’t soiled.

Immigration

Many Americans fear foreigners because they need jobs. Poor foreigners are even worse because they would gladly work for less. But maybe we should let them in and give them free English courses, or even a little money in case they don’t find a job immediately (Luke 10:25-37). And of course we shouldn’t abuse or despise them (Deuteronomy 23:7, 24:14).

A Psychological Metaphor of the Trinity

I was wandering through Wikipedia yesterday when I ran across A Canticle for Leibowitz and then its “midquel” Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman. In the latter, the RCC has reformulated YHWH as Open Sky, and the Trinity as three avatars including the story’s second namesake.  I don’t know whether the term was applied by Miller or a Wikipedian, but that doesn’t matter a whole lot to me.  I’ve been meditating on the doctrine of the Trinity for a few days now, and this word helped me to express my thoughts to myself and further develop them.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term “avatar,” it means an incarnation or, as more generally used above, a representation of one’s nature.  Modern examples of avatars include main characters in a story which represent aspects of the story’s author, and a sock-puppet show which can contain up to two (or three, including the head) avatars of each puppeteer.  But any popular instance of either example would be imperfect; if all the main characters are essentially the same, there’s no room for a story – right?

I had better tie the title into my point before anyone gets bored.  Why would YHWH manifest as avatars?  He is the relational God, which implies that He has emotional and psychological “needs,” or motivations.  So because of His need to relate to someone else, He has forever been acting as three distinct persons with the same nature but different offices, or responsibilities.  But the perspective used by these persons when they consider their relationship is unique; Jesus consistently refers to His Father as distinct from Himself (see particularly John 8:18).  So each person has not only a different office but a different identity.

Now, that last point may not seem so unique at first; a character in a story or a puppet in a show calls itself “I.”  The uniqueness is in the sincerity of the designation; authors and puppeteers know theirs to be false, but YHWH believes His.  God is not simply putting on a show for us, because such a show would indicate that we were to follow His lead.  But the only reason for Him to direct us in such a way would be that we might become more like Him.  And that requires that the show is a shadow of something deeper, something essential to the divine nature.

This is not schizophrenia because YHWH not only “hears voices” but also produces the same.  So the Father is knowingly pretending to be two avatars – additional, separate, interacting persons, but each of these persons is realer than any of us and as real as the Father Himself, who perfectly projects His own nature onto the other two.  And I lifted this concept of comparative realness out of C. S. Lewis’ Great Divorce, which compares righteousness to a person’s mass and, by extension, either volume or density.  In Heaven, which is much larger in every way than the Grey Town (Hell), visitors from the Grey Town have such low density as to essentially be ghosts (less real than the Bright People), unable to accomplish anything.

This is also distinct from dissociative identity disorder because:

• such a person is not consciously aware of their own masquerade;
• each avatar, or personality, expresses an incomplete piece of a person’s psyche; and
• no two personalities are ever active at the same time.

Scripture necessarily contradicts all of these points regarding YHWH.

Finally, I want to explain how I arrived back at the conventional term of “person” for each aspect of the Trinity.  I actually wanted to avoid its use because it gives the impression of three independent gods who happen to agree, and that was where “avatar” came in.  But then I realized that each avatar must be identical in nature, and the Puppeteer must also be identical to them.  For otherwise He would be misrepresenting His own perfect nature, but now I had four identically perfect beings.  So I assigned the Father as Puppeteer and reduced the avatars to two.  Then I had to promote the avatars to persons because they are necessarily just as real as the Father.

So I think the sock-puppeteer analogy is the more accurate of the two regarding the relationship in the Trinity.  But as YHWH relates to humanity, He is the protagonist in an epic romance – the Bible.  And within that romance, He is the Puppeteer.

Relationship Versus Faith

This was originally Comment #62 on Condemnation by Virtue of Beliefs.  That post and its comments discuss the essence of salvation:  Is it primarily physical or intellectual?

Certainly, the relationship aspect of both the Fall and the Atonement, and the resulting works are important to theology. Any theology which lacks them is necessarily deficient, and any Christian who doesn’t live accordingly needs to be discipled. The perception of importance for this aspect increases with maturity, so only one who is fully spiritually mature (only Jesus) can claim any objectivity in the matter.

However, the faith aspect is also important, and it is often considered more important. This aspect is accurately perceived (insofar as we comprehend eternity), and is usually the primary reason that people seek a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

If I were to fully know God (a staggering thought in itself), which would I consider more important? Since no one but Jesus has ever reached such a height, we can never know for sure. But we can guess at Jesus’ priorities by reading His teachings. How often does He mention knowing versus obeying God? I’ve never performed such a Bible study, but even it would be limited in certainty by John 21:25.

On the other hand, some have proposed that they are actually the same thing – that is, that someone who doesn’t know God would necessarily be tormented in an eternity where He turns out, with all His holiness, to be real. C. S. Lewis, for example, offered such an explanation (or two, if you count the agony of being a ghost in the presence of light) in The Great Divorce.

But I think the entire discussion misses the point.  “For we know in part and we prophesy in part.  But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.”  (1 Corinthians 13:9-10, NKJV) Just as our works are a shadow of our faith, so too is our intellectual understanding.  I don’t know that either can be reliably tested, yet we must attempt such inside the Church as both are essential to the Christian walk.

What is a Christian?

A random internet person recently asked this question, adding that his own definition was “a kind and just person.”  I can understand where he’s coming from, given that, for example, “America is a Christian nation.”  “Christian” is a very old word and, for nearly two millenniums, it has also been a very popular word in some section of the world or another.

