The Raven Foundation

 

 

"Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, 'Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.' But Jesus said to him, 'Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?'”

-Luke 12:13-14

 

I have great sympathy for this “someone in the crowd.” I make Jesus into my judge and arbitrator all the time – especially when it comes to justice issues. And the funny thing about those justice issues is that Jesus always, I mean always, agrees with me.

 

Take same-sex marriage, for example. I’ve written about my theological defense of same-sex marriage – and I know Jesus agrees with me, because Jesus and I are tight.

 

So, you’d think I’d be ecstatic over President Obama’s support of same-sex unions, but, I’m not. It feels cheap. It’s not just the criticism that Obama’s position over the years looks more like political waffling than thoughtful evolution. It feels cheap because it’s about power.

 

I’m all about social justice, including marriage equality. If same sex couples want to get married, I say go ahead. It’s not going to threaten my marriage, or any heterosexual marriage. But here’s my problem: The more passionately I feel about social justice issues, the more I dismiss another point of view. And soon a strange thing happens in our culture. Once we dismiss another’s point of view, they dismiss our point of view. Soon, our culture is trapped in a contagious cycle of dismissing other viewpoints, which soon leads to dismissing other people entirely. When we fall into this cycle, it’s no longer about the political issue, it’s about political power. And we seek the highest authority to make such claims to political power, which for liberal and conservative Christians alike, is Jesus.

 

Because, you know, Jesus and I are tight like that.

 

Historically, we’ve been very good at using Jesus to fight our political battles. But then Jesus comes and says stuff like, “Who set me to be judge or arbitrator over you?” Well, apparently, we did. Just like that “Someone in the crowd”, we resort to Jesus when we fall into political power struggles.

 

“Jesus never said anything about homosexuality.”

“Jesus was against homosexuality because he referred to marriage as being between a man and a woman.”

 

I want us to stop the Jesus talk. All this Jesus talk from the left and the right is about political power. And that’s the ugly, nasty rub of all this. It looks as though we want different things. But in reality, the left and the right desire the same thing: political power over and against the other. And then we Christians drag Jesus into this mess we created. When we turn Jesus into a political power figure, we turn the Prince of Peace into a weapon of political warfare as we beat our opponent over the head with our Jesus Stick. And then they beat us over the head with their Jesus Stick.

 

And then someone hears Jesus off in the distance saying,

 

Who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?

 

Now, do I think the Spirit of Jesus is guiding our culture into affirming same sex marriage? Yes. I do. And I believe that same Spirit is concerned with politics – with the way we structure our lives together. But when I affirm a position so fervently that I dismiss another person because of a conflicting point of view, I’m no longer guided by the reconciling Spirit of Jesus, but by a spirit of exclusion.

 

Good people across our nation are trying to find answers to the following questions: Was Trayvon Martin’s death a racially motivated murder or something else, an act of self-defense or a tragic accident? Is George Zimmerman a racist or something else, a decent man or emotionally ill? Is President Obama’s response measured and appropriate or something else, too timid a challenge to racism or too dismissive of concerns for safety and security? Is this incident unique or something else, a symptom of culture-wide racism, of too many guns in civilian hands or not enough?

 

Strident voices are shouting at each other from all sides, confident that they are in the right and that anyone who disagrees with them is willfully, undeniably wrong. As the conflict polarizes and we are forced to take sides, it becomes harder and harder to believe in the goodness of those taking opposing views. Here is the eerie thing about all this for me: it is sadly reminiscent of old, tired patterns of debating moral issues that go back to the Civil War. Let me explain.

 

When an issue is morally charged, good people take sides. That’s what’s happening here – the death of a young person from gun violence is a moral issue, and this death has become even more morally complicated by the charge of racism. Racist violence, unarguably a moral wrong, has a long history in this country: the violence of slavery, of white race riots and lynch mobs, and the institutionalized racism of the Jim Crow South. One of the tragedies of the Civil War, and there are many, is the way in which the North was able to hide from its own racism both before and after the war by shifting all the blame onto the South. Christian rhetoric from North and South provided cover. Pro-union sermons claimed God’s divine support for the union; pro-secession sermons claimed God’s divine support for secession. Each side believed they were fighting for God, liberty, patriotism and to claim their place as the true heirs to the Revolution. As Abraham Lincoln said, God cannot be for and against the same thing, so at a minimum one side is wrong. As if that were not enough of a minority position, Lincoln nearly became a minority of one when he dared to suggest that God’s purposes might be something neither side had yet imagined.

