Sometimes I wonder how Christians can ever justify a political "fight" or stance. It seems contrary to the nature of Christians to be crusading or promoting for any cause of any kind.
I fear, being someone easily excited about politics and debate, that I can begin purusing the win, over pursuing God or something of his greater character.
I think the greatest danger in pursuing the win has to do with the inevitable beating-the other side portion of winning. To win, someone must lose. It is disheartening to see people starting to mark up tallies, deciding who's coming up "better" than the other, or who holds the upper hand. When we focus on beating someone else, for whatever reason, we cease to love them. We cease to see them as children of God, only as another pawn in a cause.
We see people plotting other's demise, Christian people plotting the demise of other Christians (is the hand revolting on the foot, cutting its own disordered body apart). It hurts. I'm not proposing that Jesus was always a pacifist, though, maybe he was--just not in a lie-down-and-get-hurt kind of way.
pray for unity of the body.
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2 comments:
i often think about how the "church" should stand politically. Whether or not we should trust in the political system as a means of social change or just encourage the church to step up and to take matters in its own hands.
i think there is a better term than pacifist or violent for jesus. The idea of nonviolence is often percieved as pacifism, but i tihnk its totally different. Rob Bell has a great podcast about it (calling all peacemakers). MLK Jr. talks a whole lot about it.
i dont know. blah blah blah.
-chris
consider this:
what is the purpose of debate and discussion? i think, ideally, its purpose is to ever move closer and closer to ultimate truth through dialogue.
When we debate, we share ideas and hypotheses about the world around us. When two people make contrary claims about reality, then yes, indeed, one must be wrong.
The beauty of humanity lies in our ability to understand and make sense of the world around us in ways inconceivable in other species. Debate, and the results stemming therefrom, is this awe-inspiring characteristic in action. When all is said and done, it doesn't matter who wins and who loses. What matters is whether or not human knowledge is advanced in the process (be it for everyone as a whole or just 1 person).
The only real tragedy is when the "loser" is so blindly committed to their dogma, they become so attached to it, that recognizing the flaws and drawbacks (or jsut flatout wrongness) of their system is tantamount to destroying their entire personhood. In such a case, human nature compels one to retreat back into the familiar in order to escape the dredded "cognative dissonance".
When that happens, nobody wins. The person that was "right" remains right - talking points brushed asside - and the person that was "wrong" learned nothing. Human knowledge takes an unfortunate backseat and humanity -however small a portion of it it may be- remains stagnate.
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