I heartily endorse this event or product, but it certainly raises a lot of frustrating questions about how Christians should conduct themselves in the public square. Congregants asked Boyd such things as, "Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent? Are you saying Christians should not join the military? How can Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden? Didn’t the church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?" How do Christians fight evil, real EVIL, without defining themselves as finger-waving moralizers or knee-jerk Republicans?
The question of how to respond to terrorism reminds me of the dilemmas faced by Christians living in the time of Nazism. I know Corrie ten Boom and her family did the morally right thing in hiding Jews and helping to operate the Dutch Underground. But did Dietrich Bonhoeffer do the right thing in conspiring to assassinate Hitler? To put it in a present-day context, we can be sure it's a virtuous act for a Christian to do humanitarian work in Iraq; but can we say it's also virtuous for a Christian to kill our enemies (those who want to kill us) in Iraq? For that matter, let's take the foreign policy context away and ask whether it's equally virtuous to minister to a mass murderer in prison and to execute that same mass murderer.
At the root of these dilemmas is a key tension of Christian theology: justice and mercy. In God, these virtues are complete, complementary, and noncompetitive. In a sinful world, though, we find that they do at times compete. Corrie ten Boom's forgiving one of the guards who tormented her and her sister was astonishingly merciful, but was it just? A successful plot to assassinate Hitler would've been just, but would it have been merciful? I think that thoughtful Christians could offer several valid and varying answers to these questions.
So, how about we Christians just let each other have different opinions on political and theological questions, and focus on the thing that unites us: the cross. That is, after all, where justice and mercy meet.
The question of how to respond to terrorism reminds me of the dilemmas faced by Christians living in the time of Nazism. I know Corrie ten Boom and her family did the morally right thing in hiding Jews and helping to operate the Dutch Underground. But did Dietrich Bonhoeffer do the right thing in conspiring to assassinate Hitler? To put it in a present-day context, we can be sure it's a virtuous act for a Christian to do humanitarian work in Iraq; but can we say it's also virtuous for a Christian to kill our enemies (those who want to kill us) in Iraq? For that matter, let's take the foreign policy context away and ask whether it's equally virtuous to minister to a mass murderer in prison and to execute that same mass murderer.
At the root of these dilemmas is a key tension of Christian theology: justice and mercy. In God, these virtues are complete, complementary, and noncompetitive. In a sinful world, though, we find that they do at times compete. Corrie ten Boom's forgiving one of the guards who tormented her and her sister was astonishingly merciful, but was it just? A successful plot to assassinate Hitler would've been just, but would it have been merciful? I think that thoughtful Christians could offer several valid and varying answers to these questions.
So, how about we Christians just let each other have different opinions on political and theological questions, and focus on the thing that unites us: the cross. That is, after all, where justice and mercy meet.
posted by Jackie at 6:33 AM
4 Comments:
FYI, I'm currently reading an interesting book on this subject you might have heard of, The Mighty and The Almighty by Madeleine Albright. So far I think it's really good, barring the introduction from Bill Clinton, which reads like some creepy moral relativist manifesto.
ugh. i don't have time to fully comment on this, but i'll say this.
there are definitely major tensions here. i'm a fairly solid GOP supporter, i'm also an evangelical christian. i have evangelical friends who are solid dem supporters; i have GOP friends who are not evangelicals.
the church's statements about moral issues would carry a lot - ALOT - more weight if we did more work humbly meeting people's needs.
i'm at the front of the line of the guilty for not doing that stuff.
but see, mother theresa's statement about abortion - nobody, NOBODY - can claim the moral high ground from her, because she LIVES it.
the church has gotten very good at claiming the moral high ground, while not living it.
and that makes me very sad. :(
I, for one, also heartily endorse that event and/or product.
...with the understanding that the religious left, with whom Mme. Albright is unconcerned, is more theocratic than the right. The trendy threat of "theocracy" is a means of scoring party political points.
Anyway, I was impressed by this guy when I saw this article.
Best,
Brant
Yes, the conclusions in the Albright book presented some theological problems that should be no surprise to anybody. (Including a special warning about the political dangers presented by "fundamentalists"--the Christian kind, not the Islamic ones.) However, after finishing the book, even though she and I are not on the same religious page, so to speak, I still felt it was mainly thoughtful and well-written, and I think she had some valuable things to say about the relationship of faith to public and foreign policy and its practical application.
I'm not concerned with Albright's predictable criticisms of the way Christians have been involved in politics and public life, obviously this article does a much better job of presenting that critique. But I think the book could be a valuable addition to the point, in the form of positive suggestions for political action. I liked the article and the book together as sort of complementary statements.
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