 

But wasn’t there a clear right side, an assuredly Godly side, when it came to slavery just as there must be a clear right side with Trayvon and George? Some must think so, especially the ones wearing the “I am Trayvon” t-shirts or speaking publicly in defense of George. But what seems clear at first often gets blurred on closer examination. Take slavery – talk about a clear moral issue! How could it be possible not to condemn the side that would fight to preserve it? The problem with framing the Civil War that way is that the Civil War was not about slavery. Look at that list of causes mentioned in the sermons – nothing about slavery there at all. It is a deafening silence that casts shame on our entire nation. The moral issue that divided the nation was the idea of the nation itself, a sacred cause that justified the killing and the dying. That we did kill and die in unprecedented numbers was taken as proof of our nation’s goodness. Bloodletting always creates hallowed ground. When the war ended and slavery was abolished – a clear moral good – we swept aside the shameful truth that slavery was made possible by a deep-seated racism in the North as well as the South. War erupted, raged and ended without Americans ever openly acknowledging and repenting of racism as a national moral failing. This misunderstanding at the heart of our national memory about the war continues to force the issue of racism underground.

 

And then it resurfaces in Florida and we take sides again thinking for sure we know what the moral issue is and for sure we are on the right side of it. But what if the real moral issue is something else? What if it has to do with the moral failure of thinking we are right? We all know that feeling of righteous rage, or moral indignation when we are sure we have the devil by the tail. Both sides of the Trayvon case are feeling it passionately right now. Maybe that night Trayvon and George were both feeling right, sure the other was wrong. I don’t know, and I don’t want to shift blame from a truly guilty person, especially in a murder case. I think that it is vitally important that the investigation proceed to determine why Trayvon was killed. But I raised the example of the Civil War because the bloodshed was largely due to everyone thinking they were right. Racism continues to rear its ugly head because we have persisted in refusing to share responsibility for what was and continues to be wrong with our nation. Shared responsibility means sharing being wrong, not forcing all the wrong on someone else. The insistence on being right and on accusing others of being wrong allows us to justify our own hatred and violence, the very thing we denounce in others.

 

As we deal with the tragedy of Trayvon’s death, perhaps we might step back from our accusations and self-righteousness to ask some difficult questions: Can I find the grace to listen to, maybe even to learn from, the ones I think are wrong? Can I give up my need to be right and be honest with myself about where I am wrong? Am I strong enough to gaze upon everyone who is suffering, even the ones whose suffering I have ignored or even celebrated? Do I care more about being right than I do about ending racism and making our communities safe for all our members? Can I seek the good in a spirit of forgiveness?

 

I’d like to leave you with the thought that the real obstacle to ending racism may be our need to take sides. It is 150 years overdue, but maybe we can find the grace to stop needing so desperately to be right so that we can embrace both Trayvon and George, an embrace that is generous and large enough to include the good and the wicked, the innocent and the guilty, the right and the wrong. Perhaps peace will have a chance if we can say together, “I am Trayvon and I am George.”

 

Peace Building Opportunity: If you’d like to learn how to give peace a chance in our schools, speak directly with Ted Wachtel on Friday, March 30 on our web radio show, Playing for Keeps. Ted is the president of the world's first graduate school devoted entirely to the teaching, research and dissemination of restorative practices.

Are you wondering what to make of all the God talk in today’s politics? It seems we can’t decide if we want God nosing around our political decisions and anointing candidates for us. Remember the dove that descended on Jesus at his baptism and the voice from heaven booming for all to hear, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well-pleased”? It’s as if some of today’s politicians think they have a dove floating over their heads and they can’t understand why they are the only ones who hear the divine endorsement: I’m God and I approved this message. Republican candidates in particular like to dally in this double-edged delusion: that (1) God takes sides in American politics and (2) is keeping his divine fingers crossed for your victory.

