Some Thoughts on Ideology

This post was originally published on a now defunct Blog last August. I woudn't want to lose it.

There are those who confuse ideology with principles, so let me illustrate the difference. Once there lived a prophet who made the following observation. “The things of God are of deep import; and time, and experience, and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out.” He went on to describe a mind stretching as high as the utmost heaven as well as contemplating the darkest abyss—the area he called “the broad expanse of eternity.” This is also how we obtain principles. One by one, we gather them into our souls as we travel through time and gain our experience.

Ideology, on the other hand, is bought with a single, seemingly inexpensive purchase. We buy a party line. We become a Republican or a Democrat. We accept a manifesto or a political platform. Thoughtful people—especially devout and thoughtful people—see that at this point a bargain is being struck with the devil. All ideology results from a compromise that God’s children make with evil. The devil permits us some good with which to comfort and cloak ourselves so long as we agree to accept and promote some evil that he intends. No better illustration of this bargain can be found than in the respective ideologies of Conservatism and Liberalism—which is to say the déjà vu of the Republican and Democratic platforms.

I recently read an essay by Wendell Berry and found there a convincing description of the evils these apparently combative ideologies promote.

"The comedy begins when [conservatism and liberalism] confront each other. Conservatism strongly supports “family values” and abominates lust. But it does not disassociate itself from the profits accruing from the exercise of lust (and, in fact, of the other six deadly sins), which it encourages in its advertisements. The “conservatives” of our day understand pride, lust, envy, anger, covetousness, gluttony and sloth as virtues when they lead to profit or political power. Only as unprofitable or unauthorized personal indulgences do they rank as sins, imperiling salvation of the soul, family values, and national security.

Liberalism, on the contrary, understands sin as a private matter. It strongly supports “protecting the environment” which is that part of the world that surrounds, at a safe distance, the privately-owned body. “The environment” does not include the economic landscapes of agriculture and forestry or their human communities, and it does not include the privately-owned bodies of other people…The left believes that and individual’s body is a property belonging to that individual absolutely: the owners of bodies may, by right, use them as they please, as if there was no God, no legitimate government, no community, no neighbors, no posterity. This supposed right is manifested in the democratizing of “sexual liberation”; in the popular assumption that marriage has been “privatized” and so made subordinate to the wishes of individuals; in the proposition that the individual is “autonomous”; in the legitimation of abortion as birth control—in the denial, that is to say, that the community, the family, one’s spouse, or even one’s own soul might exercise a legitimate proprietary interest in the use one makes of one’s body. And this too is tragic, for it sets us “free” from responsibility and thus from the possibility of meaning." (From Rugged Individualism in Wendell Berry’s The Way of Ignorance, Counterpoint, 2005)

Principled men and women become extremely uncomfortable when confronted with the “either/or” dilemma of conflicting ideologies. Spiritually on edge, they long for but cannot find a more principled way to participate in the political life of the community. In the end, they find themselves surfing back and forth through the decades, riding the conflicting waves, trying to measure threats and do the least amount of harm. But not so the ideologues, who would ride their adopted tsunami well beyond the shorelines and into the homes of their community, making society a mere backwash to the interests of some political party.

I once heard Phillip Roth remark that you cannot see through an ideology because your ideology sees for you; and it is true that a kind of blindness comes upon Israel with the introduction of parties and ideologies. Many Christians are being enticed from principle into ideology as they find their faith being threatened by the insecurities of life. All of European history might be summarized in that sentence. Now, as we once again watch our national political drama take shape, it seems that we too are succumbing to the pull of ideology. We surrender to the forces of ideology when no good can be found in a political opponent and no criticism can be tolerated of our own standard-bearer. In this way, governments descend slowly into various kinds of tribalisms. Mass murder becomes a real possibility because ideology spawns tribalism and tribalism, genocide.

