Conservatism Lives!

I believe that the American value system on which our country was founded is superior to that of every other nation in the world. That isn’t a very popular thing to say these days. Many of my own friends cringe at the thought of that statement. They are quick to point out our national sins and mistakes. I don’t discount those sins. They are real. Some of my friends might even call a statement like that arrogant. Some might ask what gives me the right to make that claim. Simple. I believe in absolute truth. I believe that there are certain “facts” or “truths” that exist as reality whether you believe them or not. They exist whether people who do believe in them make mistakes or not.

I recently started re-reading an old, but classic book by C.S. Lewis called The Screwtape Letters. For those of you not familiar, it is a series of letters written by a higher level demon named Screwtape to a lower level demon named Wormwood instructing him on how best to “manage” the humans to which he is “assigned” in order to keep them away from God. The first, and possibly most important lesson Screwtape attempts to impart to his trainee is that the single most effective thing they can do is to skew the humans’ idea of, or even better, their very belief in the existence of actual truth.

Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines primarily as ‘true’ or ‘false’, but as ‘academic’ or ‘practical’, ‘outworn’ or ‘contemporary’, ‘conventional’ or ‘ruthless’. Don’t waste time trying to make him think that [your philosophy] is true! Make him think it is strong, or stark, or courageous-that it is the philosophy of the future.

Believe it or not, that book was published in 1942. Perhaps the world hasn’t changed as much as we think it has. Lewis was confronting the same moral battle that rages today about what is and is not true, or for that matter if truth even exists. Interestingly, our founding fathers chose to draft our Declaration of Independence with the words:

“We hold these truths to be self evident…”

They recognized the existence of absolute truth:

“…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

They structured our government around those Rights as best they could:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

They chose to build our nation on the foundation of those truths even if we failed to live up to those standards before the ink was even dry (that all men are created equal, for example) or even still struggle to do so today. Have we made mistakes? Of course we have. Have we failed to live up to our own moral underpinnings? Absolutely. But that doesn’t change the simple truth, that those underpinnings are morally superior to any other in the world.

As a nation, we value life. Even when we go to war, we go to great pains to reduce the number of innocent or non-combatant lives that are lost in the process. All the while our enemies make a point of targeting civilians. We value liberty. Individual freedom is a cornerstone of our society while in much of the rest of the world, people know only the freedoms granted to them by tyrannical dictators or brutal governmental regimes. We are the land of opportunity. Our foundation upon truth, makes our value system superior. We are as Ronald Reagan said, “a shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere”.

I saw Billy Mays as a downloadable Mii for the Wii yesterday. It really struck me as an odd thing. Here stood a tiny cartoon caricature of a man who has become famous for nothing more than selling things on TV. Things. Plural. If its “new”, “revolutionary”, or “not available in stores”, there’s a pretty good chance Billy Mays is pushing it in an infomercial. In a sense, Billy Mays is our modern day version of the snake oil salesman. The thing is, no one seems to mind. We’re used to it. We have become accustomed to being “sold”. We assume that most people we encounter have some sort of hidden agenda. Sarcasm is a standard method of communication. Consequently, sincerity is in short supply these days.

Like any resource, scarcity increases demand and therefore value. Politics is certainly no exception. One thing Obama definitely had going for him during the campaign and even since, is that he comes across as a man of deep sincerity. That’s appealing. Plain and simple. The problem is that the seduction of sincerity obscures the honest evaluation of the message.

To put it simply, sincerity is not an adequate evaluation of a man’s ideas or ideals. Hitler was sincere. Mao was sincere. Even Osama Bin laden is sincere. Unfortunately, in our sincerity starved society, sincerity seems to be enough to convince most people that its presence alone grants merit. That is a foolish, and dangerous place to find ourselves. 

Maybe its the fact that I’ve crossed firmly into my thirties now and have developed a sincere distaste for the fundamentalism of my childhood, or perhaps its just the friends I’ve been keeping the last few years, but as a conservative Christian I find myself in an odd place politically these days. You see, there has been a groundswell of liberalism inside the confines of Christianity. As a matter of fact, I would say that Christians probably represent the largest “growth demographic” for liberal ideology in recent years. Of course First Baptist this and the Wesleyan Church of that by and large are standing firm in their fundamentalism and condemnation of all those (including and perhaps most particularly, other Christians) who do not agree on their 121 points of theology and corresponding list of 363 do’s and don’t for getting into Heaven. But those aren’t the people that I’m talking about. I’m talking about the rank and file majority attending Faith Church this and Community Church that, and even more so, I’m talking about those people’s kids.

These are the people who are struggling to understand why their parents and the “traditional” church believed in the moral superiority of American ideals. These are the people who are asking why the “traditional” church can’t just let people live their lives and marry whomever they want regardless of gender. These are the people who perhaps most loudly are asking how the “traditional” church can scorn an impoverished woman for wondering how she will care for her baby when its born, but refuse to reach out and provide a helping hand. These are the people who voted in droves for Barack Obama. These are the people who rail against the “evils’ of the very companies that provide them with work and health insurance. These are the people who are pushing beyond stewardship to form an idol out of the Earth itself. These are the people who are in the process of reorienting the most basic tenants of what represents the collective worldview of the “church”. And to be honest, these are the people that frighten me.

They don’t frighten me because they represent “change”, or because I fear the loss of power or slipping into some sort of minority. Quite simply, they frighten me because they seem to be poorly versed in history, uneducated economically, content to follow popular whims, and consequently pursuing a course based mainly on temporal and emotional reactionism.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Some of the questions they ask are good ones, excellent ones even. I would even say that they have done a fantastic job of identifying where recent and even historical “Christian conservatives” have failed. Do we not, as believers, have a responsibility to “give”, and to “help” the “less fortunate”? Yes. Absolutely we do and we must. But I would ask, who are “we”, exactly in that context as it related to believers? One of the organizations leading this movement is the “Matthew 25 network” which proudly quotes Matthew 25:40 on its homepage:

“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

I believe this is a gross misrepresentation of Scripture and robs the believer of both the responsibility and the joy of caring for those around them. I mean seriously, the verse says whatever you did. It doesn’t say “whatever politician or Presidential candidate you voted for who promised to provide the most social programs”. Yet, that is exactly how the Christian left has made this verse to fit into their agenda. Certainly Christ also said “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, but the left acts as though that’s the abridged version and that he went on to say “so that he may fulfill the commandments I gave you on your behalf.” Its utterly ridiculous, but that seems to matter little.