 

Of course, God will only root for you if your position is the right one. You have to be on the right side of every issue from economics to immigration. Stray across into the grey middle ground and God will join the crowd in calling you weak or wishy washy. Stray all the way to the wrong side and you might as well admit you are siding with Satan. And don’t be fooled by Democratic candidates who don’t use God-talk because they are just as guilty of certainty in the sanctity of their positions. They just claim to be “right” instead of divinely chosen. I’m not sure whose voice they hope we hear, but the point is the same. Being on the right side of an issue, whether you think in religious or secular terms, naturally results in absolute, unwavering, uncompromising faith in your position and total condemnation of your opponent’s. When it comes to casting our votes, they want us to believe in their differences from one another, but the thing that is becoming more and more apparent to voters is how alike the candidates are, not only in their pre-election barnstorming, but in how they behave in office. Choosing one over another seems to be a futile exercise, like choosing which pair of blue socks I’ll wear today. Just reach in and grab one/ vote for one, because the differences don’t matter.

 

And that, folks, is where we are today. Oddly it is where we have been before and the result was an American tragedy. The American Civil War was fought by two sides (there were a slew of diverse positions which telescoped into two opposing armies when the war broke out) that each believed that God was on their side. It was all God talk back then, because religion was assumed to be part of political life. Everyone was more or less a Christian in name if not in practice, and the Bible was the go-to reference book for how to vote or who to support in an election. Folks on both sides of the slavery issue whole-heartedly believed that they had Biblical and therefore Godly support for their position. Did you get that? Both sides of the slavery issue believed that God was on their side and the proof was in the Bible. I won’t go into that here, but if you can attend our conference at Wheaton College on March 16-17 you will hear directly from Civil War historians about how even the pro-slavery South could feel divinely inspired.

 

The salient point for us today is that the abolitionists and pro-slavery folks were locked in a heated argument about their differences, differences so extreme that God was supporting one side and condemning the other. Which side you thought God supported depending on which side you were on, of course. But each side resembled the other in a critically important way: their confidence that they knew the mind of God. Today’s debates around moral issues have a bit more diversity because all sides aren’t making the God argument. But if you substitute “certainty that I’m right and you’re wrong” for “knowing the mind of God” then our debates on same-sex marriage and reproduction, immigration and terrorism, fall into the same pattern as the slavery debate. According to Mark Noll, the insistence of both sides on absolute certainty that you are reading the Bible and the mind of God correctly created a hostile environment leading up to the Civil War that “transformed the conclusions reached by opponents into willful perversions of sacred truth and natural reason.” (The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, page 20) In other words, both slavery and anti-slavery positions were called “perversions of truth” by their opponents so confidently that the truth itself, that both sides were guilty of blind racism, was hidden from view for the next 100 years.

 

But what’s the risk today for a politics of certainty? Politics has become a form of entertainment. No one thinks that all this certainty and God-talk will lead to violence, do we? I mean, we’ve come a long way since the 19^th century; we’d never let things go that far. But there is a place where God talk is part of an outbreak of violence: the fight against Islamic terrorism. Americans insist that we are completely different than terrorists whose conviction that God is on their side leads them to die for their cause and to murder civilians without ever doubting God’s favor. To prove how different we are, when we fight back we are careful to avoid God talk of any kind. But is that a difference that matters? Just like our adversaries, when we kill civilians, we don’t doubt our own goodness. When our soldiers die for our cause, our certainty does not waver. In a very real way, we are exporting our violence right now, allowing our combating certainties to play out in foreign wars. Our Civil War, four years of escalating violence in which over 850,000 Americans died, may be a warning to us that if our current wars end and we don’t start another one, all this certainty may find a violent outlet at home. We may be marching to the tune of our own infallibility toward a Sophie’s Choice of war abroad or the risk of war at home. I wonder which side God is on.

 

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^{(Washington Representative Drew Hansen. Video discussed below.)}

 

Can faithful Christians support same-sex marriage?

 

The question is coming up quite a bit these days, as states throughout the U.S. are dealing with legislation concerning the hot button issue.

 

I’ll go a step further in answering the question – Not only can faithful Christians support same-sex marriage, faithful Christians should support same sex marriage.

