Theology and Politics

Theology and Politics

Marion D. Aldridge

We are living in a time when politicians are trying to be theologians, and theologians are attempting to be politicians. It’s not working out very well.

Over the years, I’ve resisted the temptation to post my political inclinations on Facebook or my blogs. I’ve been a happy American, blessed beyond reason under both Democratic and Republican Presidents.

My specific concern this week is when people speak, as if they knew what they are talking about, in areas where they don’t know what they are talking about. For instance, the Bible.

I know little to nothing about economic theory or geological formations. Neither is a field in which I have expertise. So, I offer no opinions.

The Bible is a Big Book. It says a lot of things. If you study the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and take a course in systematic theology, and another in ethics, you will discover quite a long and complicated history about how people of faith should live in the secular world. Here are a few of my summary thoughts about matters of faith, as they relate to the law:

1) Jesus was clear when he said to let Caesar have what belongs to Caesar, and let God be in charge of the God-stuff.

2) Paul was a follower of Jesus, willing to go to jail for disobeying laws. In fact, when he named his top three motivators, the law did not make the list. He said the Big Three are Faith, Hope, and Love, and the greatest of those is love.

3) The Old Testament prophets, Jesus, and Paul all point us to higher ground: “What does the Lord require of you but to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

The law is not to be our moral compass. Legalism is a methodology for defending, instead of fixing, a broken compass.

These are principles even a politician can use as an ethical guide.

A Gift of Advent

Over the past few years, I have become exasperatedly aware how Big the Bible is. I’ve read it all my life—I don’t know how many times. I’ve even read the New Testament in Greek.

The Holy Book is HUGE—containing 66 smaller books, some of them not-so-short. Some texts are enigmatic. All are written in languages foreign to me. Some of the Bible is fiction—that’s what a parable is. Paul even resorts to sarcasm. There is no end to conversations and debates about the Bible.

Three years, at least, is how long a pastor needs to preach through the Bible, and that requires skipping a lot of texts. A sermon based on a passage from II Chronicles gets the same attention as Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. For me, that’s a problem. I’m a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ. I’m not a Davidian and certainly not a Branch Davidian. Some are. I’m not. I read the entire Bible. I value the entire Bible. But I’m a Jesus guy.

Twelve Step groups  read each step at every meeting, focusing on a different step each week. When the group finishes the Twelve Steps, they start over and go through them again.

Not so in Sunday school or sermons. If we limited ourselves to a single Bible book each week, we’d need sixty-six weeks to skim through the Bible once. We’d spend only one Sunday, for example, on Matthew—to learn about …

The birth of Jesus

The visit of the Wise men

The preaching of John the Baptist

The Sermon on the Mount

The Beatitudes

The Lord’s Prayer

The healing of a leper, etc. etc. etc.

That’s an impossible task.

The Gift of Advent is that for four weeks, every year, we focus on …

Hope

Peace

Joy

Love.

Year in and year out, approaching Christmas, we are reminded that these attributes are important. No need to ignore salvation, grace, justice, or the Ten Commandments, but at least once each year we will focus on Hope, Peace, Joy and Love.

Year after year. Over and over.

Hope

Peace

Joy

Love.

An Audacious Proposal

For a couple of thousand years, human beings have lived tribally: my clan against your clan, my nation against your nation, my religion against your religion.

My proposal: for the next two thousand years, more or less, we live as if all humans were part of the same family, and that we act compassionately toward one another.

I know nothing about statecraft, so I’ll leave that problem to people with different skills than mine. But I do know something about religion.

For instance, I’m aware that the Bible is full, exasperatingly full, of warnings about hanging out with those who are different:

• “You shall be holy to me; for I the Lord am holy, and I have separated you from the other peoples to be mine.” Leviticus 20: 26

• “Now make confession to the Lord the God of your ancestors, and do his will; separate yourselves from the peoples of the land and from the foreign wives.” Ezra 10: 11

Separate. Avoid. Shun. Sometimes, kill.

I’m sure the Koran and other holy texts have similar passages that counsel, “We’re the best! We’re number one. Our way is the right way. Other beliefs are false and dangerous. Stay away from them. Destroy them.” Hindus and Buddhists have also victimized others because of religious intolerance.

