“…And the Home of the Brave”

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.  2 Timothy 1:7 (NKJV)

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love,  endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3 (NKJV)

On Sunday, my pastor (Don Guthrie) started his sermon will a familiar refrain: “…o’er the land of the free, and the home of the…”  He waited for the congregation to finish it, which we did…albeit a tad timidly.  He went on to bring a profound word from Acts 6-7 about the kind of bravery which is supposed to mark us as followers of Christ.  I was duly convicted.

That evening, my friend Brad Livingston preached a marvelous sermon on how we, as Christ-followers, should approach this election season: be active, be honest, be aware and be imitators of Christ.  Again, conviction set in almost immediately (particularly with the “be active” part, because politics really do bother me on so many levels).

Now, I am pondering what exactly our work of “keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” looks like in the midst of an election…especially a presidential election as divisive as our last few have become.  It does seem to me that we, as the church, have a responsibility to inject a Christ-like temperament into the political conversation.  It seems to me that our political speak should not look and sound exactly like the world’s…shouldn’t we have a higher standard than the world’s media?  Shouldn’t we be doing better with our political speak than CNN or Fox News or any of our favorite secular radio voices?

More to the point, I am troubled when we (the church…the people of God) use fear tactics to make our political points in conversation.  It disturbs me more than a little when we, a people supposedly filled with the power and authority of the almighty God, speak about the coming election with fear and trembling about what will surely happen to our great country if you vote for the wrong candidate…some have referred to it as “fear mongering”.  It happens on both sides of the political line…by Christians.  Christians on the left argue that a vote for that conservative candidate is a vote for big, ugly, dishonest businesses who will surely take over the world and ruin our country and starve all the children and take away all our rights.  Christians on the right argue that a vote for the liberal candidate will virtually guarantee the compete destruction of all moral fabric and fiscal viability of our country and send us right to hell in the process.

Interestingly, our country has voted for each of those sides over the last several elections and, while there have certainly been consequences of those votes, here we are…still standing as the strongest and freest and most envied nation on the planet.  As it turns out, neither Obama nor Bush (either of them) nor Clinton nor any other president before any of them have yet managed to destroy our nation nearly as much as was predicted by the political pundits who opposed them.

In his sermon, Brad quipped (tongue-in-cheek, I am pretty sure) that he is about to vote in the fourth consecutive “most important presidential election of [his] lifetime.”  This comment drew some uncomfortable laughs from the congregation, because all of us have either been guilty of saying that or at least have sat by idly while someone close to us said it.  It is how we attempt to mobilize people to get involved.  We scream at them about how this country will go right down the toilet if they do not get out and vote for the correct candidate.  Frustrated by what we see as apathy on people’s part, we feel the need to “up the stakes” a bit.  In a not-so-funny way, we become that parent you see from time to time in the grocery store literally screaming awful things in his/her child’s face, thinking that will get the desired results from them.  It never does.

I believe when we use fear as a motivator in our political activity, when we so demonize the other candidate and “prophesy” doom and gloom and utter destruction under his/her watch, then don’t we look a little silly when we are all still standing on the other side of it?  For my money, I have yet to see a candidate who, in reality, ended up being quite the “demon” his opposition predicted he would be.  Honesty in our predictions, it seems, should be a higher standard for us as Christ-followers.

One last thought on this subject of political fear-mongering by Christians: what does it say we believe about the resolve and resiliency of the people in our country when we spread this kind of fear?  Are we the home of the brave or not?  I think we can do better.  I think we as Christ-followers can resist the secular models of manipulation in our political dialogue and can adopt an honest, balanced, peaceful, cool-headed, non-anxious presence in the midst of an otherwise chaotic conversation.  I am convinced we can become the church…even in an election.