Over time, the popular understanding of a word, especially a popular word, can change drastically because people gradually ascribe to it new meanings slightly different (in the speaker’s mind) from the one(s) previously known.  Thus “happy” (fortunate) became “happy” (glad) and “gay” (glad) became “gay” (homosexual).  This happens everywhere in every language to the degree that the language is used liberally.  It’s a reason we have trouble reading ancient text supposedly authored in our current language; indeed, it’s one of the reasons we have so many languages.

So, back to the question:  What is a Christian?  In my opinion, there’s no good reason to abandon the original meaning of the word.  The word is first recorded in Acts 11:25-26, where it means “follower of the Christ.”  “Christ” is a Greek translation of the Jewish “Messiah,” which implies the Jewish concept of God.

To consider someone a Christian, I require that they (earnestly desire to) agree with Jesus on every point.  And the New Testament canon is the most reliable account of Jesus and His contemporary followers. Although there may still be a bit of subjectivity, it’s mostly objective; I cannot see a secular humanist, Moslem, or any other person whom I would consider “lost,” except of course members of ‘Christianish’ cults, claiming the label given those bounds.  And in the case of such cultists, I believe they’re on very shaky ground to say the least.

My Personal Graphic

I’ve been designing my site (from which I hope you’re viewing this blog) lately, and today I decided to make my own “favicon” with the GIMP.  First, because my online identity is “Jesdisciple” (“Jesus’ disciple” abbreviated as a computer-generated username suggestion), I decided to show a slightly elevated, capital ‘J,’ a forward-slash, and a small ‘d,’ after the style of hand-written mathematical equations.  The basic idea is that Jesus is “over” (divided by) His disciple (me), and that the smaller I am, the more accurately I view myself, the more powerful the result of our relationship becomes (2 Corinthians 12:9).

First, I had to choose a background color.  I like purple, so I started with full red and blue (hexadecimal #FF00FF or #F0F), but that was too bright, kind of pastel. So I went progressively darker until it conveniently looked royal, and it was then hexadecimal #430049 (or something like that).  In observance of the web-safe colors (3-digit hex numbers), I reduced it to #404; 404 is an error code which conveniently means “Not Found” in the HTTP standard. (I know, I know… I’m a hopeless geek.) The significance is that I don’t fully realize the above basic idea, i.e. I consistently view myself as more than I am and therefore limit my potential in Christ.

Then I needed a text color.  The GIMP had already selected white as the default background color and I had set the foreground to #404.  White text sounded fine to me, so I switched them.  (Actually, being an amateur GIMP user, I first clicked the wrong button and reset them to black on white…)  Do you think I should use some other color, maybe yellow?

I naturally tried typing “J/d” into my image, but the text was too big and I couldn’t find a way to resize it.  I tried drawing the characters 1px wide but didn’t like them very much.  Since I participate in a few forums and needed a larger original image anyway, I looked up “Avatar (computing)” on Wikipedia for the common size of forum avatars.  The article gave the range of maximums as 96×96 and 100×100 pixels, so I decided on 96×96 because any forum within that range would accept that size.  But then the text as written by the GIMP was way too small, and I still couldn’t resize it. So I decided to write the characters by hand; I do not have a steady hand, so it came out looking like a child’s crayon-art. This is convenient because it reiterates the basic idea from a slightly different perspective: No matter how sophisticated I think I am, I’m always a child in comparison to God.

As of early August 2008, I’ve added my name “Chris” in the bottom-left corner.  I used the GIMP’s text tool for this because 1) it’s the right size, 2) it should be legible, particularly on forums, and 3) it’s easy.

Being pleased by how many “happy accidents” (probably all intentional on God’s part) I’d had, I used Dynamic Drive’s Favicon Maker to generate the 16×16 version you should see in your browser.

The Emerging Church

Some Christians, known as “the emerging church,” incorporate the postmodern worldview, hermeneutics, and terminology, and I wonder if this movement has any Biblical merit. Before I jump into the actual topic, some people might want a background of what “postmodern” means. Wikipedia says of postmodern philosophy, “The essential point is that the meaning of all things is colored by subjectivity, and that for a philosophy or ideology to pretend full objectivity is not only deceptive but also in some cases politically abusive.” At the least, I must agree that some human perceptions (e.g., of color) are subject to the humans who have them, but hold that this doesn’t change the absolute truth of what is being perceived. Wikipedia also notes a common (supposed?) misconception “that postmodern skepticism appears similar to relativism or even nihilism,” and McDowell, on page xlii of The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict, seems to equate postmodernism and relativism, i.e. “Christianity may be true for you but it’s not true for me.” To my knowledge, however, there’s a consensus that postmodernism emphasizes confusion. I suppose the debate is mostly over whether it generates this confusion or simply exposes it.

The emerging church incorporates postmodernism by noting that we cannot fully know God and regarding “concealment as an aspect of revelation” rather than its opposite. It also includes at least one aspect of mysticism, namely dualism (i.e., that God is both known and unknown). I think the core of the emerging church is explained well in this paragraph from the last link:

Following the postmodern understanding of man as subjective, Rollins advocates an understanding of faith that pays careful attention to our limited ability to describe the subject of our faith. By describing our talk about God as iconic, and our Christian discourse as a/theological, Rollins highlights our limited ability to objectively speak of God. By affirming the place of silence and doubt within our theology, he suggests we should be comfortable with our limited ability. His overall goal is to communicate a humble faith comfortable with uncertainty and subjectivity, not pressured into foundational thinking, but resting in faith and trust that God is God regardless of our failed attempts at describing him. A nonfoundational theology values the known and unknown elements of God, recognizing the need for humility when doing theology.

Does this movement have the right idea in general? If “yes,” does it have any bad points? If “no,” does it have any good points? And how should we react to it?