I maintain hope when I remember R. S. Thomas’s poem, A Line from St. David’s, wherein it is written, “…the way back / is not so far as the way forward.” To travel further along the road of ideology is to lose those precious principles with which the American people were once endowed—principles that were obtained by those careful, ponderous and solemn thoughts that constituted our national experience. Wisdom insists that we do not travel so very far away that the way back no longer remains close at hand.

The Jubilee Year of American Politics

This post was originally posted in September on a now defunct Blog. I felt it worth saving.


Today I want to remember a meeting held on the evening of December 5, 1955 at the Holt Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. This meeting marks the eve of the modern Civil Rights Movement in America, although the overflowing congregation had no way of knowing that. The cause of this meeting was the arrest of a member of their church—Rosa Parks—for the crime of failing to relinquish her seat on the bus to a white man, “which was a much resented customary practice at the time,” as Ms. Parks later wrote. That morning, she had been found guilty of violating the segregation laws of her state.

The purpose of this meeting was to form the Montgomery Improvement Association which would be responsible for organizing their community’s protest of Rasa Parks’ humiliating arrest and subsequent conviction. These were deemed to be a clear violation of her civil rights as described and guaranteed in America’s founding documents. The community had previously decided upon a boycott of the Montgomery bus system and the Reverend Martin Luther King was elected to serve as president of the association.

That evening he delivered an eloquent call-to-arms that deserves to be read by every patriotic American, but my purpose here is to focus upon his definition of justice and to argue for its continual application in our political process. I believe this application to be the particular civic duty of all participating Christians. Whenever we speak of patriotism, his definition of justice should not be far from our thoughts and reflections.

These are the relevant sentences spoken that evening by Dr. King. They should not be overlooked.

“Let us be Christian in all our actions; but I want to tell you this evening that it is not enough for us to talk about love—love that is one of the pivotal points of the Christian faith. There is another side called justice, and justice is really love in calculation. Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.”

Too often we think of justice as mere punishment for wrong doing; something that is opposed to mercy. But Martin Luther King had a more correct and comprehensive view of this matter: justice and mercy are both arms of God’s love. I think this definition offers a particular help to Latter-day Saints as they contemplate the relationship between love and mercy as it is describe in the Book of Mormon.

We find in that book two passages which, on the surface, seem to contradict one another. The first is found in Alma 42:25 wherein this question is asked and answered:

Do you suppose that mercy can rob justice? No, not one bit. If so, God would cease to be God.

Earlier, however, a seemingly different claim is made. In Alma 34:15. There we are taught that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ overpowers justice with mercy. For years, I owned the notion that justice stood aside in awe of such love. This was how a dear friend of mine reconciled those two passages. I see now that that was a partial truth at best. It is better not to separate Mercy and Justice into conflicting entities. Rather, we should say that mercy, while it cannot rob justice any more that we can rob our selves, can nevertheless overpower justice in the same way that we have been overpowered by our own emotions. Love, for instance. How many of us have not been overpowered—smitten, if you like—by love? Justice and mercy, then, are two of the attributes of God and, as the Gospel proclaims, God is love.


By Dr. King’s definition, in harmony with the Book of Mormon, justice is love in correction and mercy is love in preservation. Simply put, justice corrects while mercy saves. This concept, I believe, is of critical importance when Christians consider candidates for political office. It is critical because—as the prophets have shown us—a nation is held accountable for justice in its own society. Our nation will either be corrected or preserved depending on how we as Americans handle the nagging questions of justice and mercy that are still being asked of us.


Here are some of the nagging questions that we face:

Economic Equality. In a wonderfully ignored passage of scripture, the Lord says that it is not given that one man should possess too much above another and that, because of this, the world lies in sin (see Doctrine and Covenants 49:20). This seems to be a nice summation of Old Testament prophetic teaching. In our day, the middle class is being erased and the inequality between the rich and poor is beginning to threaten the fabric of our democratic society.
War. Here I am listing war as an issue of social equality rather than a moral issue in its own right. The question is, shouldn’t the generation that decides to make war pay for it? America is now engaged a war being fought on two fronts, but we are not paying for it. Instead, we are borrowing money from other nations—China, for example—and shouldering our children and grandchildren with a debt that will exceed 1.5 trillion dollars. We went into this war being told by the Administration that the war would pay for itself through oil production; but that hasn’t and was never going to happened. We should also ask if it is right to wage a massive war with an all volunteer army that is filled. The burden of this war is being borne unfairly and this is a concern America must address in this election.

