Losing respect for people with whom I used to identify is painful. And I am beginning to despair for the future of rationality and honesty in our nation.
Where does one even begin?
I made the mistake of following a link to EthicsDaily.Com which is the website of the Baptist Center for Ethics. Two or three years ago I visited it on occasion. Most of time agreeing with the articles they published.
Remember when moderate Baptists criticized strongly the Southern Baptist Convention for how often it seemed to confuse Christian faith with conservative politics? for wanting a “wedding” with the Republican Party?
The irony seems completely lost on Robert Parham when he writes:
The Blue-Dog Democrats, many of whom are from the Bible Belt, and Republicans who have claimed for 25 years that GOP stands for God’s Only Party, seldom, if ever, frame health care as a moral imperative.
Read the whole thing here. Brace yourself. It is perhaps the single most offensive article by Robert Parham I have ever read.
Apparently he is fighting leukemia. Baptist deacon comes in and asks to pray for him. Parham replies “I won’t let you pray for me”. Why? Because the deacon is a sanctimonious jerk? Get this:
Then I told the bug-eyed deacon I would let him pray for me-under one condition. He and his church had to pray and to work for social justice related to the looming health care crisis in Tennessee, where some 300,000 people were at risk of finding themselves without health care coverage.
Uninsured Tennesseans deserved the same quality of care that I was receiving, I said, sharing that I was one of the wealthy Americans with good insurance and a community of support. Then, I asked him why he hadn’t written down what I had said on the pad he was holding.
Talk about moral blackmail. “I will not let you pray for me until you and your entire congregation agrees with me on this particular social and political issue. And why are you not writing this down?” Parham casually assumes that his understanding of “justice” is not only correct but the one that others must subscribe to or else he will not let them pray for him. And if they do not then they are “indifferent” to the “biblical imperative: seek justice”.
Not mistaken. Not wrong. Not sincere faithful Christians with different understandings of what “seeking justice” looks like. There are indifferent.
Look. To be honest he is indeed entitled to his opinion even to his convictions. That “seeking justice” in this particular context means helping 300,000 Tennesseans get health care coverage. We can extend that courtesy and generosity to Parham even when he will not extend it to brothers in Christ who came to the hospital to visit him and pray for him.
But therein lies the irony and the hypocrisy.
The Baptist Center for Ethics has pretty much taken the gloves off and declared not only their support for President Obama and “healthcare reform” (as understood by liberals in the Democratic party) but has done so in the name of God. This is what God wants. This is part and parcel of the biblical imperative to seek justice.
Those silly Southern Baptists. Those silly Republicans who claim that GOP stands for “God’s Only Party”. (Really? First time I have heard of that.) How dare they think God is on their side politically.
“No – we are on God’s side politically”. That is the irony. God and politics for me – but not for thee.
And the hypocrisy is to criticize Southern Baptists and Republicans for allegedly saying something similar.
Let me address at least two more articles I had the misfortune to peruse.
The first is “Choosing Sides: In Health Care, Jesus Sides with Poor” by Drew Smith.
Toward the beginning he writes:Many Christians are ignorant to the social justice message of Jesus. Preferring to see Jesus in only spiritual terms, and his message as only about salvation and heaven, we often miss the significance of Jesus as a political figure.
But if we are to call ourselves Christian, we must broaden not only our understanding of Jesus’ message as having social and political ramifications, we must also be open to how that message shapes how we live socially and politically today. Certainly this should influence how Christians should treat the current health care debate.
Read the whole thing here.
Fair enough so far. Although Smith might be careful about (1) assuming that if people disagree with him it is because they are “ignorant” (an all too common assumption people make about those who hold different views) and (2) professing to know just what those social and political ramifications are. I have strong political convictions myself. But (3) I do not push them on my congregation partly because (4) although I think my political convictions are good and reasonable I am not quite prepared to identify them entirely with what the Bible teaches about justice. In other words we can all (okay – mostly) agree that the Bible calls the people of God to seek justice. Even that God has special concern for the poor. But we might exercise a little humility when it comes to articulating exactly how we think that plays out in terms of specific political and social and economic policies in the United States in the year 2009.
