Vote Without Fear

I learned that anger is a secondary emotion (thanks to training for pastoral counseling, and parent and marriage communication). Anger is preceded and triggered by another emotion, which must be addressed in order to deal with the anger. As I have observed the extraordinary anger in this election cycle, I have pondered what emotions might be triggering it and have concluded that very often it is fear (from both left and right).

In my pastoral career I have often passed on as a life axiom that when we make decisions based on fear, we almost always make the wrong choice. 1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear,” which suggests to me that the opposite of fear is not courage but love. A mother does not run into traffic to snatch her child from in front of a speeding car because she is brave but because she loves the child. So to keep from making a bad decision based on fear, I have long suggested to people they consider how to decide based on love.

Through this election season, I have purposely refrained from indicating for whom I am voting or recommending any candidate. Rather, I have tried to wrestle with how what I have gained from Scripture over the years informs the way I do my thinking and pass that on with a hope it will help others think more biblically and deeply. So I’m still not going to endorse a candidate, but I will suggest that when you sense fear in the choices you must make, consider how love can supplant fear as you decide how you will vote.

Watching our Culture Die

My friend Randy Breen asked me to respond to this article, so I offer these thoughts. https://thegospelside.com/2016/10/03/watching-our-culture-die-where-the-secular-culture-went-wrong-and-what-christians-can-do-to-help/

Since Randy specifically included me in his request for responding to this article, I’ll give it a shot, even though a few days late. As I suspect he guessed, I’d present something of an alternate perspective, without actually arguing with the piece itself. My sense is that in an effort to make a single point, the article is just too brief to deal with the many nuances that surround the questions to which it speaks.

I would suggest that western civilization is not based on a single narrative but on a rich blend of narratives, not all of which have Christian or even biblical roots. For example, without a  doubt, Greek/Roman and Nordic mythologies inform much of the self-understanding of western civilization. Rather than seeing the Christ narrative as the defining story of western civilization, I see it as the defining narrative of the Church which has had a significant impact on western civilization. Part of understanding what is happening with western civilization in our time requires recognizing that for a host of reasons the Christ narrative is so radically countercultural that even at the height of Christendom and the appeal of the US as a “Christian nation” (which really took the form we recognize today in the Cold War to distinguish the US from godless communism) its broad acceptance was in a version watered down to be more polite and less threatening.

Just within the last few days I wrote about how we who seriously want to follow Jesus are, always have been and always will be exiles. Jeremiah 29:4-7 gives some guidance about how to live as exiles. http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2016/10/sent-into-exile.html Last year I wrote about why I am more concerned about the spiritual health of the Church than the religious landscape of the country. http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2015/05/i-am-more-concerned-about-spiritual.html I hope that by juxtaposing some of this sort of thinking with the article Randy posted with prompt deep and prayerful thought. I’ve written about these sort of things quite a bit and posted at http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/ . Norman Stolpe

An additional thought in a somewhat different direction. Cultures and civilizations are always fluid and in transition. There is no “normal” state to “go back to.” We cannot find an ideal moment and freeze it in perpetuity. I just turned 70 and my wife, Candy, was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We are in the process of discovering and living this next transition of our lives, and though we have some guidance, the path is not totally clear. I have been aware for several years, and the recent musical “Hamilton” brought it up again, that Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had radically conflicting visions of what this then new nation was to become. Jefferson saw an agrarian society with wide open spaces, and for all of his words about “all men being created equal,” the pragmatics were based on a landed aristocracy who defined what happened for everyone else. Hamilton saw an industrial society full of inventive people creating new ways to build a shared economy. Though Jefferson prevailed at the time, Hamilton’s dream came closer to the reality. As Jefferson saw that happening, he wrote of his fear that such a country would not survive long but collapse and the dreams of liberty be lost. Such tensions and transitions occur at every juncture of history, including our own. The 1950s were not utopia, especially for those who were left out of the post-war suburban boom.

From a theological perspective, I see our human insistence on seeking an idealized stable state is a built in longing for the Kingdom of God that comes by being made in the image of God. However, I see our efforts to create that stable state ourselves as a doomed idolatry akin to the Tower of Babel. Faith calls us to supreme and sole loyalty as citizens of the Kingdom of God who aspire to be God’s agents of peace and justice, righteousness and mercy in every human society, civilization and culture until the King himself comes.

Sent Into Exile

You may be one of the many who do not believe you have a viable vote for US President in 2016. You cannot enthusiastically vote for either of the major party candidates but are reluctant to vote for a third party candidate lest the candidate you hate or fear the most gets elected. I am not going to tell you how to vote, but I think the reading from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament) for this coming Sunday (Revised Common Lectionary - October 9, 2016) in Jeremiah 29:4-7 suggests a constructive way of thinking about this for those of us who aspire to be serious disciples of Jesus Christ.

