I take it as a given that our standard right/left political dichotomy does not represent a Trinitarian approach to politics at all. I have argued this for quite a number of years now, with no appreciable sign that anything is getting through to anybody who is actually running the show. Nevertheless, let us keep on keeping on, as we used to say.
But the mistakes made on the right and on the left are very different, and so as we reject the blandishments offered by both we have to be careful how we do it. Note that the question is not whether we reject what they are selling, but what we are rejecting and why.
The rights of the individual are not the touchstone of morality. God’s law is the foundation of righteousness, and not a set of abstractions bequeathed to us by the Enlightenment. Nevertheless, God’s law does protect the individual, explicitly, repeatedly, and clearly. The basics of this law can be communicated easily in the nursery, as children are taught to share, to respect the decisions of others, and so on, and these basics are the easiest part of the law for anyone to see. Even nonbelievers can see what C.S. Lewis called the Tao.
Now this next distinction is crucial. The fact that secular conservatives can see it and so express their support for things like pro-life legislation or marriage protection laws does not mean that they are capable of helping us out when it comes to the more complex, systemic and corporate issues we must face. The fact that they can read the big E on God’s eyechart for mankind does not mean that they can see the lowest line. As Trinitarian Christian we must affirm that our ethical responsibilities are both individual and corporate, which means that however much we might agree with certain Republican talking points in a campaign (on issues like abortion and sodomy), we also must acknowledge that such appeals are inadequate — they do not fill out our vision for Christendom at all. They are fine as far as they go, but they don’t go very far.
In the case of liberals, it is completely different. They celebrate sodomy, and say that a woman has the right to chop her baby up in little pieces. They cannot read the big E and insist that being asked even to try reading it is an insult to their core values. Now, this being the case, I am not even going to ask them to read the lowest line. My reason for this is that they are clearly blind.
Think of basic issues that are biblically easy — abortion and sodomy heading the list — as a qualifying round. Those who fail at this point don’t get to move on to the semi-finals. Those who do get to move on, who clear that first round, have not thereby demonstrated that they are going to win anything later on. Liberals want to lose their races to men, and then move on to prove their prowess in running against horses.
A parable, written in big block letters. Let us say that I have a next door neighbor who routinely kicks puppies and brags about it on his web site. He gets his jollies that way, and whenever the police get called, he just shows them his grant money application for the National Endowment for the Arts. The project turns out to be his senior thesis, funded by the feds. So we all know that he is despicable, and we can’t do anything about it. Now let us say that he — also on his web site — starts demanding that we all (to make up something ludicrous) outlaw poverty, and that we eliminate poverty by having the government cut everybody in the world a check for a million bucks. He demands that we do this by next week because, in his blinkered world, justice demands it. Now there are two legitimate ways to reject his proposal.
One is for someone to write a careful paper, outlining what the actual effects of cutting these checks would be. Such a paper would no doubt be learned and wise, and I would enjoy myself greatly in reading it. But the other way to dismiss this guy is by simply pointing out that he kicks puppies for fun and hasn’t the foggiest notion of what justice is. I don’t go see his team playing in the finals because they got spanked, basketball-metaphor-wise, 116 to 12, in the first round. They are not even in the game.
With liberals, we are rejecting their entire vision of the world — they are building a perverse house, a house of mirrors. With conservatives, we are rejecting their attempts to build a house without a foundation, a house, as Jesus taught us, that will not withstand any kind of a storm.