 

First, the can.  The Bible is often a stumbling block when it comes to this issue.  Many feel that they can’t support same sex marriage because the Bible is against homosexuality.  But what if we’ve misunderstood the Bible?  That’s the case that James Alison makes in his lectures The Shape of God’s Affection.  Alison points out that heterosexuality and homosexuality are modern concepts.  The terms were coined around the 1860s and it’s only been during the last 60 years that we’ve come to a scientific understanding of sexual orientation in general, and homosexual orientation in particular.  Pre-modern people assumed all people were naturally attracted to members of the opposite gender.  We know now that about 4% of human beings are naturally attracted to members of the same gender.  Why does that matter?  There are 7 passages (yes, only 7!) in the Bible that we moderns use to discuss homosexuality.  The problem is that the people who wrote the Bible weren’t talking about our modern concept of homosexual orientation, because they didn’t know it.  To impose our modern concept of sexuality on the Bible is to misunderstand the very important critique the Bible makes in those 7 passages.  Indeed, those passages denounce sexual sins, but they are the sins of gang rape and cultic prostitution.  The ancient Hebrews and the authors of the New Testament were concerned about sexual abuse and believed the sexual humiliation of another was a very bad thing, but they were not commenting on homosexuality as we understand it today.

 

Let’s take the verse most often referred to in the New Testament: Romans 1:26.  Previously, Paul stated that many have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie.”   It is “For this reason,” Paul continues, that

 

God gave them up to degrading passions.  Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another.  Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

 

The New Testament scholar Neil Elliot wrote an essay called The Apostle Paul on Sexuality. The essay supports Alison’s argument that the biblical authors weren’t talking about homosexuality, but about sexual abuse.  Elliot claims that Romans 1 was principally about the Roman Emperor Nero, who led a very infamous and active sex life. Elliot quotes ancient historians and claims:

 

Nero's sexual passion for his own mother was “notorious,” … but then Nero “practiced every kind of obscenity,” defiling “almost every part of his body with men and women, usually under threat of force” … His cruelty and sexual predations paled, in the eyes of the Roman aristocracy, next to his profligacy with money: when he had devoured his personal fortune he turned to “robbing temples.”

 

In the Romans 1 passage, then, Paul is not against our modern understanding of homosexuality, but rather against sexual abuse and excessive sexual indulgence.

 

Now for the should.  The speech made by Washington State Representative Drew Hansen (above) provides an important theological account of what God is doing on this issue.  Representative Hansen is a Christian committed to the way of Christ who voted for Washington State’s same sex marriage bill. Hansen said, “What if God is doing a new thing in the church right now on this question?  I mean, remember, as Christians we believe that it is the stone the builder rejects that becomes the capstone.”

 

This is very profound and significant.  Hansen illuminating the “truth about God” that Paul referred to in Romans.  Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, the One who reveals who God truly is and what it means to by truly Human, is the Stone that the builders rejected.  As the Son of God and the Son of Man, he is the capstone to our theology and to our anthropology.  By being rejected, Jesus radically identifies with those who are rejected by other human beings.  Theologian Walter Wink reflects on this principle in his essay Homosexuality and the Bible:

 

God sides with the powerless.  God liberates the oppressed.  God suffers with the suffering … In light of that supernal compassion, whatever our position on gays, the gospels imperative to love, care for, and be identified with their sufferings is unmistakably clear.

 

It is unmistakably clear because the particularly Jewish Jesus suffered in order to show us that God in Christ identifies with all who suffer.  In this way, African American theologians can say Jesus is Black.  In this way, GLBT theologians can say Jesus is Gay.  But here’s the next point: Jesus freely allowed himself to suffer and be rejected by his fellow human beings so that our pattern of rejecting others can be transformed into a pattern that loves and embraces others.  Refusing to allow GLBT people to participate in the joys and challenges of marriage is a way of rejecting them.  When it comes to same sex marriage, the authentic Christian response is not one of rejection, but one of love and affirmation.

 

And that’s why faithful Christians can and should support same-sex marriage.

 

 

 

The United States of America is under attack.  America has an enemy that will stop at nothing until it defeats our way of life.  If you are afraid of any possible threat to our way of life posed by Islamism, or China, or the European economic crisis, or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, well, those are all child’s play when compared to this threat.

 

You may be wondering, “Just who is attacking the United States?”  According to the conservative website Caucus for America, which is “dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the historic American civilization,” liberals are to blame.  Liberals are attacking the religious core at the heart of America’s way of life.  The secular Left, which, according to the website, has contaminated protestant Christianity, “knows that the only way to destroy the America we’ve known is by destroying the Christianity, the Judeo-Christian ethic, which has made it great.”  The Left is attacking America’s soul from the inside.  If this was an enemy from the outside our borders, “We would have raised our swords” against this threat.

