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Putting aside political differences

3/6/2019

1 Comment

 
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Written by: Scott Colburn

      Henry Adams, an American historian and the grandson and great-grandson of U.S. Presidents, once wrote that “Politics is the systematic organization of hatreds.” Even a casual look around at the national scene today would seem to confirm that. Can Christians do anything to change this, or should we just disengage?
       A group of Church Army and Cafe folk were in the Washington, D.C., area in February for a “Matthew 25” conference. We met a lot of other folks who are also answering calls to love and work for the least, the last and the lost. There were great speakers, great fellowship and lots of worship and prayer. Thanks to anyone who sponsored us or prayed for us while we were there!
       For me, one of the highlights was a “field trip” by bus to the National Mall and the surrounding area where many of the nation's monuments and government buildings are. On the way back to the conference we stopped by the Capitol and the White House, and prayed for congress and the president. I think this is how Christians can best be involved in politics. We vote and donate and canvas, as citizens should, but we also pray. As I prayed, knowing I was setting aside my partisan political views, my “organized hatreds,” I felt genuine concern for people who bear the weight of government, and real love for other Americans who answer that call. It doesn't diminish my sense of justice, or my sorrow when some of our leaders use their offices to harm others, even in the name of the people. It does kill my experience of politics as a blood-sport my side must win at, and gives me patience, and I hope, God's perspective.
         As we go into Lent I repent of my political partisanship and my need to be right, even when it is supposedly for the sake of others. I am not my own savior, and I'm not the savior of the country. I'm resolving to pray for our leaders daily. I'll still vote, of course. I just won't vote from hatred, or fear. I'll also “vote” by continuing the work of bringing Jesus to the marginalized, and by living in the margins myself, to seek humility and solidarity.
1 Comment
John Heidengren
3/13/2019 09:37:43 am

Here's an article I read relevant to your post:

TITLE: The 'cult of relentless negativity' really hacks me off!
by The Rev. David Baker Tue 26 Feb 2019 10:39 GMT
Did you realize you are almost certainly a member of a sinister mind-controlling cult?
But it's true, my friend – it's true. And what's more – you've probably never even realized it. This sinister network has no formal name or structure, but we could accurately call it 'the cult of relentless negativity' – and its tentacles are everywhere, including in the Christian world.
For the 'cult of relentless negativity' is the system of thinking that almost all of us have unwittingly bought into. See it on Twitter; see it on Facebook – the sarcastic comments, the knee-jerk negativity, the relentless tribalism where 'we' are always right and 'they' are always wrong. It's putting the worst possible spin, the bleakest interpretation, on the motives and actions of others – while presenting ourselves as the enlightened ones, the saints and heroes, who alone can see things clearly.
Social media is helping to drive the culture of negativity.
Hear it on the radio when pointlessly adversarial interviews are staged with two opposite views – because a negative clash is deemed more likely to engage listeners than a reasoned debate. All it does is leave both interviewees looking foolish – and the presenter as righteous ring-master. Hear it when interviewers constantly interrupt or harangue their interviewees, leaving an impression that the person being interviewed is stupid or inept.
Watch it on television when news reporters conclude their package with a phrase such as 'But critics will say...' without naming anyone, or indeed offering any evidence they have even spoken to such 'critics'. And there's that other lazy, negative journalistic sign-off – 'But many questions remain unanswered' – leaving the impression that whatever person or event has just been reported on, there's probably some sort of cover-up or incompetence yet to be exposed.
Observe it in politics in the nastiness between Democrats and Republicans in the US. See it likewise in Britain: witness the way people on both sides of the Brexit debate have spoken of the other. Or hear Labour MP John McDonnell who said he could never, ever be friends with a Tory – as though they are to be regarded as some separate species of human.
And sadly, of course, the cult of relentless negativity is in the church too. Read Angela Tilby's likening of Anglican evangelicals to Labour's hard-left 'Momentum' grouping in last week's Church Times. Why undertake any serious comment when you can just smear a whole group in this way? Meanwhile an 'inclusive' and influential Anglican website carries an article in which every member of the Church of England's 'Living in Love and Faith' sexuality project is declared 'guilty' on six counts (yes, six!) of 'evil' by the writer, namely 'prejudice, silence, ignorance, fear, hypocrisy, prejudice and misuse of power'. Quite some indictment!
More conservative Christians can be the same. There are websites purporting to offer objective comment on Anglicanism which seem dedicated, relentlessly, to reporting and reinforcing a 100 per cent negative view. One wonders what it does to those who churn the stuff out. Some of the loudest online critics of the Church of England have alienated potential allies by relentlessly disparaging anyone who does not see things exactly as they do. How easy it is, as the puritan Richard Baxter observed, 'to tear our brethren as heretics before we understand them'.
At times all this makes me feel physically sick. The American Christian writer Preston Sprinkle summed it up well recently when he wrote on Twitter of 'the inability to humbly listen to the other side, the other tribe – those you are told are the enemy; the posture of seeing the world in black & white, good people & bad people, & refusing to love your enemy.' He was speaking, he indicated, of both 'conservatives' and 'liberals'. Whether he had in mind theology or politics (or indeed both), he was absolutely right.
Of course, it's easy to see this in others, but I know that if people were to work through every online word I have ever uttered I would have plenty of this sort of thing to answer for too. I guess some might even feel some of my words above are guilty of exactly what I am criticizing. If that is the case, I apologies. We all have logs in our eyes. So what are we to do?
One of the most astute and wise attempts I have seen to counter 'the cult of relentless negativity' is found in the 'about' section of a blog entitled 'Gentle Reformation' which has writers from both sides of the Atlantic. It wants to encourage a way of speaking, especially online, which is, firstly:
'persuasive rather than polemical (seeking to avoid the condescending pride that is, sadly, too often seen... among those who, of all people, should be able knowledge

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