Health Care. It seems clear that Jewish and Christian scripture hold society accountable for the treatment of the sick and afflicted among us. It is simply unjust to insist that all Americans pay their own way to save their own lives while, at the same time, we allow our economy to sweep its middle class into poverty. Is affordable health care a right or a privilege that belongs to fewer and fewer Americans as corporations surrender their health insurance policies to the demands of the new global economy?

Global Warming and Environmental Degradation. It may come as a surprise to most Latter-day Saints to learn that we do not in fact believe in private property, but that is the case. We believe in stewardship and one cannot be an owner and a steward of the same thing at the same time. We hold the earth in trust. It is not ours to do with as we please. And yet, that is what we have done and as a result our planet is in imminent danger of an ecological catastrophe unrecorded in human history. As stewards who hold the land in trust, we have not only been burying our talent but also toxic and radioactive waste. We have been poisoning the earth’s atmosphere for generations and pretending that when the landowner returns he will save us. But that’s not the way the parable goes.

Corporate Power. There was something fundamentally unsound about the concept of incorporation in the beginning; I would almost say antichrist. The sole reason for incorporation is the avoidance of personal responsibility and accountability. Men and women with an idea to make money want to get rich, but should things go wrong, they do not want to lose the money they have garnered. And so they come together and incorporate themselves; in other words, they create under law a fictitious individual who does not exist in reality. They then siphon off corporate profits annually into their individual bank accounts. When children start dying from cancer downwind; when women become infertile because of the side effects of their product; or when a bridge collapses due to faulty materials that were used in its construction, not one of these individuals can be held accountable in a court of law—only the comparatively threadbare corporation. Now, in our lifetimes, corporations have become fantastically global, owing no allegiance to the core principles of anything so old fashioned as a nation state, to say nothing of a community or a neighborhood. The only imperative that is left for many of them is to win and to increase the wealth of their investors. The power of the individual ballot becomes anemic as corporations continue to inject the steroids they demand from our elected officials—the tax breaks and laws of special circumstance.

Over the next few weeks, I hope to bring the scriptures together in an order that will address these concerns—God willing. But I end today’s column grateful for C. S. Lewis, who pointed out to me in his slim but wonderful book, Reflections on the Psalms, that there are those who are anxious for justice in this world; not only those who cower in its face. He points out that the typically Christian image of judgement puts us in the dock as defendant, as is demonstrated in the parable of the sheep and goats. There is another image, however, typically Jewish but also sanctioned by our Lord. Here we are seen not in a criminal case as before, but in a civil trial. Here we are the plaintive, as in the parable of the Unjust Judge. Here the difficulty faced by a widow is not to avoid the courtroom but to get into it. On the Day of Judgment, Lewis assures us, “hundreds and thousands of people who have been stripped of all they possess and who have right entirely on their side will at last be heard.” Our duty as Christian voters is to try to see to it that they will not have to wait that long.

We must try, as Dr. King and the widow in this parable tried, to ensure a recalculation of God’s love during the jubilee year of American political life; a redistribution of God’s blessings over which many claim ownership, when in truth we are merely stewards. In a democracy, it becomes our responsibility to thus heed the call of the prophet Micah, to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God.

Breaking Down the Walls of Partition

This post was originally published on a now defunct Blog last August. It's one I thought worth saving.)

A few weeks ago, I listened in horror as an older sister made an aside during her talk in Sacrament meeting. She had been speaking about an ancestor who had not joined the Church. She said that this man, who lived in Columbus, Ohio, was a very shrewd business man. She therefore believed that he, “must have had some Jew blood in him.” She repeated this phrase twice more in connection with the management of his business affairs and being shrewd with a dollar.

