Politics

May 23, 2023May 23, 2023

The Passover and Politics

Without doubt, the guilt of Egypt in oppressing the people of Israel was great. The Egyptians enslaved the people of Israel and even sought to wipe them out as a people. This oppression cried out for God’s judgment and redemption.

In this story, we have clear good guys and bad guys. Israel–the good guys. Egypt–the bad guys.

Only the Passover teaches us something different. When God announced the 10th plague, the death of the firstborn, He said that both the Israelites and the Egyptians were liable to judgment. Any house that did not have the blood of the lamb applied to it would be liable to the judgment of God.

The only way that Israel would avoid the plague was to apply the blood of the lamb. “The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt” (Exodus 12:12). This was the only way that Israel would avoid the plague.

This liability to judgment was so real that after Israel went into the wilderness, they had to “pay” for the redemption of their firstborn. The tribe of the Levites was dedicated to the Lord in the place of the firstborn of all Israel. When a count revealed that there were more firstborn than Levites, God did not say, “close enough.” The Israelites paid the difference.

We must remember that Israel was dealing with a political issue. It was an issue of power and oppression.

When we are dealing with political issues, nothing is easier than to divide the various sides into good guys and bad guys. This is not totally wrong. The oppressor has great guilt, and power can defend evil. When this is the case, it is our duty to stand up against oppression and evil. Continue reading “The Passover and Politics”

October 20, 2022

7 Principles for Christian Social Engagement

As Christians, we want to see the world be a better place. Jesus has taught us to love our neighbor and to be concerned for the least of these. The problem is that when we try to get involved, we do not know what to do. We find it harder than we supposed. This can lead us to give up, but then what of our obligation to love the world?

In my view, few Christians have thought about this issue with as much clarity as the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. I have learned much from him. What I have learned has enabled me to keep going in big and small ways with outreach to the communities of which I am a part. Here I want to summarize seven principles that continue to be sources of wisdom, challenge, and encouragement to me when social engagement gets hard. I will not quote Niebuhr here. You can see my summary of his views on Christian political engagement here. I am just writing these in my own words, but my thought owes much to him.

1. There is no limit to human anxiety, insecurities, and ambitions. One reason it is so tough to engage with people is because we are filled with anxiety. Anxiety is part of human life. It arises from the fact that we can see all sorts of problems that we can do little or nothing about. We are anxious about our survival, our life, our possessions, our money, our kids, our nation, our significance, and on and on.

And there is no point where this stops. No matter how much we succeed there are always new problems. We have anxiety that we will lose the things we have gained or not reach the next level. In America and the West, we have solved a lot of problems that were huge issues for our ancestors, but we have simply run into bigger problems. Anxiety explains why people accept even bad situations. They fear that if they change them, they will encounter something much worse. In engaging with society, we are dealing with anxious people.

2. Human pride is born out of anxiety. Why do people exalt themselves at the expense of others? Why do they act in selfish ways? It is in part because of their anxiety. They are worried about their survival and the survival of the things they enjoy, and they will fight for their position and prestige as much as if it were their very life. Why does a nation invade others? It is in part out of the anxiety over the prosperity, prestige, or survival of their own nation. Why do people amass goods and not worry about others? It is in part anxiety over their own position. Why does a parent think they can continually make their child happy? Some of it is anxiety about their child, but it is also pride in their own ability to solve every problem for someone else.

Pride born of anxiety is a factor in human life. We stubbornly cling to our own position and power and exalt ourselves, our things, our people, and our ideas above others, even at the expense of truth and justice. This deserves our condemnation, but it also calls for compassion because it is born out of an attempt to solve the basic problems of life, relationships, meaning, and security that we all deal with. This can take some of the edge off of the opposition of others because it is born in part out of trying to solve the same problems that we ourselves are trying to solve.

3. Religion is not a pure quest for God, and reason can be just as fanatic as religion. Religion and reason should mitigate our anxiety and humble our pride. However, religion can easily become a tool of our pride. Thinking on the absolute, we identify ourselves with the absolute. We borrow the sacredness of the holy and apply it to our own faulty and sinful ideas and actions. We use it to exalt ourselves at the expense of others. Even the idea of grace, which should humble us, can become a way of looking down on others who don’t get it and baptizing all our ideas because we “understand” God’s grace. Continue reading “7 Principles for Christian Social Engagement”

September 10, 2022September 10, 2022

Christianity & Social Life: 15 Quotes from Reinhold Niebuhr to Help Us Engage

How do we engage in our polarized national life? There seems to be so much bitterness and so little progress. It can divide families, friends, and communities. How do we as Christians engage well in this division?

