Canon recently fixed our camera for free even though the warranty had expired a long time ago. Maybe the Josh factory will take my hubby back? :) Just kidding. This post is dedicated to the hubbiest hubby around (who, incidentally, found out that Canon would fix our camera for free). I know this sounds cheesy, but marrying Josh was one of the best decisions I ever made. I can't believe it's been four years. I hope the next four are just as good.
I have drafted and re-redrafted responses to what my uncle and others said on my blog a number of months ago about a Christian's proper role in politics. I am now more than willing to admit that parts of my original post was a bit inflammatory and overstated, and I apologize to any politically active Christians I've offended as a result. I did not intend to say that any Christian involved in politics is a self-seeking hypocrite, but I think it sounded like that. There is a respectable argument to be made for the idea that God holds Christians accountable for laws they have some responsibility in making. I'm just not really sure I agree with a lot of Christians on what that accountability means or how it ought to play out in our lives.
By way of explaining my last post a bit: My reaction was to a number of examples I have seen where political activism seems to have basically supplanted evangelism, and often for ignoble reasons. That gets me pretty upset. Whether you think political action is part of our responsibility as Christians or not, it would be difficult to argue that it is a greater responsibility than our responsibility to win hearts for Christ.
To be honest, though, I am not sure what I think a Christian's political responsibility entails in our day and age, aside from politics not being the defining role of a Christian in the world. A Christian's responsibility in a truly republican government—and a secular one, at that--is a tough concept to define. It is not made any easier by the fact that we are in a unique position in history in that Christians, as individuals, have some say in the decisions of the government and its laws, while the church itself as a body and an institution does not. The uniqueness of the situation makes it difficult to extrapolate guidelines from the Bible. While there are examples in the Bible of believers who participated in secular government (such as the centurion), it is not often clear how they did it, or how they applied Biblical principles to their position. It seems to me that the theocracy of the Old Testament and descriptions of the future millennial rule of Christ are not necessarily examples of government that can or ought to be followed in our particular situation. When it comes to looking for practical suggestions for those of us whose government is not directly or even indirectly ruled by God (in addition to His sovereignty over everything that happens), the Bible does not seem very clear.
Reading the discussion a few months ago on my blog and a recent discussion on the WORLD magazine blog on the same topic, I have felt as if a lot of us are talking right past one another without addressing some of the basic premises and presuppositions behind our disagreement. Plus, I just don't know where I stand enough to give a treatise of my own thinking another shot. I keep changing my mind. Since my uncle thinks I get many things wrong on a "fundamental level," let's strip the discussion to the fundamentals. Although it is difficult to discern a biblical approach to our particular situation in time and space, it is certainly not impossible. This will be the first post in a series with questions that anyone with an opinion on this should answer. I'm not going to claim that these questions are completely free from my own presuppositions, but I hope that they can get us a little closer to the heart of the matter. Please try to back up your arguments with scripture whenever you can:
- How do you pray for our government?
- Getting back to one of the very basic questions inherent to this debate: Is there a doctrinal or theological basis for Christian's being held accountable for the laws and their enforcement in a state in which they have some responsibility?
- To what extent does that accountability depend on the Christian's role in that state (king, voter, mayor, etc) and on the moral attitudes of the people being ruled? It seems reasonable that John Calvin, Constantine, George W, and Miles Standish would all be held accountable for their political influence in different ways, not to mention biblical personages like Daniel and Paul. Does our role as American Christian voters change as the country becomes increasingly secular and immoral?
I listened to an "All Songs Considered" podcast today (great song by DJ Tilly and the Wall, by the way, called "Bad Education". Think Flamenco rock with an accordian. The rest of the album is nothing to write home about), and the band members were discussing songs that are meaningful to them. One band member mentioned "Smells Like Teen Spirit," which I think was a formative song for about half the people in this country who are now between 25 and 35 years old. It's interesting to think about works that have influenced artists, but I know that even people who aren't musicians feel the same way about some song or other (and by "some song", I mean, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"). I never really got into pop or rock all that much, though, so it made me think about whether there is something in my life that served a similar function. Not a favorite, since I have trouble identifying my favorite color or even my favorite food (shrimp?) Something I could point to that marks a sea change in my life from innocence to adulthood.
