Of monsoons, American idolatry and Interstate 70

Politics are a big interest of mine, yet I have been very deliberate to clutter this area with only things that are either of concern even for the Christian who isn’t into politics or those that would hold deeper intellectual cachet than the usual partisan tripe.

Well, take a look here.

It appears that Focus on the Family, aka the ministry political outreach group of Dr. James Dobson, have encouraged their supporters to “pray for torrential rainstorms” for the night of Obama’s speech tomorrow night (as it is to be held outdoors, at Denver’s Invesco Field at Mile High).

In their defense, Focus have come out and said that proclamation was intended to be “mildly amusing”.

The joke was lost on me.

Wanna know why?

Because vast swaths of Americans no doubt hold that God really does work that way with His creation, i.e., the only way poor old God would be able to get something done would be through the weather… as commanded by the fervent prayers from more of one group of people against another. (Think of it as a kid playing his aloof grandparents off one another to get around being grounded.)

In this sort of scheme, God becomes our Hit Man, Mob Guy, Messenger Boy, or Biggest Endorsement the Galaxy Has to Offer to Whomever Courts Him Best.

That also makes Him an idol.

Allow me to lay my cards on the table here openly and honestly.

Attempted humor or not, I find these guys’ sentiments vile, theologically bollicksed and despicable.

The God of whom they supposedly speak is a) not at our whims and b) smart enough to reveal Himself in ways that no phalanx of political hacks can pat themselves on the back for provoking.

Demographers and other people-qualified-to-speak-on-such-things say that the younger generation of thinking evangelicals (the age group of pretty much everyone that reads this blog, I’m pretty sure) are turning away from the GOP in droves and are growing to repudiate them entirely.

May I present to you Exhibit A.

Enquiry from a stoplight

Just now I had a thought and have given it little time to gestate. Nonetheless, I’m entrusting it to your care.

If the relative ubiquity the Internet has achieved of recent years represents a modern-day, real-world, tangible “Pandora’s Box,” unfurling upon the world all manner of previously unmined worldviews, horrors, dreams, hopes, memories and the like, then what would be at the proverbial “bottom of the box”? (In case you’d forgotten, in Pandora’s case, what was left was hope.)

Would it be something positive, like hope, above? If so, in order to keep harmony with the original myth that would mean that everything that had rushed out was negative, right?

If what is left behind is something negative, then what is it?

Is it only one thing?

Like I said, I haven’t pondered it much at all, but thought I’d toss it out to you guys.

Thoughts?

Obama and the Black Hole Son

As sleep began to gain the upper hand last night, my mind was carried aloft by that classic party-stopper, “how can a Christian vote for someone who is pro-abortion?” As has more than once in my world proven the case, this is an issue with which we Christian folk think and communicate with an incredible amount of zeal. And not without reason!

If you made it past the word “abortion,” allow me to posit a wider, perhaps more refined way of thinking about not only politics, but our entire world.

I dredged up Col. 1:15-17 for you so you wouldn’t have to look it up:

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together

We sell God’s creation short when we settle for simple explanations of God’s role in the issues of our day, ones that easily surrender to talk of where God isn’t or even can’t be.

As you think about that, let me toss this your way: what if one were to say, based on the famous passage in Leviticus 18, that the entire Bible is about human sexuality and right relations betwixt the genders? Or that the entire Bill of Rights was about the importance of the Third Amendment, which can be used as a check on the power of the federal government’s ability to interfere in citizens’ private affairs and property? Would not either of those perspectives do extraordinary violence to the content, the history, the origins, the authors, etc. associated with those works?

Both of those situations above (which, if you’ll allow your mind just the barest liberty, you’ll no doubt see scenarios in which people would argue those perspectives very well) are what I would call an “adventure in missing the point”.¹

As we discuss “the point” as Christians, we find ourselves in an interesting quandry. Revisit the wideness of the language used above in Colossians: phrases like “all things,” “all creation” and that list comprised of “heavenly things…” to “… earthly authorities.” Surely you won’t object to my saying that Paul meant this list to be exhaustive!

So then, what is “the point”?

Guess what: no answer here.

Here’s what I will tell you though. If in fact all of this high and exalted language of Christ is true, if indeed he is in, before, transcendent and in the midst of “all things,” then such a figure as our exalted Savior in all his transcendent glory should be as frequent an informer as possible to the world of the Christian. In the very midst of the realities of the dirty and the pure, the complex and the simple, the amenable and the lamentable alike, we should seek out and apply that depth, majesty and wisdom.

So then, when we presume to have the “Christian perspective” on something, or to speak “as a representative of Christianity,” let’s make sure we’re taking into account the majesty, the awesomeness, and “all-ness” of Christ. Let’s make sure we aren’t settling for something that isn’t real.

Let’s err on the side of humility.

I don’t know about you, but I’m just not smart enough, holy enough, wise enough, or familiar enough with the Scriptures to say with confidence which candidate, and for what reasons, God is “for” or “against”.

If what Colossians says of Him is true, then I’ll bet He’s got a way to make one vote count for both anyway.

1 I actually first heard this phrase as the title of a McLaren book; haven’t read it.