In light of the upcoming election, I thought I would provide a memoir-like post that might shed a little light on what's happened to the country politically and where the Christian fits in. That, and world peace are all subjects one can easily lay out in an online post.
Winston Churchill once said, "If you're not a liberal when you're twenty you don't have a heart. If you're not a conservative when you're forty, you don't have a brain." This kind of describes most of my political journey. As I've always said, I've had a special affinity for politics, becoming active when I was very young. In college, however, at Wheaton, I dallied with more liberal-minded ideas. There were two "cultures" or dynamics which allowed for this, and they sketch a miniature version of what I think has happened to so much of the electorate.
First, almost all of my friends were through the theater, and perhaps my most influental professor was there, the late Jim Young. Jim was an unabashaed liberal Democrat whose office was adorned with McGovern campaign posters and the like. Although it was easy to spot and slightly obnoxious, his liberalism nevertheless possessed the street cred of deep, true, unconditional compassion for others. This influence had the effect of turning young people from conservative Christian households into partisan Ds and of legitimizing the free-thinking rebelliousness of others, which is common at this age. Most powerful, Jim's theater culture was a place where young Christian men struggling with their sexual orientation could find acceptance. I had many friends who were having a hard time with this. But during my years at Wheaton (1990-1993), I witnessed Jim change from a counselor who hoped to guide these young men out of their homosexuality, into a quiet supporter of homosexual behavior among those who still tried to call themselves Christians. In the process he took up their demands for political equality. As a twenty-year-old who thought Christians could still respect each other but disagree politically, this disillusioned me. To make sense of brothers in Christ like Jim who seemed to cross a line from a policy disagreement into condoning sin, I tried to tell myself he was being caring of someone who was gay the same way he might care about another student who was struggling with some chemical addiction or another sexual problem. But to see Jim become a quiet advocate convinced me that Christians who went down the path of modern liberalism could not escape compromising where it mattered most. Although I loved Jim, I was made afraid of his weakness in this area, specifically how he essentially politicized sin. I wanted to find another path, which I'll talk more about in a minute.
The second culture which flirted with my political conscience came courtesy of the ministry-driven extracurricular program of Wheaton. Located 20 miles from Chicago's notorious West Side, the College sponsored a score of ministries for us which were heavily oriented toward the metro area's urban poor. I myself opted for the jail ministry inside the foreboding Cook County Department of Corrections. Even though I was no stranger to African-Ameircan poverty having grown up in East Texas, the size and scope of it in a city like Chicago took my breath away. It was easy for me to buy into the despair of so many of these people, especially the men, who were lost in a wilderness of thousands and fed each other with a sickening diet of blame, ignorance, laziness, mediocrity, manipulation, immorality and envy. I began to think that these people needed more than just Jesus - they truly needed a leg up. I labored at my ministry of helping the men in the jail earn their GED. That, to me, seemed the best way I could help. But of all my students, only one showed the slightest motivation, and at age 27 his brain was so damaged by marijuana that he simply could not compute the most basic of fractions. I left the ministry after my sophomore year very discouraged. There had to be another path.
I was desperate for another path. Many of my generation don't like the political divisiveness we are in and believe that common ground is there. Because this has not been forthcoming, many are becoming permanently absent on Election Day.
I desperately hope there is a better path. The fruit of my friends in the theater today reveals just how I have been saved. My friends who struggled with their sexual orientation are now fully out of the closet, such that I wonder why they even bother to identify with Christianity at all. Another close buddy is an actor who's best gig was getting cast as this scary pimp on a network television show. Another is an actress who portrayed an incestous wife in a major motion picture this summer - a film filled with that and other rank vulgarities passed off as comedy. Many of these brothers and sisters of mine seem truly lost, such that it pangs me. They are all outspoken in their support for Obama.
What was the fruit of my work in the jail? I'll never know. But, our President's political career is rooted in Cook County. Maybe if that one inmate had learned his fractions, none of this would have happened.
And yet I knew the shortcomings of the old path I was on within Reganite Republicanism. I loved the Gipper's ability to inspire and get Americans to believe in the best of themselves, but I saw at Wheaton how the appeal of Republican values to the people who needed to hear them the most fell flat. I concluded the problem lay in empathy, or in what pollsters today call "the concern gap." Bill Clinton brought this to bear in 1992 and it has been an important plank of campaigning ever since -- for candidates of both parties. The perception that Obama is more concerned about Americans is the single biggest reason he is tied with Romney, even when the former's record is so atrocious. It's why FDR was constantly reelected during years of hardship. Suffice it to say there are plenty of opportunties for Republicans who can show concern.
I also became alarmed, even resentful, at how my fellow Republicans were so eager to become self-righteous and legalistic about our ideas. I got turned off by what the GOP had become in the mid-Nineties when I came home from college. This attitude is the stark opposite of empathy. It's this spirit that is creating so much contention in the party today where unity is less important, such as in Texas -- if they haven't left altogether and formed a TEA Party. Now, unfortunately, we Republicans are forced to vote nationally more out of fear than hope due to Obama's policies and the agenda coming out of Cook County. Voting out of fear rarely carries the day. Even though we are forty, there's a tendendency not to use our brains when fear is in the air.
So, to summarize this meditation, I wonder how the country can also be saved from liberalism. It will take more power than I have, certainly. I think the change lies in returning to an idea that humans always have the tendency to do the wrong thing. This is not where secular conservatism begins; it begins with the idea that my self-interest -- rugged individualism -- will bring about wealth, order and fairness. That's OK if I remember that my self-interest is unreliable and I need to God to direct it. May God save us all.
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