In the twenty-first century, the tribe that is threatened is humanity. Maybe it’s time to pay attention to some of the other texts in our holy books:

• “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” I Corinthians 13: 4-5

• “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22: 37-40

• “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Matthew 5: 7-9

 From the sacred texts of Islam:

• “There is no compulsion where the religion is concerned.” (Holy Quran: 2/ 256)

• “Show kindness to parents, and to kindred, and orphans, and the needy, and to the neighbor that is a kinsman and the neighbor that is a stranger, and the companion by your side, and the wayfarer, and those whom your right hands possess. (Al Quran 4:37)

It’s time for two millennia of zealotry, persecution, argumentation, name-calling, and finger pointing to give way to something different. This doesn’t mean people of faith become less passionate about their beliefs—just less angry and arrogant. I can tell my story and I can listen to your story. Religious people are endlessly talking about repentance and transformation, but it’s funny how it’s always the other person who is expected to change.

Here’s my audacious proposal:

I ask my Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan and Hindu friends to love, to be kind, to be patient, to be gentle, to be good, to be merciful, to be peacemakers, to be gracious. If we don’t, according to a Jewish rabbi quoted in the Christian scriptures,

 “You may even be found fighting against God.” (Gamaliel, in Acts 5: 39)

 

 

Mother’s Day reflections

Someone said, “A woman is like a tea bag, you cannot tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”

I like strong women.  I am married to one!  I’m the proud father two daughters who I believe can hold their own against anyone!  In my professional life, I have always been surrounded by strong women!

Some people mistakenly operate out of an economy of scarcity.

• If one kind of person is strong, then other people must be weak.

This week is Mothers’ Day.  One of my heroes is a woman from the Bible, Lydia, a Strong Woman, a successful merchant in Philippi, Greece.

• She was a businesswoman, a broker, a distributor whose niche market involved purple cloth. 
• She owned a business. 
• She owned a home. 
• She was smart. 
• She was sensitive. 
• She was hospitable. 
• She was compassionate. 
• She was persuasive. 

Lydia is one of dozens of strong women in Holy Scripture who serve as a reminder to us that there are two sides to every story.  Churches or families or cultures that insist on only one type of woman, the weak, simpering, docile woman, do themselves and “their” women much harm. 

I had lunch this week with a young woman who regrets that the church has seemingly approved of two kinds of women through the centuries:  “pretty women” and “good women.”  Yet I can think of dozens of types of women in the Bible that are valued and their stories are told.  Why have we limited our Mother’s Day reflections to texts such as Proverbs 31?  In the Bible there are stories about

• Rebellious women
• Charismatic women
• Courageous women
• Wise women
• Colorful women
• Determined women
• Independent women
• Strong women

According to some parts of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, women were no more than property, first of their fathers and then of their husbands.  Examine Exodus 21 and 22 for some painful Mothers’ Day reading and see if Jesus or Hallmark would bless those particular passages?   Passages such as this are why the Bible tells us to “rightly handle the word of truth.”  By the way, all children were property, male and female, but boys grew into men and acquired the rights assigned to men.  Girls become women, however, and remained second-class citizens.

There are people who will argue that I am misrepresenting the position of conservative or fundamentalist churches.  I don’t think I am.  I was watching a television worship service once, which is something I don’t often do, and I was impressed.  The choir was multi-racial.  The camera panned the congregation and people were smiling.  Men and women, young and old, black and white, were highlighted by the camera.  This was a good church, I thought, briefly.  Then the Deacons entered, 70 overweight white men paraded to the front of the sanctuary and sat in the seats of prominence and authority.  The people behind the camera knew what made the church appear attractive to the people watching on TV.  Women would be allowed to pretty up the place, but they would be restricted to positions of serving and would never be allowed into the rooms where decisions were made.

Here’s a strange story.  A friend of mine was teaching the Baptist Sunday School lesson to the children in her class.  It was from II Chronicles 34 and was about someone discovering the Book of the Law during Josiah’s reign as King in Jerusalem.  Hilkiah the Priest got involved.  They called on Huldah the prophetess to get her forecast on what this find meant.  Huldah made her prophecy and the priest and the king and the people all seemed to respond appropriately and the story concludes.  Since the denomination of the church in which this woman was teaching Sunday School believes that women must submit to men, they left the Huldah part out of the lesson.  They just skipped it!  What a distortion of Holy Scripture!  Let the Bible say what it says.

There is a time to submit and there is a time not to submit.  That is the nature of life and that is the truth of Holy Scripture.  Queen Vashti did not submit, and good came from it.

Thanks, Lydia, for reminding us that our world, our churches and our families will never be the same because of Strong Women such as you.