Category Archives: Political rhetoric

“Everything is Politics”

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Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), famed Prussian general and author of On War, defined war as “the continuation of politics by other means.” The clear presupposition of von Clausewitz’s definition is that politics and war have the same end in mind, defeating and dominating all opposition. Only the means differ. Of course, we may object to the Machiavellian nature of von Clausewitz’s realpolitik. But as a description of how nations actually relate, it often fits the facts. As I try to make some sense of the upheaval that characterizes contemporary society, von Clausewitz’s definition of war comes to mind. Only, it needs to be flipped on its head, so that it fits contemporary social facts. It’s flipped form reads as follows:

“Politics is the continuation of war by other means.”

Follow me one step further. In times of national crisis, everything you do and say and every relationship becomes political. The novelist and Nobel Prize laureate (1929) Thomas Mann, writing about German culture just before WW I, said, “Everything is politics” (The Magic Mountain, 1924). Perhaps you have heard the feminist assertion, “The personal is political.” This slogan entered popular culture with the publication of Carol Hanisch’s 1969-essay by that title. It was used by Gloria Steinem and other feminists of the late Twentieth Century to make all dimensions of male/female interactions matters of public debate and policy.

It seems to me that the idea expressed in the assertions “everything is politics” and “the personal is political” has been taken up and generalized by contemporary post-modern culture. They are no longer merely theoretical and aspirational but are descriptive of the facts of the present state of society: every social interaction is a political act and every person is an ally or an enemy in a political cause. All relationships have become relations of power. In every interaction, we oppress or are oppressed, dominate or are dominated, we act as racists or anti-racists, or we win or lose. The logic goes as follows:

War is politics (von Clausewitz).

Politics is War (Highfield’s inversion of von Clausewitz)

The Personal (everything) is political (Post-Modernism)

Hence…

The personal (everything) is War.

Think about it: social media, the press, sports, business, entertainment, education from kindergarten to graduate school, science, family life, and marriage—everything is political! Everything is war. And in war everything is fair: Pandora’s Box is opened. Legions of demons are unleashed: hatred, lies, slander, theft, murder, rage, betrayal, and spying. No evil is forbidden as long as it helps our side. “Truth” is only an idea that can be plausibly used to justify our cause. “Reality” is a state of affairs (in military terms, “facts on the ground”) to be created by power. “Justice” is a vision of our interests realized. “Peace” is but hidden preparation for war.

Concluding Thought

Genuine peace is possible only if we deny and resist the philosophy that asserts, “the personal (that is, everything) is the political.” The peacemaker denies that every relationship is a power relation. Peacemakers seek to replace win/lose with win/win interactions. They seek unity among differences. They expand rather than contract the space of the personal.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God” (Matt 5:9).

Next Time: What is the difference between ethics and politics, between what is right and what is legal? If “everything is political” there can be no difference between the two. But peace is possible only if the two differ.

Roosters Crow, Politicians Lie, and Journalists Get in a Hurry

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As I often do, I recently received a request from a journalist to comment on current affairs as a theological expert. This journalist asked me to comment from a Christian perspective on President Trump’s legal effort urging the Supreme Court of the United States to declare the Affordable Care Act (“Obama Care”) unconstitutional. She is writing an article about what Christians think about this hot button issue. Here is what I said:

“Dear Kelly [Not her real name],

Your project is interesting from a political/journalism perspective. As a theologian and an expert in Christian theology and history, I rarely find that people understand the course of Christian history or the present shape of Christian faith and practice. In some ways, it is so much more complicated and in others so much simpler than the average journalist thinks. I think I can help you best by clarifying things for you.

Your question needs clarification in several ways. Your investigation seeks to discover “a Christian perspective on this action” (Trump supporting the Supreme Court overturning the ACA). First, there can be a huge difference between the political opinions of self-identified Christians and a viewpoint justified by thoughtful reflection on the original and normative sources that define what Christian faith is and what it demands of those who would be Christian. Consider an analogy: There are differences between what the “person on the street” thinks counts as a constitutionally guaranteed right and what the United States Constitution actually says or what the Supreme Court interprets it to say.

Second: I am a Christian theologian. My job is to reflect on how the original/normative sources define Christianity. Those sources are the life, teaching, deeds, and what happened to Jesus Christ and what his first followers (aka the Apostles) taught about Jesus’s significance. In fulfilling that role, I am not in the least interested in current political issues. Some self-identified Christians and some self-identified Christian clergy and theologians, like to present themselves as experts on public policy, and, like doctors or actors or literature professors who think their expertise in one area makes them experts on complicated public policy issues, they speak confidently about things of which they have little comprehension. They smash together things that ought to be distinguished clearly before they are carefully related.

