Booing the Golden Rule -- Really?

Some time ago during one of the many presidential debates, candidate Ron Paul suggested that the foreign policy of the United States would do well to follow the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.  The response of a significant portion of the audience in the hall, most of them, I would hazard to guess, Christians, was to boo.

It is shocking to hear the Golden Rule booed in any context.

My own belief that the crisis of our time and place is not a lack of faith in Jesus, but rather a lack of belief that Jesus is ‘up to the job’ – I think, without meaning to, we have somehow rewritten our understanding of just who Jesus is and what Jesus does and can do.  And so we believe we have to act in the ways we do, because Jesus just isn’t up to the job.

An example: on the eve of the Iraq war, I coincidentally happened to attend a church meeting as a student observer.  The minister asked his Session to reflect on what Jesus would do when it came to the decision whether to go to war or not.

The folks had many and varied answers; they were all thinking seriously on it; they were all taking their faith and their understanding of God and God’s word into account, including one gentleman who just couldn’t contain himself; the words literally burst from him: If you’re asking me if Jesus would ride into Baghdad on top of a tank, well, of course he wouldn’t.  But Jesus would be wrong!  

The silence that followed his outburst was, as you might imagine, stunned.  I don’t know how he and his church family dealt with that in the days, weeks, months and years after I left.  But his statement has never left me.

What was going on in his heart, I cannot know.  But I can tell you what I thought then and what I think now: I think the man is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, but that somehow, over time, he has stopped believing that Jesus really is the Savior, the Messiah, the Rescuer.  Somehow, he has come to believe that Jesus just doesn’t understand what we face; that somehow, Jesus isn’t up to the job.

I don’t know what else to call that except a crisis of faith.  So it’s my own guess that too many in the debate hall the night Ron Paul invoked the Golden Rule may suffer the same problem: believing that Jesus is a nice enough guy, that Jesus is a good model to follow for our kids; but when it comes to the world of grown-ups, when it comes to the serious ‘business’ of the work of nations, Jesus is just too darned naive to be considered, let alone believed or followed.

If I am right; if this is so, more’s the pity.

Newt Gingrich's "Let Them Eat Cake" Moment

At the Iowa Family Values forum on Saturday, presidential candidate Newt Gingrich commented on Occupy Wall Street activists, saying, “Go get a job right after you take a bath.”  It’s likely not a coincidence that his remarks came on the heels of Gingrich having been heckled by Occupy folk while giving a speech at Harvard.

Whether Occupy Wall Street folk are clean or unwashed is pretty much beside the point as I see it.

Gingrich sought to tie his remark to the challenge of Captain John Smith to aristocrats in the early American settlement to either work or starve, “If you don’t work, you won’t eat.”

Unfortunately, Gingrich’s remarks are more consonant not with Smith, but with the remark, “Let them eat cake,” apocryphally attributed to Marie Antoinette during a time of famine in France.

There are no studies of those participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests and communities across the nation, but among those on the streets are those who do have jobs as well as those who do not; those who have worked for a lifetime and those who are waiting to enter a job market that has no place for them; those who have protested wars at home and those who have fought them.

The unemployment rate (which measures those who do not have jobs who are looking for jobs) for young adults has topped 19% during this economic crisis and hovers consistently at above 16%.  The Wall Street Journal, "Generation Jobless"

The young are being hit the hardest in these times.  And this is while corporate profits have hit all time highs.

Given that joblessness is so high for young people who are looking for work but not finding it, Mr. Gingrich, might I suggest that telling those who are looking for work to get a job hardly qualifies as either helpful advice or meaningful challenge.  Rather, it smacks of an utter lack of awareness of lived realities for so many in this country.

Admittedly, we continue to be much better off as a nation than many other countries.

But I stand with the 16th-century Reformers on this one: human beings were made for work, for vocation.  Our work is our divine calling.  We serve not only ourselves and our community with our work; we also serve our God.  Being denied work is tantamount to being denied the opportunity to serve God.

Unfortunately, from this presumption, work is equated, wrongfully, with worth in our society.  No work; no worth.

And, Mr. Gingrich, your remarks smack of that same assessment.

But the folks on the streets are not worthless.  They are human beings.  And they are working.  They simply aren’t being paid for their work.

We can disagree with each other.  We can challenge the foundations of the opinions of others.  We can call into question the reasoning of someone whose opinion differs from ours.  But we cannot dismiss or denigrate the very existence of others.

There’s a word for that: dehumanization, the effort to make a person or persons something other than a fellow human being, so as not to have to take them into account.

It is beneath you, Mr. Gingrich.  It is beneath you as their fellow human being.  It is beneath you as someone who would seek to hold the highest office in our land.  And most especially, it is beneath you as a Roman Catholic Christian follower of Jesus the Risen Christ, who took us all into account.

To Be a Good Leader, You Have to be a Good Follower (We’re All Following Somebody!)

Sermon Archive Cliff Notes from the eve of national elections of November 2008 
Readings from Matthew 23.1-12 & 1 Thessalonians 2.1-13
          Jesus calls the Pharisees hypocrites.  The word ‘hypocrite’ comes from the Greek word hupokrisis, meaning the ‘acting of a theatrical part’.  In other words, a hypocrite, someone we understand to pretend to have higher standards or beliefs than they really do, is an actor, someone who is pretending, someone who is wearing a mask.
          Now we’ve talked before about the masks we wear – but then we were thinking about the masks we put on to hide our sorrows from the world . . . now that is pretending, but it’s a different kind of pretending than we’re hearing about today.
          When I put on my mask to pretend I’m okay, I’m not humbling myself enough to believe that you might really care about me.  But the mask Jesus refers to is the one I put on to hide that I really don’t care about you.  The first is the mask of the follower; the second, the mask of the leader.  It is to the leader in all of us that these texts speak.
               This week, all over the country, candidates of one side will pack their bags and go home when the other side steps into the victor’s seat.  The keys to the earthly ‘kingdom’ will be passed along.  And life will go on.
          But if we follow our usual pattern, the ink won’t be dry on the page before we’re crying foul or criticizing the new leaders, before they’ve even gotten the chair warm.
          Before we get too righteous in our indignation, let us remember that we too are leaders, that we too are setting an example, that we too are called to be in the burden sharing as well as the burden bearing business of life . . .
          Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, grandchildren, family and friends, younger sisters and brothers, neighbors and strangers,  all are led by you . . .
          What Paul understood, what is central to his message to the Thessalonians, is that how you lead is determined by whom you follow . . . and we all follow someone or something . . .
          So like Paul, remember always that God is your leader . . .
          The word ‘cynical’ is defined as believing the worst about human beings and their nature.  There is no room for the cynical in the kingdom . . . and cynicism, like a disease, is contagious . . .
          So here’s a challenge particularly suited to this time in our nation . . . drop the cynicism . . . try believing the best rather than the worst about the candidates . . . all of them . . .
          Pray the best for all of them . . .
          And who knows, maybe, just maybe, they will become the leaders we need.
          But the real miracle is that maybe, just maybe, we will become the leaders we’ve been  looking for . .


CHARGE:
                 On this eve of elections, I charge you in the words of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist tradition, "Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences”.