Monday, July 21, 2008

Change or Why a Christian should Always be Apolitical

  • As Joshua built on the work of Moses, leaders of today – the ‘Joshua Generation’ – must build of the foundation of previous generations to move our nation forward.
“The final thing that I think the Moses generation teaches us is to remind ourselves that we do what we do because God is with us. You know, when Moses was first called to lead people out of the Promised Land…the Lord said I will be with you. Throw down that rod. Pick it back up. I'll show you what to do. The same thing happened with the Joshua generation.
Joshua said, you know, I'm scared. I'm not sure that I am up to the challenge. The Lord said to him, every place that the sole of your foot will tread upon, I have given you. Be strong and have courage, for I am with you wherever you go. Be strong and have courage. It's a prayer for a journey. A prayer that kept a woman in her seat when the bus driver told her to get up, a prayer that led nine children through the doors of that Little Rock school, a prayer that carried our brothers and sisters over a bridge right here in Selma, Alabama. Be strong and have courage.”
-Barack Obama's Address to Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, Selma, Alabama, on the Anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

I support Barack Obama as a Southeast Asian because i think he would bring a fresh outlook to government of the world's only superpower..which is wat is needed so desperately and is wat the world, which includes Southeast Asia, definitely wants right now..moderation would be advanced as well as clear-headedness..i think his competitors look tired and worn out, especially Senator John McCain..he would remove a great deal of that evangelical involvement in American politics which gives Jesus Christ such a bad name..more on that in a minute..and he might ensure that the United States is less flippant about foreign military intervention..

However, as a Christian with a Christian conscience, i find that i cannot agree with his attitude towards faith ..while pluralism is a reality of our increasingly pluralistic world, it is against the nature of my Christian faith to compromise and accept, as a given, plurality in any, and every, situation..i would have to tearfully say that Christianity is different from the other religions even as i would continue to fight for tolerance of these same religions in the world..it goes against the grain of everything i have always held fast to, liberte, equalite, fraternite..i always have and always will, support the French Revolution and everything it stood for...Monarchy is evil and Republicanism is the only way of government until Jesus returns..Terror is tyranny without Virtue and Virtue is powerless without Terror..Liberty must be bedded on a mattress of corpses..the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants..Now is the time when the sun-shine patriot and the turncoat republican will be revealed...yet i cannot turn against my faith..the Christian is different from the world..Christianity is different from 'other religions'...Christianity allows me to tolerate other religions even as i disagree with them..but Christianity is not equal to other religions...neither are all religions one homogenous soup...

As such, i think that Barack Obama has unwittingly, misquoted scripture in applying Joshua to the fight for freedom...it is about God's Providence yes, but it is not an iron-clad guarantee that God approves of what American or Obama is doing..we run the danger of putting words into God's mouth that He never says..the idea that America is the same as God's Promised Land for Israel in the Old Testament is a very bad, and mistaken, assumption..

i think that Christians should not try to 'force-fit' scripture to justify their own ideas and actions...Respect the Bible and please lets not use it as a political tool...which brings me t the crux of wat i want to say...politics is a dirty, very wicked game that manipulates and twists and turns cruelly for a person's own benefit...wat part can a Christian have with this? oh, of course a Christian should be involved and concerned about our world and our nations...oh, it is even possible for a Christian to be a politician..but lets not think for a minute that a Christian politician is any better than a non-Christian politician..the weight of history, from Constantine's Rome, to Calvin's Geneva, to Cromwell's England..and now (supposedly) evangelical and born again George Bush Jr..seems to be on my side...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

the day Christians cease to be involved in politics is the day we hand over any means of participation to others.

In any case, it doesn't have to be ideological or blind. In America, the Christian lobby groups are just 1 of the more powerful groups. Doesn't mean i support them but it is part of the whole democratic process.