Christian faith (the original!) must be distinguished from any political program, right, left or center, ancient, modern, or future. Christian faith is about GOD as known by and through Jesus. Anyone who makes God or Christ a means to any other end, has already abandoned the right order of faith. In biblical language, this switch is called idolatry. In my role as a theologian I am equally hard on people of the right or left or center when I sense that they are attempting to use faith for political ends. Politicians can’t help themselves: that is what they do. Roosters crow and politicians lie.

There is another distinction that must be made. Christianity demands that those who want to follow the way of Jesus love God above all other things and love their neighbors as themselves. In other words, Christianity makes heavy ethical/moral demands of its adherents. But we cannot transfer Christian ethics and morality directly to the public sphere. Christianity and the Christian way must be adopted freely and knowingly. But politics is a debate about what public policies can and must be enforced through coercion for the common good. Christianity wishes to persuade, not coerce. Hence there can be no one-to-one translation of Christian morality into political policy. Let me say that again: not possible! Not possible because there is an absolute contradiction between free choice and coercion.

Let me make one more point about this distinction. Christian morality is about what we ought to do in freely embraced obedience to God; it’s about what is right. And doing right is a Christian act only if one does that action because it is right—even if one sees that it is also good and helpful and wise. Politics and public policy are so much messier! It has to be realistic about how weak, irrational, and selfish human beings are. It has to take into account all sorts of competing interests and values. Again, no easy one-to-one transfer!

Christians have different opinions about all sorts of things: tastes of all kinds, financial strategies, child rearing, health practices, and educational values. Christianity does not provide cut and dried answers to our scientific, sociological, psychological, and personal questions. Nor does Christianity give a direct answer to public policy questions like the one you pose. Christianity assumes that believers will use their God-given reason to work out as best they can answers to these questions. For sure, Christianity envisions an ideal community. But that ideal community, I want to remind you again, must be freely chosen by people who love God and their neighbors from their hearts! That is never going to happen in this world. Never!

Hence like everybody else Christians must use reason in their efforts to think out realistic public policies. Aiming for a perfect society in this world is irrational because it would require one of two things (1) transforming all human beings into good angels or (2) massive coercion. Angels we are not, and using coercion to realize the perfect society is a contradiction in terms! Hence reason demands that public policy avoid utopianism for Christian reasons (no angels and no coercion) and enlightened self-interested reasons. Christians think about this problem on the same ground as everyone else. And even if all Christians cherish the same ideals, they often come to different conclusions about how best to embody approximations of those ideals in a secular society of imperfect people.

Specifically on the Affordable Care Act: Christian morality requires love of God and love of neighbor. But no one believes we should try to coerce everyone to love God and their neighbors! Christianity envisions an ideal community–called in the New Testament “the kingdom of God”—where everyone loves God and each other. But how do you translate that ideal into a society where most people do not love God above all things or their neighbors as themselves?

Complicating matters greatly from a rational point of view in the debate over the ACA is our inability in a world where most people do not love God and their neighbors to reconcile competing political/social/moral values: specifically, freedom versus compassion. Freedom and compassion are Christian values. Christianity envisions a society where people freely love each other. Hence compassion and freedom are not ultimately irreconcilable ideals…but not in this world! For Christianity, all good acts must be done freely. How could you love or exercise compassion unfreely? But the ACA, as is all law, is enforced through government coercion. To oversimplify matters and not to accuse anyone of ill will, it’s seems that those who support the ACA tilt things toward the compassion side and those against it favor freedom.

Hence there is no clear cut Christian answer to the ACA question. The truly Christian answer would be the arrival of the kingdom of God! A rational Christian person might aim for the most realistic balance between compassion and freedom possible in a society like ours. And this formula is not simple! And Christians won’t agree on the proper balance.

Let me state my final answer to your question: There is no Christian answer to your question. Notice that I did not say there is no one Christian answer, but there is no Christian answer to this rational question as surely as there is no Christian answer to a math or chemistry problem. Given the competing values (freedom and compassion) in our society of less than perfect people, there no easy rational answer either. Don’t believe anyone who says there is.

I hope this helps.

Sincerely,

Ron Highfield”

Social Justice and The Great-Cause Fallacy

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It seems that everyone who’s anyone these days has attached themselves to some great cause. In introducing yourself to another person you give your name, where you work, and the cause that drives you into the streets. You’re nobody if you’ve not founded a nonprofit organization or haven’t been arrested for chaining yourself to the White House fence or at least have “Activist” printed on your business card. You’ve gotta fight for something—for social justice for the oppressed, for the homeless, for the poor, for the trees, for open spaces, for endangered species, for the climate, for gun rights, for gun control, for children’s rights, parents’ rights, for women’s rights…for somebody’s rights! It’s “Up with…” or “Down with…” or “Out with… or “In with….”

