Jesus' True Teachings Could be Good Politics

Here I am in a “Disciples” class a few years back trying to explain grace and why it’s so superior to “reaching God” through the law and by avoiding all those naughty things named in the 10 Commandments and other parts of "the Book." A friend in the class, a school teacher and all around pretty bright woman, was scratching her head over the idea of grace and salvation coming as a gift through Christ’s sacrifice. It seemed just too mechanical. She felt there had be another way, a fresh way, to talk about what it means to be Christian.

Maybe she's right. Maybe we’re balled up like a sweaty sheet from theological tossing and turning over how obedience to the law fits with God’s grace. She steps in, smart but no trained theologian, and sees there has to a third way.

I was reminded of her resistance to my “grace formulations” by Judith Warner’s opinion piece titled “Holier Than They” in Thursday’s NY Times. She takes a lay person’s peek at the faith and wonders why the core concerns people on the street would call “Christian” seem to be missing:

“These days … for all the talk of religion, there is little public soul-searching about the absence of care and compassion, love, acceptance and inclusion – the things that many consider to be the essence of Christianity – in the words of our purported Christian leaders.”

And while she sees what we’ve previously pointed out in this space -- cracks in the conservative movement’s solid wall of propaganda, she wonders if it may be too late:

“The Christian conservative vote is, apparently, splintering. Younger evangelicals are increasingly said to be interested in putting their faith to greater use than bashing gays, promoting guns and putting God on the presidential ticket. That would seem to indicate that we’re facing a moment of opportunity: a chance to expand and amplify the reach of the voice of religious moderation. The silence I’m hearing makes me think, though, that as a society we’ve come to accept the slippage of prejudicial and hateful attitudes into religious doctrine as somehow normal.”

That slippage, while deplorable, is facilitated by ordinary means. Most of us are set up for it the first time we write a research paper in high school or college. You propose an idea and then look for a “proof passage” in the literature. Too much of that approach in studying the Bible can obscure scripture’s true essence and open the door to deceivers. My Disciple class friend was suggesting a little less theology and a little more ardent application of the KIS theory. If we’re ready to defend the soul of Jesus’ message -- that we love God and our neighbor as ourselves -- it’ll be harder for the haters to play their game.

Warner borrows a phrase from a Times editorial condemning “Islam’s silent moderates” for inaction in the “appalling, brutal and bigoted” case of a Saudi woman sentenced to prison for being gang raped, and asks when Christian moderates will end their silence:

“It would be nice today to hear a candidate step up and oppose all that is ‘appalling, brutal and bigoted’ in the limited religious views that substitute for spirituality in American politics today. Who knows — it might even be good politics.”