God's Politics and the Progressive Movement

I'm in the process of reading God's Politics by Jim Wallis. As a Christian, I sometimes get a little pissed off by my leftist compadres when they "shush" me for talking about Christian values in a political venue. I really am tired of hearing "we must be inclusive and respectful of those who don't hold our same religious beliefs". They have no problem with not being inclusive when it comes to the right-wing extemists. So why do they have a problem with inclusiveness within their own ranks?

Well, I've got three words for them these days: "Get OVER it!" I'm no longer going to "shush" when I want to talk about how my faith affects my politics. I've been inclusive long enough, and now it's the politically correct, the atheists, the agnostics, and the "other" religious believers that are just going to have to be inclusive and let me and other Christians have their say. We might actually have a clue.

So here's me, having my say.

I believe that God is a God of light and in Him is no darkness at all (IJohn 1:5). And I don't know, but maybe God evolves, too. Or at least changes his mind. It seems that the God of the Old Testament seemed very "eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth" leaning. Or maybe that's just what the people wanted so that's what He gave them. After all, God didn't even like the idea of a King, and resisted until the Israelites demanded He give them one. In my book, that says that God doesn't think it's a very good idea for one man or a few men or any men, for that matter, to rule over another, let alone a whole country. I think the right-wing religious fundamentalists overlook that little tidbit of Biblical history.

But God was very explicit when He told the children of Israel, who had always been ruled by priests and holy men, what he expected from the king they would demand. First, God said He would give them a king of His choosing - not of their choosing. (Probably where the kings of old got the "divine right" stuff from, but probably not what God had in mind...) Second, God said the king would not be a foreigner but one of their own (Sorry, Arnold.) Third, God said that the king would not endeavor have alot of women or to make himself rich...yep, that's what He said. Fourth, God said the king should always keep God's laws by putting them in a book and reading them daily, and by respecting and revering God.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound very much like any of our current world leaders, and it especially doesn't sound like Dubya and his band of merry fascists.

This stuff can all be found in Deuteronomy 17, but the point is that God didn't really think Kings were such a good idea, He preferred a nation ruled by no one but where grievances were solved by the "priests" of the day, I presume in a non-violent manner. And when He did give in to the Israelites demands for a King, God was very specific about what kind of a man that would be.

God didn't want anyone who would let power go to his head. And to prevent that, God outlined the rules - something those who rule in America today have seemed to conveniently forgotten, if indeed, they ever knew of them.

Back to basics.

I don't believe God ever wants war. Maybe He had enough of it in the Old Testament. Maybe He, as we should, found a better way. All I know is that the God of the New Testament is a "kindler, gentler" God. In the Old Testament the people kept asking for rules and regulations in order to "please" God by obeying them. The trouble was, they couldn't keep all those laws and God knew it. He knew man's nature better than man himself knew it, because God created man (and I don't want to get into the creationism versus evolution argument, because I believe it could be both or neither and it's one of those mysteries that have been lost to the ages and one day we'll know one way or the other. Until then, I'm not seriously going to argue one way or the other. I have a hard time believing we all came from a single cell, though....).

Anyway, for all the laws of the OT, Jesus summed them all us when He said we were to love God first and foremost and love our neighbors as ourselves. (Mt. 12: 30-31). I don't think we think about that much, really, but we ought to.

Jesus also talked a great deal about the poor, the sick, the disabled, the widow, and the orphan. He didn't have alot of good to say about the rich or the religious leaders of His day. In fact, he often "gently" rebuked them and criticized them by saying things like it was better to heal on the Sabbath than to leave someone in need.

So why do the right-wing fundamentalists concentrate only on gay marriage and abortion, when the major theme of God's Word is poverty? If you cut out all the verses in the Bible that have to do with abortion and homosexuality, you'll still have 99.99% of the Bible left. But if you cut out all the verses that talk about poverty, your Bible will be left literally in pieces.

So why don't progressives start putting Jesus on the map for what He REALLY was concerned about and preached about, instead of letting some right-wing nut jobs use smoke and mirrors to take the focus off what really matters to God?

I think that's a good question, and a valid one. After all, the right-wingers have kicked the football of faith onto the playing field, so to speak, and it's up to us progressives to pick up the ball and run with it. If we refuse to learn the rules of the game, how can we expect to play to win?

So I've decided to jump into the game and play to win. I'm a Christian. In another life I used to study the Bible somewhat, and I've probably forgotten more than most fundamentalists will ever know - and I don't say that to be smug; it's that they're just not "getting" it, probably because they're not being taught.

I'm not saying that progressives that don't believe in Christianity should pretend to do so, but I'm sure there are plenty of closet Christians within the progessive movement that have been silent or have been told to "stifle it". I encourage all of you to speak up and out for what you know to be the truth, not as this minority of narrow-minded, fundamentalist right-wingers see it, but for what you know it to be.

It's time.