No one presents their cause as evil. No one protests, “Down with justice, up with injustice!” Have you ever seen anyone carrying a sign that says, “Tax the Poor!”? No group occupies the halls of state capitols chanting, “Trash the environment!” No. We adopt causes we think are good, noble, and great; or at least causes we can present as good, noble, and great. Perhaps it should not escape our notice that by adopting a good and just cause I demonstrate to myself and others that I am a good and just person. I present myself as a defender of the defenseless and a champion of the oppressed. I set myself in opposition to the oppressors and polluters, the privileged, the greedy, and the selfish. I manifest my love for the beneficiaries of my zeal for whom I sacrifice an evening a week and a weekend a month. And I am righteously outraged at the evil doers who exploit those I love so much, and I am disgusted by those who turn a blind eye to such injustice. If such a self-presentation were a prayer it would go like this:

“God, I thank thee that I am not like other people—greedy, racist, unpatriotic, or lazy! I am a vegetarian, I recycle, I drive a Prius. I stand for the National Anthem and pay my dues to the NRA” (See Luke 18:9-12).

Am I being judgmental? Then let me bring in a witness. What about the great-cause activists’ claim to love those for whom they fight? The letter we know as 1 John has much to say about loving others and loving God:

“Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

Many great-cause activists resonate with John’s critique of the religious hypocrite who claims to love God but doesn’t love other human beings. But the reverse principle is just as true. If you claim to love people but do not love God, you are a liar. If you claim to love some people but do not love all, you are a liar. If you claim to love some of the time but do not love always, you are a liar. 1 Corinthians 13 lists many great causes one could adopt and noble actions one could perform without loving God or human beings:

13 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing (1 Cor. 13:1-3; NASB).

Identifying with a great and good cause for which one is willing to give up everything is no sure sign that one loves, that one is a good and just person. In his profoundly insightful book, Søren Kierkegaard reminds us of something we should keep in mind always:

Christianity teaches that love is a relationship between: man-God-man,  that is, that God is the middle term…For to love God is to love oneself in truth; to help another human being to love God is to love another man; to be helped by another to love God is to be loved (Kierkegaard, Works of Love, pp. 112-113).

In our relationship with other human beings, with God’s creation, and with ourselves, God is the “middle term,” that is, we must never try to love anything other than God directly. Nothing can be loved in the right way unless it is loved within the act of loving God and because we love God. If you think you are loving people by championing their rights and fighting against their oppressors but are not helping them to love God, you are self-deceived. You do not love them at all. Indeed you may be making them seven times worse off. If you think you can love yourself by asserting your rights and your dignity directly apart from loving God, you are dressing pride in clothing of justice. The greatest cause is learning to love God. The greatest act of love you can do for others is to help them love God, and the most loving thing anyone will ever do for you is to help you love God.

So, you are looking for a great cause? Be sure that your desire to serve a great cause is not secretly a desire to become great by associating with a great cause. We might begin by learning to pray the prayer of tax collector instead of that of the Pharisee:

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ (Luke 18:13).

“Jesus is Lord” or “Caesar is Lord” – A Decision for All Times

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In the previous post, I addressed the subject of truth and power and lamented the ascendency of the post-modern philosophy that asserts “politics is everything.” Today I want to address the subject of politics and religious truth. We should not be surprised that for states, with their kings, emperors, senators, and governors, “politics is everything.” States view religion and every other aspect of social life as subordinate to their ends of survival, wealth, unity, power, and stability. There has never been and their never will be a state that is wholly subordinate to a religion and its end. But there have been many religions whose purpose is to serve the ends of the state. All warrior, ethnic, and state religions either deify the state or make the king the voice of god on earth. Worship of the state gods looks to one end, the welfare of the state as understood by the state. From the state’s perspective, religious truth must be subordinated to political power.

Jesus Christ demanded that people direct their highest loyalty to God and subordinate all other ends to that end. He proclaimed God’s judgment on the powers and authorities that claimed divine status or in any way refused to submit themselves to God. And the “powers” and “rulers of this world” killed him for preaching such political heresy. Some theologians have argued that Jesus was a political revolutionary. This thesis is largely false because Jesus was not attempting to establish a worldly rival to Rome, but it contains an element of truth, that is, that Jesus challenged the religious foundation of any state’s claim to possess divine authority. Hence Christianity was born not as a warrior, ethnic, or state religion, and it is ill suited to serve these purposes. It refuses to serve the interests of any power other than God. It proclaims the same “truth” to any and all, no matter where or under what conditions. A “Christianity” that on principle or merely in fact serves the ends of state is a heresy.