American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) believed that Christianity was about more than just the individual and the life to come. He believed that the Christian view of man could give us a perspective that would enable us to understand the challenges of the modern world and hope that they could be changed. I believe that Niebuhr had a lot of wisdom on how to engage in American society (and any society), and his insights are just as relevant as when he wrote them over the course of middle decades of the 20th century. Here are 15 quotes that illustrate the wisdom of Niebuhr in applying the Christian faith to modern society: 5 on the problem, 5 on the solution, and 5 on the hope we can have to make things better.

The Problem
1. “Actually the history of religious fanaticism proves that it is fairly easy to claim identity between the absolute and the contingent value, and thus to claim divine validity for a ‘Christian’ civilization despite all of its moral ambiguities, and to use the Christian faith as a weapon against the foe in all kinds of historic encounters” (The Self & the Dramas of History, 149).

2. “The ultimate sin is the religious sin of making the self-deification implied in moral pride explicit. This is done when our partial standards and relative attainments are explicitly related to the unconditioned good, and claim divine sanction. For this reason religion is not simply as is generally supposed an inherently virtuous human quest for God” (The Nature & Destiny of Man, 200).

3. The rise of science in Western culture “gave modern culture a special animus against ‘dogma.’ But unfortunately it was not prepared to deal with the hidden dogmas in prescriptions of science itself” (The Self & the Dramas of History, 114). “In short, reason may be as obedient a servant of particular interests as religion” (ibid., 153). Continue reading “Christianity & Social Life: 15 Quotes from Reinhold Niebuhr to Help Us Engage”

April 14, 2021

What Would Our Society Do with Peace and Prosperity?

If we had basic provision, leisure time, and peace, what would our society do with it? What should society do with it?

Most of our time and energy is consumed with making sure that we will have enough provision, food, clothes, housing, security, savings. This is true on an individual level, and this is true on a societal level. If we do not feel we have enough, we want to figure out how we can have enough. If we do have enough, we worry about threats that would keep us from having enough.

But what if we didn’t have to worry about that, either on a societal level or an individual level? What would we do with our lives? What is the purpose of human life beyond merely staying alive and well-fed?

That’s the question that Aristotle considers in his books on ethics and politics. He believed that the question of politics was a question of what form of state would allow the most people to realize the ideal form of life (Politics, 2.1). For, as he said, “a state exists for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only . . .” (3.9). His answer was that the best form of government was one “in which every man, whoever he is, can act best and live happily” (7.2). So, politics should ask not only what is the way for people to have enough, to have mere life, but, how can they live well, how can they live the best life, and how can they live a happy life. Continue reading “What Would Our Society Do with Peace and Prosperity?”

March 25, 2021March 25, 2021

Aristotle’s Politics: The Politics of the Golden Mean

Aristotle’s Nichomachaean Ethics is famous for its idea of the Golden Mean. Aristotle writes, “It is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess . . .” (2.2). Consequently, he argues that excellence is “a state concerned with a choice, lying in a mean relative to us” (2.6). It is important to note that not every characteristic could be understood this way. For example, “spite, shamelessness, envy” all are bad in themselves (ibid.). He also understood that it was not always easy to determine the mean. For example, in regards to giving and spending money, “to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy . . .” (2.9). All that said, Aristotle believed that the Golden Mean was an important way to understand what an excellent or virtuous individual would look like.

After reading carefully through Aristotle’s Politics, his politics seem to me to be a politics of the Golden Mean. Aristotle quotes Phocylides: “Many things are best in the mean; I desire to be of a middle condition in my city” (4.11). The Golden Mean, according to Aristotle, could help us understand what the excellent or virtuous state would look like. In fact, this concept may be more useful in politics than in individual ethics. Here I will demonstrate this briefly from Aristotle’s Politics, applying it to a variety of political issues along the way.

The basic question Aristotle sets forth for himself in Politics is this: “Our purpose is to consider what form of political community is best of all for those who are most able to realize their ideal of life” (2.1). In other words, what is the best possible state?

Aristotle begins his discussion in the abstract. However, he recognizes that the ideal is not likely to be possible. So, he says, we ought to

inquire what is the best constitution for most states, and the best life for most men, neither assuming a standard of excellence which is above ordinary persons, nor an education which is exceptionally favoured by nature and circumstances, nor yet an ideal state which is an aspiration only, but having regard to the life in which the majority are able to share, and to the form of government which states in general can attain (4.11).

Aristotle wants us to consider what is really going to work best for most people. This is important to ask because “political writers, although they have excellent ideas, are often unpractical” (4.1). Continue reading “Aristotle’s Politics: The Politics of the Golden Mean”

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