The Babylonian Empire had invaded Judah around 586 BCE and were taking captives into exile. The prophet Jeremiah who was still in Judah wrote a letter to those who had already been carried off to Babylon. Some with a false hope of a quick return to a liberated Judah and others in resistance to their captors were refusing to go on with life. Though not especially welcome, Jeremiah’s eloquent letter on God’s behalf echoes with wisdom through the centuries right to our own time.

He wrote: “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”

I suggest that the ambivalence many Christians feel about this election is a symptom of not recognizing that by following Jesus we are ipso facto in exile. I further suggest that this is not new at all but has always been the status of authentic disciples of Jesus, who had nowhere to lay his head, whose lordship was an intolerable threat to the Roman Empire. Until the Roman Emperor Constantine usurped his own distorted version of Christianity the official religion of the realm as a tool of military conquest, neither Jesus, nor the Apostles, nor the early Church could ever have imagined Christianity as a national religion.

Many of the documents quoted in support of the idea of the United States as a “Christian nation” come from the New England Puritans of the colonial era. They left Europe, not for religious freedom as we would understand it, but to found a new Israel in the wilderness that would be a city set on a hill to enlighten the rest of the world (or at least Europe which they saw as still bound by the “rags of Popery” (Roman Catholicism). In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, only male landowners who were members of the Congregational Church in good standing could vote or hold public office. Within a generation this seemingly noble aspiration collapsed, and they instituted what was called the “halfway covenant.” That allowed for perfunctory church membership without participation or discipline. All such efforts to have established churches were abandoned with the adoption of the US Constitution which makes no mention of God and forbids established religion and religious tests for public office. (Among the Thirteen Colonies, only the Baptists of Rhode Island and the Quakers of Pennsylvania insisted on freedom of religion without an official church.)

I have included this very brief historical note, not to explore why I am convinced the idea of a “Christian nation” is detrimental to authentic Christian discipleship (I’ve done that elsewhere), but because I believe it gives some context to how understanding that those who follow Jesus are exiles is liberating and empowering as we face the sorts of challenges and conundrums of which the current presidential election is but one example. By relinquishing a fear-driven pursuit of the unrealistic, and I believe unbiblical, hope of a “Christian nation” and accepting that we who aspire to seriously follow Jesus are, always have been, and always will be exiles.

Though two and a half millennia after Jeremiah, his letter to Judah’s exiles in Babylon can stimulate us to be positive and constructive even when we live in a culture that wants to dilute discipleship by making Christianity a cultural artifact, or pretends to ignore the challenge the lordship of Jesus is to all human authority, or even sometimes opposes those who seriously aspire to follow Jesus.

Though I would hardly claim to be the exemplary disciple of Jesus I aspire to be, I do see my personal identity totally tied up with Jesus’ identity. My roles as husband, father, grandfather and even pastor are all expressions of my identification with Jesus. Jeremiah wrote to the exiles that God had sent them to Babylon. By virtue of my birth and the path of my life I believe God has sent me to the United States. God might well have sent me elsewhere, and God has certainly sent most of Jesus’ people to countries other than the United States. I am first and foremost a citizen of the Kingdom of God and called to live that way as a citizen of the United States, just as most other disciples of Jesus are called to live as citizens of the Kingdom of God in whatever country to which God has sent them.

Jeremiah’s letter tells those of us who follow Jesus how to practice good citizenship in our human countries as those whose sole loyalty is as citizens of the Kingdom of God. Live your life with gusto! Get married; raise families; participate in the economy. Your presence will light a path for others who seek something more satisfying, more enduring than our daily human pursuits. Your allegiance to Jesus points people who are disillusioned with fallible even corrupt political leadership to someone they can trust with enthusiastic confidence. Seek the welfare of the city where God has sent us. Contribute to the common good, even the good of those who mock or oppose your faith. As the community prospers, we prosper too, and all will have the opportunity to know the God who sends his rain on the just and the unjust. This is the beginning of experiencing God’s grace which is predicated on loving those who don’t deserve love. And perhaps most of all, pray for the city in which God has sent you to exile. Yes, pray for the presidential candidate you hate and fear the most. Pray that peace and justice, righteousness and mercy may flourish for those among whom you are in exile.

I believe Jeremiah’s letter precludes living in fear that national foundations are being destroyed. When the psalmist pondered that question (Psalm 11:3), the answer is immediate, “The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord’s throne is in heaven.” (Psalm 11:4) As exiles we who follow Jesus are harbingers of hope and joy even in the midst of chaos and confusion. I know we will disagree with each other about exactly how best to seek the welfare of the city to which we have been sent in exile, but I do believe we should pursue that goal positively, full of faith, hope and love. As far as deciding how your vote this election as a disciple of Jesus can make that contribution, I’ve suggested the prayer for the king in Psalm 72 as a template for voting, and you can read that at http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2016/06/principles-for-deciding-for-whom-i-will.html .

I’m not looking for arguments but hoping to stimulate thinking and discussion among those who follow Jesus as how best we can seek the welfare of the United States in this present moment.