Modern western states differ in many respects from ancient tribal and ethnic states and empires. Because of 2000 years of Christian influence they allow more individual freedom and are more humane in punishment for crimes than ancient nations were. But modern western states, the United States of American included, pursue ends that states have always pursued: survival, wealth, unity, power, and stability. And Christianity can no more allow itself to be subservient to the ends of modern western states that it could to the ends of the Roman Empire. And modern western states are no more at peace with a defiant Christianity than ancient Rome was. Today I see two areas where the interests of the modern western state and the interests of true Christianity are at odds: (1) Christianity’s moral teachings, and (2) Christianity’s claims that Jesus Christ is the only Savior (Acts 4:12) and that he is the “true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).

I have addressed many times on this blog society’s (and increasingly the state’s) demand that the church tone down and compromise its strict moral teachings. The state has concluded that it must tolerate—and even celebrate—behaviors that it once suppressed. Society, so the reasoning goes, has come to a consensus that attempting to suppress these behaviors would cause more social unrest than allowing them to be practiced. Hence when Christians continue to preach against these now accepted behaviors, they are viewed by society and the state as disturbers of the peace and sowers of division. The state wants a compliant religion to cooperate with its goals of unity, peace, and stability. And some denominations have changed their moral teachings so that they fall into line with the state’s ends. But we must ask them a hard question: Are you not as faithless as a church in the Roman Empire would have been had it replaced the Christian confession “Jesus is Lord” with political creed “Caesar is Lord”?

A second way the state wants Christianity to conform to its ends concerns the need to maintain peace among different religious communities. States have always viewed religion as a powerful force that is potentially subversive, and that force has to be dealt with by cooptation, suppression, or neutralization.  Modern western societies find themselves in an increasingly global community in which nation states have become highly interdependent. In relating to states with majority Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, and other religious populations, the historically majority Christian states of the west wish to play down religious differences. Hence they have developed a diplomatic language designed to highlight only common interests and values. Sometimes western diplomatic talk implies or explicitly states that all religions have at their core the same truth, that is, such humanistic values as peace, respect for human dignity, reverence for life, and freedom. By whatever name(s) they call God(s) and however they understand God(s) otherwise, God’s only relevant function is to support politically useful humanistic values. States don’t seek the truth about God or God’s will. They never have. They never will. All rhetoric about the wholly positive nature of the religions of other nations is crafted solely to serve the national interests of the state as it relates to those nations.

But pluralism is not merely a global phenomenon. Modern western states, mainly through immigration policies designed to promote their economic interests or foreign policy goals, have allowed themselves to become religiously diverse within their nations. These nations want these different religious communities within their borders to get along, not for religious reasons but for political ones. And they employ the same rhetoric at home that they use in international relations, that is, that all religions worship the same God and share the same humanistic values. Proselyting and debating adherents of other religions is discouraged and often condemned as hateful. The underlying assumption of calls to conversion and debate is that one religion might be true and others false, one good and the others bad, one a way to salvation and the others not. This assumption is criticized not so much for being false as for its “arrogance.” Christianity, as the traditional and majority religion in the United States and other western countries, has been for many decades under great pressure to withdraw, or at least suppress, its exclusivist claims. And the same denominations that changed their moral teachings to fall in line with the state’s goals also changed their confessional statements so that they renounce proselytism and the exclusive claims about Jesus Christ found in Scripture. In doing this, have they not allowed themselves to be coopted to serve the state rather than Jesus Christ? The church has always been and always will be faced with a choice between two confessions: “Jesus is Lord” or “Caesar is Lord.”

Ron Highfield

Amazon Author Page:

https://www.amazon.com/author/ron.highfield

The One Thing I’ve Never Seen on Facebook

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We see lots of things on Facebook: pictures of families at holiday dinners, vacation selfies, and nature scenes. We see videos of pet adventures, talking heads, and wild animals. We receive birthday and anniversary notices. And we wade through lots of advertisements! But we also encounter lots of heated political, moral, and theological rhetoric. This rhetoric sometimes involves outrage, name calling, labeling, and hyperbole—all in the name of truth, reason, justice, Jesus, the kingdom of God, and all we hold dear. There is no need for me to give examples. You know.

But the one thing I’ve never seen is a reply to a FB post that reads like this:

“Before reading your argument I held strongly to an opposing view. But your cool, careful reasoning and your fair—even generous—representation of those with whom you differ has convinced me that I was mistaken and that the view you espouse is the correct one.”

I wonder…is there any place in our culture where cool, patient reason reigns? Where there is enough humility before the truth to let it speak while we all listen? Where we leave final judgment to God?

How can disciples of Jesus avoid becoming like those we despise? Perhaps the first question we ought to ask is where our spite comes from.

How can we speak with those with whom we disagree? Perhaps we need to ask ourselves first about the character of the force that drives our urge to speak.

What if we thought of persuasion this way: you listen to others until they hit upon the truth?