Now, I admit that I’m given to over reaction. The classic anti-Semetic pamphlet “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” was not distributed as we left the chapel and I saw no men in brown shirts. But I was deeply saddened to see that this racial stereotype still exists in my church and that no one else seemed to be affected by it or to have glimpsed its significance. This bit of anti-Semiticism has been around for a long time. You come across it, for example, in the Shakespearean character of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.” In the 1930s and 1940s, this and other similar stereotypes greased the wheels of Adolf Hitler’s war machine and were to some degree responsible for the extermination of ten million Jews and other ”racially inferior” human beings. I don’t for a moment, of course, believe that this sister, who is old enough to have been an adult when these things occurred, aligns herself with the holocaust. At least I hope not, but the fact remains that she was nonetheless comfortable with this bit of Nazi propaganda.

I said I listened with horror, but I was not surprised. In the last ten years, I have witnessed more blatant racism than I ever did in the 48 years that preceded it. In the late 1990s, I watched as a black man was denied a computer technology job that he was fully qualified for, solely because of the color of his skin. The man who denied him the job, a good man in most ways, a member of my church, washed the sin from his own hands, of course. He simply said to me, “Our customers would never accept him.” Quite recently, within a one week period, I heard a church members refer to rock and roll as jungle bunny music, a supervisor explain an Hispanic employee’s Monday morning absence as a hangover (both men are active church members) and a mid-management church leader discuss with the president of my company the dangerous implications of “a Canaanite in the White House.” (Both of these men were confused and mildy offended when I laughed out loud and tried to explain to them that Barack Obama’s opponent is actually the one whose name means “a son of Cain.”)

No one, I suspect, would like me to lengthen this list. All of this, of course, contradicts biblical Christian teaching. Be patient as I ask you to consider two passages taken from the Apostle Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Ephesians.

Here is the first. “Ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26, 28).” Racial, class and gender distinctions lose their significance in Christianity. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ established equity. And should any future Christian seek to establish some sort of “separate-but-equal” doctrine, Paul tried to make sure they had no room to do so. Carefully ponder this description of Jesus’ atonement.

“Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off were made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity…to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace (Ephesians 2:13-15).”

The spiritual significance of the atonement consists not only in making us one with God, but also making us one with each other. That the veil separating us from God in the temple was ripped open is an historical fact. Unfortunately, that every generation since that Good Friday has tried to repair those walls of partition between us, walls that Christ died to break down, is also an historical fact. How sad that the people of God, who rejoice in their free access to God through the temple veil, should be so stubbornly persistent in erecting walls and partitions between themselves and others.

Thus, when Barack Obama spoke in Berlin about tearing down walls, he was not peddling fluff instead of substance, as some have said. He was renewing the age old, clarion call of Christianity which, I would think, devout Christians in all churches would respect. But what are we given instead from the pretentious ideologues that form part of the Christian right? We see them pointing fingers of scorn; displaying attitudes of mocking that erupt in childish You-Tube videos like “Obamessiah.” Too many Christians, captured by ideology, have forgotten the Christian significance of tearing down those walls that divide us. If prejudice and discrimination fester in our churches, how can they not affect our political discourse as a nation? Logically, Senator Obama can lose this election and America can rise above intolerance and bigotry. Just as logically, Barack Obama cannot win if we do not. However we chose to vote, let us first seriously examine and then re-examine ourselves as to where we really are regarding this fundamental question.

Considering Chapters: Notes on Eduardo Galeano's "Open Veins of Latin America"

A few months ago on my son's Facebook page, a thread of conversation had us discussing a book that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela had rather publicly presented to President Obama. Most commentators seemed to think the presentation was an arrogant act. Certainly it was given in the middle of Chavez's bombastic three day tour-de-force of rhetoric directed against capitalist imperialism. This, anyway, is how I remember Tim's correspondents viewing it.

The book, "Open Veins of Latin America," was written by Uruguayan journalist and author, Eduardo Galeano. It soon became clear that, despite the heat and passion of our comments, all of us were more or less ignorant of the book. My son suggested that we should all read it. The book suddenly became the number 2 best seller on Amazon.Com, and so only after a long delay I have at last begun to turn and mark its pages.