I think I am right. I think my views are compatible with the “biblical imperative to seek justice”. But they might not be.
This is where Smith begins to lose it.
Why do many of our leaders side with big insurance and pharmaceutical companies instead of with those who need quality and affordable health care? Why do they listen to the lunatic fringe of the right wing misinformation machine, instead of standing firmly on what is right and just for the vulnerable of our nation?
Yet, we must not place all the blame on these leaders, for many of the citizens of this country, and tragically many who claim to be Christian, are also standing vehemently against any sort of reform.
Well now. Does Smith mean the pharmaceutical companies that have now offered to spend $130 million in support of President Obama and his healthcare reform proposals? Why assume that they “side” with insurance and drug companies out of malice? And Smith accidentally demonstrates he is not interested in serious honest conversation the instant he talks about “listen to… right wing misinformation machine”. As oppose to what? The left wing information hegemony? Why assume that people oppose the current healthcare reform proposals (of President Obama and the Democratic leadership) only because they are evil or are misled? And to say they are against any sort of reform is a lie.
A lie.
Let me say that again.
A lie.
Tell us that Republican proposals for healthcare reform are wrong. Tell us that ordinary citizens have support wrong alternatives for reform. Do not tell us they are against reform. What was that about misinformation sir?
If we read our Bible carefully, we will find that God is always on the side of the poor and vulnerable. If we are to be on God’s side of the issue of health care, then we must side with the poor and vulnerable of this nation. We can and we must speak with greater authority, even if those who stand against health care reform continue to scream. We have the power to change things, if we only will.
Like Jesus, we need to have a sincere consciousness about the plight of people in our country, especially the vulnerable. We have a moral and godly responsibility to care about this issue and especially the people who are greatly affected by this problem. We must, if we claim to follow Jesus, speak up for the vulnerable of our nation; we must be the voice of the voiceless. If we are not, then we cannot claim to follow Jesus.
There is some truth here I think. But once again Smith – while persistently caricaturing and demonizing his opponents – confuses the specific policies that he favors with “God’s side of the issue of health care”. And it is revealing that is precisely how Smith frames the issue. There is indeed a “God’s side of the issue”. And Smith and President Obama and the Democratic leadership are on that side.
And if you disagree – “you cannot claim to follow Jesus”.
I could also tackle “Infusing Health Care Debate with Nazi Imagery” by Rabbi Fred Guttman. But after reading through it a few times I found more irony than hypocrisy. When conservatives employ Nazi language and imagery against opponents – that is a classic mistake. But how quickly we forget (1) how Speaker Nancy Pelosi has done precisely that and (2) how some of the people who employ this language and imagery have been proven to be fakes and plants intended to make opponents of the current healthcare reform proposal(s) look bad.
(For the record – I myself have been the target of such fakery when I was in college. People pretending to be part of my group trying to make us look bad.)
Let us wrap this up with “What’s Really Motivating Angry Town-hall Mobs?” by Jim Evans. This borders on evil and is one of the chief reasons why my respect for many moderate Baptists is evaporating.
Members of Congress trying to hold town hall meetings on health care reform are being shouted down by angry mobs of constituents. Attendees at these events are reportedly carrying weapons. Conspiracy theorists are awash with nonsense about President Obama being a socialist, not a natural-born citizen and intent on dismantling the American way of life.
This is mostly slander. “Reportedly carrying weapons”. Oh really? You mean like the “angry white guy with an assault rifle” that MSNBC showed – never letting us see his hands or face because he was in fact an African-American? Most conservatives and Republicans I know have little patience for “birthers” (those who keep going on about whether the President is really a natural-born citizen).
It gets worse:
Pure, unadulterated paranoia? No, not really. Actually it’s displaced racism. There is a segment of the population that will not accept that we have an African American president. Any notion that seemingly disqualifies him is embraced with the ferocity of a pit bull at a dog fight.