 

That’s pretty serious.  But, there’s more.  According to the progressive website Common Dreams, it’s not the Left who is attacking America; it’s the Right.  And you should be very afraid of the policies those demons would legislate if they were to gain power.  “It’s very possible that Mr. XY Zombie Republican could seize power in November, with the backing of endlessly deep pockets like the Koch brothers, Big Energy, and Big Finance, and the blessing of the Supreme Court.”

 

As I read these equally hysterical but completely opposite viewpoints, I realized they had something in common that is more profound than their panic and fear.  Whether on the Right or the Left, the American way of life many of us are so eager to defend involves demonizing and shaming others so that you aren’t the one demonized and shamed.  Attack!  Attack so that the attention is on your opponent’s deficiencies and not on yours.  Seriously?  “Zombie Republican”?!?  Are you kidding me?  It’s sophomoric and certainly not progressive.  And the suggestion that we should raise our swords against the Left to protect our American way of life is an American way of life that I reject.

 

And so I’m attacking this American way of life.  Yes.  I’m attacking it because it’s pathetic.  It’s banal and I think it’s time for us to grow up.  The Left and the Right justify the demonization of one another in the name of protecting America.  And they both look pathetically similar.  The Left and the Right are caught up in a mimetic rivalry, where both sides assert differences where no difference exists.  They are exactly the same.  They both claim the mantle of righteousness while they demonize the other.  It is, apparently, what America is all about.

 

Indeed, it’s pathetic and weak.  It makes us into cowards because the American way of life that demonizes the other conveniently blinds us to our own faults.  It takes courage to look deep within ourselves and critique our own failings.  Under our current way of life, we will never have that kind of courage because we are possessed.  Make no mistake - when the bible talks about demon possession, it’s not talking about an archaic misunderstanding that our ancestors had about humanity.  No.  They had a much more powerful anthropology than we moderns do.  When we accuse others of being a demon (or a Zombie), when we blame the other for all of our cultural problems, we become instantly blind to our own demons.  You can be damn sure that you are possessed by a demon if are inciting fear of Liberals and accusing Republicans of being “Zombies.”

 

I’m attacking this American way of life because I demand better.  The American way of life that mimics accusations against one another needs to stop because it will destroy us.  I have little hope that politicians, the media, and bloggers have the power to change this pattern.  I do have hope, though.  I have hope that people like you and I can change.  We don’t have accuse one another.  We are not enslaved to a way of life that demonizes and shames our family members, our neighbors, our co-workers, or even those we call our enemies.  We must say no to that way of life, because only when we say no to that way of life can we be empowered to say yes to a way of life that respect opposing views and values dialogue over demonization.

 

When the American way of life emphasizes that spirit, I will stop my attack.

 

 

 

 

 

If you are like me, you believe New Year’s Resolutions are made to be broken. I struggle with resolutions. I’ve already failed three of the top twelve resolutions Americans make.  Lose weight? I always break that during football games on January 1^st. Stop drinking? Again, January 1^st football games. Eat healthy foods? Nachos, pizza, and burgers, all on January 1^st.

 

January 1^st is the day I resolve to make the hardest resolution I’ve ever had to make (and I make throughout the year) – to forgive myself.

 

To be more forgiving of one’s self and of others is certainly a resolution worth making, but the Iowa Caucus tonight reminds me of another resolution worthy of discussion. It’s a resolution few people will make this year. And it’s a resolution you are bound to break. Sometime during this first week of 2012, you are likely to be asked, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?” Imagine their response when you reply, “I’m going to end scapegoating.”

 

It’s a big task. Scapegoating infects our culture, our lives, and our politics. For example, the Iowa Caucus is tonight and we find candidates scrambling to define themselves over and against their opponents. Mitt Romney, who seems to be the front-runner in Iowa, has attacked President Obama, accusing him of creating an entitlement society in the U.S. Romney said that Obama’s continued policies would “poison the American spirit by pitting one American against another and engaging in class warfare." He went on to say, “I prefer an America that is one nation under God and I will keep it that way.” While Romney attacks Obama, a Super PAC backing him has spent $3 million on ads slamming Romney’s Republican opponents. And Romney’s opponents have responded with similar attack ads. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post warns that this is just the beginning of negative ads run by Super PACs:

 

We are going to see hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ads bombarding millions of voters for months on end, with no knowledge of who is paying for them, no accountability at all for the candidates who are directly benefiting from them, and no meaningful effort to rebut the countless lies, distortions and sleazy attacks they’ll be leveling on a daily basis — ones that will directly impact who controls Congress and the White House next year.

