Looking at the political map, you’ll see red and blue piled up in huge areas of the country. A lot of blue on the coasts. A lot of red in the heartland. And I was wondering, what makes someone elect their particular representatives in government? The bottom line should be that we’re going to vote for people we think would best represent us and our personal views. We should be asking ourselves, “If I were to go to Washington, how would I vote on any particular issue?”
People who don’t get that – who see it only as “us against them” and believe their particular party is one big block that has to toe their line – don’t understand then when a Senator from another state doesn’t vote the way they would. That’s because that Senator isn’t voting the way they would. They’re voting the way the people who elected them would. At least you would think so.
Because not everyone is from New York. Or Texas. Or California. Or Florida. But everyone is formed in some way by the place from which they came, and if they can’t get along there, they move to the place that suits them. So we have these pockets – these collections of like-minded people. Some who are dyed-in-the-wool conservative. Some who are far-left progressive. And if you think about it, I’m not sure if that makes them right or wrong, it just makes them who they are. You believe this, I believe that, and we each think the other is wrong, so who’s really right?
You should know by now that I approach this from a position that there is a moral standard which is, at heart, known by all of us, but ignored or neglected to varying degrees. We all know it’s wrong to lie, and yet we do. And we cover it up by calling our lies “little,” and “white” to make them seemingly less potent. We obfuscate and manipulate. As long as there’s an “out,” well then, I didn’t really mean it that way in the first place (politicians are good at this).
Likewise, we all know it’s wrong to let people suffer. But here, the answer is a bit less clear. One group may think we should freely share everything we have, while another thinks the poor will only prosper if we get enough rich people to hire them.
But let’s not ignore human nature. It is not in our nature to take actions to better ourselves so that other people may benefit. It’s in our nature to look out for ourselves first and foremost. For an example on a grand scale, Apple – the paragon of American public virtue when it comes to privacy (snork) – tries to get away with this in China. They cover it up by saying, “we’ve got to do business with them and let them build our iPhones so that we can better the lot of the Chinese people.” Hogwash. Apple does business with China because of their bottom line. It’s cheaper to build iPhones in China, so even though China engages in overwhelming abuses that, for Apple, are absolutely forbidden in other countries (especially the United States), they stay there “for the benefit of the Chinese people.”
I use that macro-example to bring it down to ourselves without being specific to any one person. We are all the same to some extent. We’ll compromise those little quibbles that gnaw at us if it works to our advantage. Sure, there’ll be the one or two cases of the truly generous. But do you think Bill Gates would be giving away all that money if he was working a 9 to 5 at the plant? The rich can afford to be generous. If half of my wealth amounted to a billion dollars, I could certainly give away the other half and still live like a king. But the rich continue to fall massively short of what is possible. It’s in our human nature for even the best of us (usually) to hold back.
If you’ve read my stuff over time, you might see where I’m going here (yet again – I’m sure I’ve covered this before). My bottom line is that we can’t rely on our own standards for how we live and treat others. We might do the easy work (like loving our friends and family), but we just don’t cut it on the hard stuff (like loving our enemies or helping the poor, destitute, and unjustly accused and imprisoned).
So who really is wrong or right? Well, we all are. Wrong and right. To some extent, in some way. We all love. We all (generally and in our own ways) help out others. But to what standard? What’s going to push us over the edge to do the hard stuff? Our own senses of human value and need? Or should we be looking to this overarching standard – the one that calls us to a greater love than anything we really could imagine on our own (I mean, “love your enemy?” Who would come up with that?).
There are many objective truth claims of the Christian faith that make it compelling. Unfortunately, they’re often obscured by first, a lack of conviction from those who claim the name (as demonstrated by their actions…or inactions) and second, by the lot who point to any excuse (to include the problem with the first group) to say “your Christ isn’t real.” But when you get down to it – when you boil it down to the actual words and actions of Jesus himself – I find this one of the most compelling. That Jesus goes beyond who we are – each and every one of us (and our voting preferences too) – and calls us to the objective standard we all know in our hearts is right.
And why? Not that we may earn our way into his good favor, but because he’s empowered the true Christian to do their acts out of a love that tell them that they are forgiven and saved by the one who gave himself for them. The one who exchanged his rightness for our wrongness. It is because of this that we can love rightly.
This is a hard thing for people because we naturally want to do it all on our own. But that puts us right back into the problem. If I do it on my own, then I’m “right” (and you’re “wrong”) by my own standard again. And what has that gotten us?