I think I've decided on The Stranger by Albert Camus. It's not really a book I even like any more, although I did like it a lot at the time. It doesn't have the subtlety that I've come to associate with good literature. I find most of the tenets of Camus' philosphy repugnant. I could go on about what I don't like about it, but liking it is not the matter at hand. It is the first novel I read in French. That in and of itself speaks volumes about its influence on my life, since I went on to study French literature in college and graduate school. More than that, however, it matters to me because it's the book that pitched me into the adult world. It marks my first real encounter with ideas that I would capitalize if I were Victorian--existence, philosophy, sex, death, the value and meaning of life, God, free will. Of course, these are all circumstances and ideas that I encountered at a younger age, but, like the main character in The Stranger, I absorbed them as part of the workings of Life controlled by someone else rather than mentally engaging with them and their meaning. For instance, when my family lived in Guatemala, kidnappings and muggings targeting Americans were not uncommon, but I have no recollection of being afraid. While the Stranger would think of them and say, "It's all the same to me," my childish outlook was, "So that is what is happening? It must be a part of how things happen, like food being put on the table, all of which are controlled by my parents or some other adult. " The Stranger pushed me into engaging with the world as an agent in it instead of a learning observer. The Stranger lost his mother and was confronted by the consequences of his own actions in a world about which he did not care. I think my identification with his sort of disengaged approach to his surroundings and my confrontation with his responsibilities as a human adult as a result of his circumstances in the book really helped illuminate the problems and questions of adulthood to me at a point in my life when I was ready to see them. Thank God there were other forces in the world that helped form my means of engagement with the adult world after that awakening.
My posture has gotten really bad over the last few months. I don't want to go to the chiropractor, so I decided to start doing yoga again. My posture improved noticeably after just the first class. Not only that, but I went to my third class today, and I am already able to put my heels on the ground in the downward-facing dog pose! Take that, you silly calf muscles that get all tight after cycling class but refuse to look defined. Bah.
I have a long commute--about an hour each way every day. Today's ride home was especially long, thanks to Six Idiots who all decided to have accidents on my route home from work. (I almost made the Seventh after I passed the last one, I'm afraid. 90 MPH on the freeway is never a good idea during rush hour.) I admit that it gets to me sometimes. I read an article recently written by a woman who has trouble with impatience. When I read her descriptions of her problems, I thought of myself, banging my hip against the Kinko's counter because I had been waiting 25 minutes to use the photo scanner and then another 10 for the one employee on duty to come take my 86 cents for the copies I made. "Oh no! I'm THAT woman," I realized. So, reading on, I discovered the idea of "found time," using times of waiting to rest your mind, think about things that interest you, daydream, read a book. "What a grand idea," thought I. "I shall try it."
It hasn't taken me long to figure out that I've actually been "finding time" all along. I listen to audio books and chat with people on the phone during my commute. I catch up on reading while I'm waiting at the orthodontist's office. But really, there are only so many things you can do during the biggest chunk of time that needs finding during my day--my commute. When your eyes and hands are busy, you're getting kind of tired of War and Peace 20 hours into it, and all of the day's podcasts are pretty boring, you're left to thinking. And, boy, do I ever think. If I had time to follow up on all of the great ideas I have in the car, well, this blog would be updated a lot more often, for starters. I also would have finished the Great American novel and the Great Russian novel, created an online database for people to rate their doctors' performance according to things that really matter, and started a revolutionary new movement in budgeting that does for personal finance what Weight Watchers does for obesity. Talk about daydreaming. My commute is long enough that it always seems to pass that critical point between, "What a great idea I just had. I can't wait to get home and do something about it," and, "Well, now that I've been sitting here this long, I might have time to think about this idea for ten more seconds after I get home, eat, chat with my husband, and check my email."
I'd like to ask the woman who wrote that article, "So I've found all kinds of time. Now what do I do with it? Can I give it to someone else?" Maybe she'd find me some trained monkeys (preferably polyglot monkeys with software-writing skills) who could do all of the stuff I think about. While I'm still riding in the car. Make it so!