Let me be honest here: I don't give one whiff about American practical politics. I refuse, on principle, to watch presidential debates. I will not become embroiled in the race to the political and social bottom that has become the American electoral cycle. And, again on principle, I will always vote third party (mostly Green, but that's subject to change).
My allegiance is now and will always be with King Jesus.
So it's hard for me to be drawn into the fray of American politics -- doing, as it always does, this horrible pitting of the teaching of Jesus against practical politics.
Such, of course, was what Reinhold Niebuhr did.
Much as I hate Niebuhr's capitulation to that struggle, I have to admit that he was on to something in his distinction between sentimental and cynical approaches in politics.
According to Niebuhr, the sentimental thinker -- typically associated with Democrats (or the Left) -- assumes that universal values of love and compassion can be translated directly into political decisions. Christ commands us to love our neighbor, so our policies regarding borders and economics should directly reflect that love. This approach is sentimental because it fails to account for the complex interaction of interests and trade-offs in every policy decision.
American political decisions are always ambiguous, whether we want to admit this or not. We simply can't love everyone in the same way at the same time. We don't have the resources to embody that love, for starters. One form of neighbor-love has to be traded off against another. So in spite of our noblest efforts, the commandment to love can only ever be partially reflected in any policy. Even the best political decisions are haunted by a tragic incompleteness.
By contrast, Niebuhr said that the cynical thinker -- typically associated with the Right Republicans -- is one who recognizes the tragic limitations of political decisions, and concludes that the ideal of love is impossible. Questions of love and compassion are set aside, and politics is reduced to amoral calculations of rival interests and agendas. To discuss the problem of economics purely in terms of economic advantages and national self-interest, without any consideration of moral responsibility, is to debase our own national identity.
I avoid the Democratic sentimentality by recognizing that love is never perfectly achievable in this life. Love is a standard of judgment, a perfect criterion against which every law and policy is measured. The best policies are those that approximate more closely to this transcendent standard. There will always be room for reform and improvement. There will never be occasion for self-righteous posturing, as if we had ever perfectly fulfilled our obligation to love in any given situation.
I avoid the Republican cynicism because Jesus' call to love my neighbor is also a call to repentance. That call to love my neighbor is a challenge to cynicism because it will not allow us to reduce our policies to the simple calculus of interests and agendas.
But here's the thing: Neither of those paths will lead to human flourishing. Because both inevitably takes Jesus' call to love neighbor less seriously than Jesus himself takes it.
Whether by temperament we lean to the Left or the Right, our political life will always be wiser to the extent that we hear Jesus' call to love others and find ways to do that in ever-new situations, knowing that the Kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness, and that the work of this love is always in front of us.
My allegiance is now and will always be with King Jesus.
So it's hard for me to be drawn into the fray of American politics -- doing, as it always does, this horrible pitting of the teaching of Jesus against practical politics.
Such, of course, was what Reinhold Niebuhr did.
Much as I hate Niebuhr's capitulation to that struggle, I have to admit that he was on to something in his distinction between sentimental and cynical approaches in politics.
According to Niebuhr, the sentimental thinker -- typically associated with Democrats (or the Left) -- assumes that universal values of love and compassion can be translated directly into political decisions. Christ commands us to love our neighbor, so our policies regarding borders and economics should directly reflect that love. This approach is sentimental because it fails to account for the complex interaction of interests and trade-offs in every policy decision.
American political decisions are always ambiguous, whether we want to admit this or not. We simply can't love everyone in the same way at the same time. We don't have the resources to embody that love, for starters. One form of neighbor-love has to be traded off against another. So in spite of our noblest efforts, the commandment to love can only ever be partially reflected in any policy. Even the best political decisions are haunted by a tragic incompleteness.
By contrast, Niebuhr said that the cynical thinker -- typically associated with the Right Republicans -- is one who recognizes the tragic limitations of political decisions, and concludes that the ideal of love is impossible. Questions of love and compassion are set aside, and politics is reduced to amoral calculations of rival interests and agendas. To discuss the problem of economics purely in terms of economic advantages and national self-interest, without any consideration of moral responsibility, is to debase our own national identity.
I avoid the Democratic sentimentality by recognizing that love is never perfectly achievable in this life. Love is a standard of judgment, a perfect criterion against which every law and policy is measured. The best policies are those that approximate more closely to this transcendent standard. There will always be room for reform and improvement. There will never be occasion for self-righteous posturing, as if we had ever perfectly fulfilled our obligation to love in any given situation.
I avoid the Republican cynicism because Jesus' call to love my neighbor is also a call to repentance. That call to love my neighbor is a challenge to cynicism because it will not allow us to reduce our policies to the simple calculus of interests and agendas.
But here's the thing: Neither of those paths will lead to human flourishing. Because both inevitably takes Jesus' call to love neighbor less seriously than Jesus himself takes it.
Whether by temperament we lean to the Left or the Right, our political life will always be wiser to the extent that we hear Jesus' call to love others and find ways to do that in ever-new situations, knowing that the Kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness, and that the work of this love is always in front of us.