 

That disturbs me, but it doesn’t surprise me.  After Christmas and New Year’s Day, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that average folk like you and I spend much of our time in rivalry with others. You can always tell when you are in a rivalry with another person or group. You know that feeling you get when your uncle starts making political comments during Christmas dinner? Or the feeling you get when you arrive at your office and your supervisor won’t stop talking about her New Year’s weekend, and you know that in two hours she’ll come back and ask why you haven’t been productive? Your blood starts to boil. You need an outlet so you gossip to your cousins or your coworkers.

 

(Not that I know from experience.)

 

It’s true. Politicians are corrupted by rivalry and scapegoating. But so are we. We are, as James Alison says, formed in rivalry and scapegoating.  “Our programming,” as Alison states in his book, Knowing Jesus, “forms us in rivalry, and the techniques of survival by exclusion.”

 

I can guarantee you one thing during this election year: The rivalry and scapegoating will heat up. Republican candidates and President Obama will continue to define themselves over and against one another in hopes of gaining a sense of superiority.

 

How do we end scapegoating? There are four key steps. First, I think it’s important to admit that we scapegoat others. Yes. You and I scapegoat. We scapegoat whenever we feel a sense of superiority by hating another person or group. Second, we can stop scapegoating when, instead of feeling superior through scapegoating others, we begin to mourn our scapegoating tendencies. Third, we know we are on our way to end scapegoating when we begin to honestly listen to our rival’s story. And fourth, to truly end scapegoating, we need to develop the courage to admit that maybe, just maybe, we don’t hold the truth, we were wrong about the truth of our rival’s story, and we were wrong about our feelings of superiority over and against our rival.

 

It’s 2012. And it’s time to end scapegoating.

 

(For an example of how to end scapegoating, see "Rick Perry and Jesus: Strength and Weakness.")

 

 

 

 

A recent article on the Huffington Post by Michael McAuliff titled, Republicans: Super Committee Remarks By Chuck Are Proof Obama Wants It To Fail points to the mimetic crisis in contemporary politics.  It’s a crisis of blame.  In my opinion, few things in this world are as mimetic, or imitative, as blame.  Blame gives birth to blame and soon we’re all pointing fingers.

 

Reporters are just as human as politicians, which means they also get caught up in the game.  McAuliff’s for example, reports that “In a sign of just how unlikely Congress' deficit-cutting super committee is to succeed, Republicans took the blame game to another level Tuesday, saying the White House wants it to fail.”  The Republican remarks of blame came after Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer blamed the Republicans as he predicted the deficit Super Committees’ plan will fail.  Schumer claimed:

 

“I don’t think the Super Committee is going to succeed because our Republican colleagues have said ‘no net revenues.’ When Democrats move too far left, we lose. We’re now — the basic mainstream of Democrats…we’re willing to move to the middle.  They are not willing to do any revenues.”

 

According to McAuliff, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell “took the blame game to another level” when McConnell stated:

 

“It's pretty clear when Chuck Schumer speaks, he's speaking for the most partisan Democratic positions. It does raise the suspicion that the folks down at the White House are pulling for failure, because you see if the Joint Committee [on Deficit Reduction] succeeds, it [upsets] the story line that they've been peddling, which is that you can't do anything with the Republicans in Congress."

 

Of course, McConnell is infamous for saying that “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

 

I don’t know how you will feel about me saying this, but I don’t think McConnell is a horrible human being.  I think he represents the political gamesmanship that infects Washington.  It’s not really about solving problems and making the world a better place.  Nah…It’s about blaming, scoring points, and beating the other team.

 

Do you want to know who started the blame game?

 

We did.

 

What’s happening on a political scale is a magnification of what can happen all around us.  Family members, friends, enemies, I’ve even heard husbands and wives get caught in blaming one another.  The blame game infects our culture, and, indeed, all of us.  Blame is a form of violence, as it inflicts verbal wounds on our opponents in an attempt to defeat them.  No one is innocent when we get caught up on this game, as René Girard states in his book Battling to the End, “When violence is involved, wrongs are always shared” (pg 16).