One struggles to disentangle the slander from the sophistry in that paragraph.
So now if you have legitimate concerns about the Obama Administration and its policies including and especially his healthcare reform proposals – you must be a racist.
Yes of course. That must be why I applied to live in Ujamaa my sophomore year and become one of three white people surrounded by about 120 people who also happened to be African-American. That must be why I was one of the few Ujamites who bothered to visit his little brother (who happened to be African-American) regularly – and continued to do so for 4 years after I no longer lived in Ujamaa. That must be why I pastor a congregation in which several congregants are African. That must be why I led a mission trip and worked myself to exhaustion in order to purchase and assemble and distribute 1300+ backpacks with school supplies in one of the poorest areas of the United States that is also predominantly African-American. That must be why I pulled my children out of a predominantly white and affluent private school so they could go to a public middle school in which more than 2/3 of the students are African-American. That must be why my wife left her state job to become a public school teacher and now works diligently at an elementary school in which one occasionally has a white student.
Because we are racists?
Come on Jim Evans. Is that the best you got? Cheap slander? You bore me.
(This is why I have decided no longer to participate in discussions with people who employ such tactics. They do not respect me. In fact they rush to defame me. They have demonstrated repeatedly they are not interested in serious honest discussion of the issues. So why should I waste my time and energy with them? But I will try to pray for them and I do not mean pray that God would change their minds. Let his will be done. What else can we ask?)
What boggles my mind – really leaves me in a pit of despair for the future of sanity and rationality in the United States – is why people like Smith and Evans and Parham and President Obama and Nancy Pelosi and so on and so on and so on cannot do something like this.
“We think you are wrong about healthcare reform. We think this really is the best approach. We have read the bill in all its details. Here are some facts and figures and studies. We are aware of the arguments against this approach. We think those arguments are wrong or mistaken in the following ways. You are not bad people. You are not ignorant. You are not angry mobs. You are not dupes. You are not racists. We understand that dissent is still American and we are happy to listen to respectful calm disagreement. But we think you are wrong. And this is why.”
You know – if supporters of President Obama and proponents of the current healthcare reform proposals took that approach…
I think they would win.
And yes you can quote me on that. But will you take my advice?
Addendum: My friend Chris Brady kindly directs our attention to an excellent preamble from Sojourners:
Good health is the will of God for each and every one of God’s children. Death, disease, and pain did not exist in the garden of Eden, and Revelation tells of a “new heaven and new earth,” where once again they will not exist.
In the fallen world in which we live, injury and sickness are a fact of life; physical death on this earth will never be overcome. But scripture paints a clear picture that health was God’s intent from the beginning and will be the goal once again in the end. This means that on a personal, national, and global level the physical well-being of all God’s children is close to God’s heart — and should be close to ours as well.
There is no religious mandate for a specific, God-ordained system of health care or insurance. No amount of biblical exegesis will lead you to a policy conclusion about health care savings accounts, personal versus employer-provided insurance, single-payer public systems, or private insurance plans. Luke might have been a physician, but he never commented on whether or not computerizing medical records should be a national priority.
Read the whole resource page here.
Second addendum: Jonah Golberg at National Review Online welcomes – in a way – how the left is beginning to invoke God and religion in defense of their initiatives.
President Obama briefly switched from wonkish frippery about bending cost curves to speaking of faith. Reaching out to progressive faith leaders in two massive conference calls, Obama insisted that God was on his side. Expanding health care fulfills a “core moral and ethical obligation that we look out for one another . . . that I am my brother’s keeper, my sister’s keeper.”
This would be an easy opportunity to call attention, once again, to the double standards applied to Obama. When Pres. George W. Bush invoked God as his inspiration, many liberals saw our theocrat-in-chief taking a sledgehammer to the wall between church and state. When Obama does likewise, it’s inspiring, spiritual leadership.
But, frankly, I find it refreshing.
Of all the silly arguments that have been passed off as deeply profound in American politics, the notion that politicians can’t “impose” their personal morality on others tops the list.
Read the whole thing at National Review.