I ordered the book because, Chavez's rhetoric not withstanding, I think that he gave the book to President Obama because he thought that here, at last, was a President who just might read it. Clearly, this is a book that must be read if we wish to understand why it is that so many Latin Americans look at the United States with a mixture of mistrust and aversion. Galeano is a powerful advocate whose advocacy is more vigorous because of his immense poetic skill, a talent that, in this case, survives and flourishes in translation.

I propose to share my notes and reflections as I read each chapter of the book, beginning today with the introduction. I would ask my Facebook friends, if they feel so disposed, to comment either on my Facebook page or on this Blog entry itself. I will try to incorporate your comments into my notes.

Introduction

"This book," the author writes, "which seeks to chronicle our despoliation and at the same time explain how the current mechanisms of plunder operate, will present in close proximity the caravelled conquistadors and the jet-propelled technocrats; Hernan Cortes and the Marines; the agents of the Spanish Crown and the International Monetary Fund missions; the dividends from slave trade and the profits of General Motors." He makes his creed and mission statement clear. Galeano believes that, while epochs may have changed, the greed of economic exploitation remains as potent as ever south of the border.

"We are no longer in the era of marvels when fact surpassed fable and imagination was shamed by the trophies of conquest--the lodes of gold, the mountains of silver. But our region still works as a menial. It continues to exist at the service of others' needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them."

He closes this argument with an aside that is awful to contemplate. "The taxes collected by the buyers are much higher than the prices received by the sellers." Imagine that for a moment! The taxes collected are more than the prices received--not higher than the profits received, but higher than the prices! A little later on, he sustains this argument with comparative statistics that almost makes this reader fear the rest of the book.

He moves on to write two or three damning paragraphs reflecting upon our government's role and motives in promoting birth control in Latin America. He underscores and expands his argument by including Rockefeller and Ford Foundation's corporate sponsorship of militant birth control programs--all based, he asserts, upon the thinking of Lyndon Johnson's plain statement: "Let us act on the fact that less than $5 invested in population control is worth $100 invested in economic growth."

His conclusion? "Now that the Alliance for Progress is dead and buried the Imperium proposes, more in panic than in generosity, to solve Latin America's problems by eliminating Latin Americans; Washington has reason to suspect that the poor peoples don't prefer to be poor. But it is impossible to desire the end without desiring the means. Those who deny liberation to Latin America also deny our only possible rebirth, and incidentally absolve the existing structures of blame. Our youth multiplies, rises, listens: what does the voice of the system offer? The system speaks a surrealist language. In lands that are empty it proposes to avoid births; in countries where capital is plentiful but wasted it suggests that capital is lacking; it describes as "aid" the deforming orthopedics of loans and the draining of wealth that results from foreign investment; it calls upon big landowners to carry out agrarian reforms and upon the oligarchy to practice social justice."

He then demands his readers answer this questions: "Is everything forbidden us except to fold our arms? Poverty is not written in the stars [and] underdevelopment is not one of God's mysterious designs." It is that last remark that justifies this book's consideration on a Blog dedicated to considering matters the intersect God and Caesar. Our rush to judgment concerning Chavez's gift to Obama may reveal our deep desire to ignore its symbolism. In truth, our rush to judgment may have a symbolism and significance of its own--a failure to heed the cry of the poor as well as the cry of Isaiah.

No matter how long or loud or often you pray,

I'll not be listening.

And do you know why? Because you've been tearing

people to pieces, and your hands are bloody.

Go home and wash up.

Clean up your act.

Sweep your lives clean of evil doings

so I don't have to look at them any longer.

Say no wrong.

Learn to do good.

Work for justice.

Help the down-and-out.

Stand up for the homeless.

Go to bat for the defenseless.

~Isaiah 1: 15-17 The Message Bible

Perhaps in reading this book, we might begin in earnest to listen to the cry of the poor.