 

So, maybe the question “Who can we blame?” is the wrong question.  Might I suggest different questions?  Is it possible for us non-politicians to model another way for those politicians who are caught in the blame game?  Is it possible for you and for me to stop playing that game in our private lives and play a different game?  Is it possible, in the midst of a culture infected with the blame game, to play a different game - the game of grace?

 

What would the game of grace look like?  First, grace is free and unmerited.  In other words, there is nothing we can do to deserve grace.  It is quick to forgive and quick to cooperate.  If we played the game of grace, we would stop trying to score points and start working together to solve the problems in our families, in our communities, in our nation, and in our world.  Because when we play this game we know that we’re all in this thing together.  So, is it possible to play the game of grace?

 

I’ll let you decide.

 

 

“I happen to know there were sealed settlements reached in the plural.  I think that anybody who thinks this was a one time, one person transgression would be mistaken.” – A source for Politico

 

“When you’re in a leadership position, sometimes people just try to take a shot at you.” – J.D. Gordon, Herman Cain Spokesperson

 

Herman Cain.  Welcome to politics.

 

Cain’s rapid ascendancy as the GOP frontrunner has been remarkable and speaks to the growing frustrations with politicians in America. Cain is an unconventional presidential candidate, as his quest for the presidency is his first time running for public office.  He gained his leadership experience in the business world: Cain seems to have been successful in all his business endeavors.  He was the regional vice president of Pillsbury’s Burger King division, President and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, and then President of the National Restaurant Association.

 

All of that is impressive, but given that he hasn’t held political office, it’s fairly surprising that he finds himself as the lead candidate.  As such, it was only a matter of time before skeletons started walking out of his closet. Michelle Goldberd at the Daily Beast commented, “Herman Cain is currently leading the Republican polls. If he wants to be treated as a serious candidate … he’s going to be subjected to serious scrutiny.”

 

Indeed, Cain’s personal life is now under serious scrutiny.  Politico recently reported that Cain is being accused of sexually harassing at least two women who worked for him at the National Restaurant Association.  Cain responded to those accusations, claiming to be the “victim of a ‘smear campaign.’”

 

We have at least three people claiming to be victims in this story.  Who do we believe?  Whose story is true?  Who is the real victim?  Is Cain the victim, or are the women the victims?

 

Yes.

 

You may not like that answer.  It’s a paradox.  But the answer is yes.

 

How is Cain the victim?  He’s in the lead and because he is in the lead many people want to see him fall, especially his Republican opponents.  Whether or not these accusations are true, his Republican and Democratic opponents can unite against this creepy man who made unwanted sexual advances toward women who worked for him.  Of course, those who unite against Cain benefit in their accusations against him, as they feel a sense of moral superiority.  Knowing that he’s creepy allows us to feel good about ourselves.

 

How are the women victims?  If their accusations are true, they were sexually harassed by their boss.  They were victims of an abuse of power and made to feel like sexual objects as opposed to human beings.  That would be an abuse of power and Cain should be held responsible for his actions.

 

So, where is the truth in this story?  It’s hard to know because the truth is being obscured by whether or not you support Herman Cain.  For example, the “truth” for one side could be that, whether or not the accusations are true, this issue was solved in the late 1990s and has no relevance for his candidacy.  The “truth” for the other side could be that this issue reveals Cain’s abusive character that would only continue into his possible presidency.

 

I don’t know the truth of Cain's is guilt or innocence.  But I do know this truth – I don’t envy anyone who gets involved in politics.

 

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Adam discusses the political drama "The Ides of March" staring Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Evan Rachel Wood, and Paul Giamatti. The title is a reference to the murder of Julius Caesar, who was literally stabbed in the back by his friends and foes who united against him. The movie is all about mimetic dynamics in politics - there is a cycle of imitative backstabbing. But this cycle is bigger than politics, it infects other areas of life as well. This leads to tragedy after tragedy. Soon there is a death and the theological question gets asked, "Where is God in all of this?" God does not plan the death, but seeks to transform human dynamics that lead to scapegoating into human dynamics that lead to love and compassion.