Like all believers, I try to allow my faith to influence every aspect of my life. Like all sinners, I manage to screw things all up no matter what aspect of my life I'm trying to let it influence. That's basic biblical theology, of course; everything a sinner does is contaminated by his sinfulness to one degree or another. But politics is a particularly tricky area in which to try to restrain one's fallen nature, especially in an age as acrimonious and polarized as ours.
When I call that other blog a "political blog," I do not mean to say that it is only that. I've written there about my interest in history, in astronomy, and in my Cubs, Bears, and Blackhawks, along with dozens of other things. I've also written about my faith. But there's where the rub comes.
I started that blog after I left the full-time parish ministry, although I did serve a parish part-time for a while thereafter. The president of that congregation, who found my blog otherwise unobjectionable, wanted me to delete it when I accepted the call back into the pastoral office. He was probably right, even though I never got around to it.
Government is a divine institution. It is, as Martha Stewart would say, a good thing, though there are those these days who are inclined to disagree (even Christians, who in view of Romans 13, among other passages, really ought to know better). It's God's way of restraining the fallen natures of the strong from leading them to abuse the weak. Again, contrary to what some in the Church might say, nowhere does the Bible teach that it might not also legitimately do other things as well. I'm certainly glad that if my house catches fire the government can be depended upon to put it out, and I while we can debate the scope and nature of government social welfare programs, I would be ashamed to be a member of a society which didn't have any, and I don't think God would approve of such a society, either. But it's also something which can be terribly abused- and government officials, too, are sinners whose fallen natures need restraint. Government is a blessing, but very far from being an unmixed blessing. When the authority of government is abused, it's a terrible thing.
That said, it's awfully hard to be charitable in a political blog. My dad was extremely fond of a proverb based on Jeremiah 5:21 and variously attributed to John Heyward, Thomas Chalkley, and Jonathan Swift: "None are so blind as those who will not see." There's a reason why politics (along with religion) are subjects traditionally not discussed in polite society. Politics is a contentious business in which it is very easy to end up saying uncharitable things, often because we've concluded that someone else is being obtuse. And even when doing one's best to be charitable, it's often not easy to say the kind of things which one is sometimes led to say in a political blog in a sufficiently graceful and benevolent way as to avoid being misunderstood.
A political blog is simply not a good arena for a pastor to set the kind of example his office requires. Then, too, there's always the danger that any political pronouncement by a member of the clergy may be taken as a claim that he is speaking for God, since that is, after all, his business. Or even that he might be misunderstood as claiming to speak for God.
I'm not in the parish now. If I ever should be again, I don't think I'll do any more political blogging for the duration. But for now, in my vocation as a citizen, I'm still writing my political blog and speaking the truth as I see it with as much love as I can. Even so, that's all too often not enough.
Richard Wurmbrand, the Romanian Lutheran pastor, theologian, and confessor, wrote a number of moving books about his persecution by the Communist government of his homeland, including lengthy imprisonments during which is captors went so far as to give him psychoactive drugs in order to disrupt his prayer life. But he also wrote a devotional book whose forward included the statement, which I paraphrase freely, that "I'm glad, after writing all that, to finally have a chance to just write something about Jesus." I am not worthy to be thought of in the same head as Richard Wurmbrand, and my political screed is nowhere near as worth reading as his witness to the sufferings of the Church under the Cross. But I'm starting this blog because I'd like a place to do something like that uncontaminated by that other stuff.
What I write here will be no less fallible and no less contaminated by sin than what I write on that other blog, But I dare write it anyway for the same reason why I dare address the affairs of the temporal order despite the extreme fallibility and all too frequent failures of charity that involves. As Martin Luther said when his conscience assailed him or he was reminded of the magnitude of his own reasons for humility, "Baptizatus sum."
"I am baptized." God has called me by my name, and I am His. My sins are forgiven. I am strengthened by his promise and covered by Christ's blood. My weakness is clothed in Christ's strength. My shortcomings are covered by his perfection. My inadequacy is covered by His sufficiency. And so are my words, even though they are the words of a sinner.
Only for that reason could I dare, back in the day, to stand in a pulpit and presume to proclaim God's Word. Only for that reason do I dare put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard) and write about anything at all.
And I'd kind of like to write a blog about why that means that I dare do such a thing- or for that matter, anything else,
Comments
Post a Comment