Losing my religion…

I know the title is a bit shocking, but it drew you in right? It’s an appropriate title for this post, but you can relax, as it probably doesn’t mean what you’re thinking.

Some of you may have noticed that it’s been a while since my last post, months in fact. Well I assure you there is a reason for that – and it’s only partially due to laziness. Most of the reason for my absence from the blog is due to this post. What I mean by that is I knew in my heart that the subject I approach in this post needed to be the next one I wrote. I haven’t been sure how to frame it up, so I haven’t blogged until now. I’m still not sure I will be able to do justice to what’s in my heart. In fact, I know I won’t do it justice. How can you possibly fully explain in a single blog post conclusions you have come to based on years of conversations, insightful reading, experiences, self-reflection, and direction from God? You can’t. So I’ll do my best with the format I’ve got. This is not an attempt to convince you that my opinions are correct or that you must follow my lead. My intentions instead are to simply share what’s going on in my life with my friends, family, or anyone else who stumbles upon this blog.   

You may or may not have noticed, but I’ve been dealing with some pretty big changes in my philosophy on life over the past year or so. In previous years I thought I had quite a bit figured out. I prided myself on being passionate about things that I believed mattered tremendously – only to find God, little by little, teaching me that they didn’t hold nearly as much weight as I had assumed. Things I held dearly in the past began to matter less to me. My worldview started to flip upside down. Even how I interacted with my own religion began to change in significant ways. Let me explain what I mean.

About a year and a half ago, my father used the term “extremely conservative” to describe me to someone; and for good reason, as I was at the time. In fact that would have been a valid description of the way people viewed my political allegiances for several years previous to that. Many of you who know me would probably agree that when I believe in something and get behind it, I can be very passionate about it- most recently manifested in my Android phone marketing  :P. So, due to the fact that I believe many conservative principles are what’s best for the prosperity of our country – my own children included – I was passionately (“extremely”) conservative. Because I believe that some of the liberals biggest agenda’s deal with things spoken as of sins in the bible, I was passionately taking a strong stand for God on the opposite side. It’s what good American Christians do after all – passionately supporting God, the Republican Party, target shooting, and bumper stickers that cleverly tie all three together.

I commute over two hours a day, and this time was often spent soaking up conservative talk radio. I listened for a good portion of my day to passionate people talking passionately (often angrily) about things that matter to the prosperity of our state and our country. I didn’t always agree with everything said, but most of it I did, because of my world view that was supplying the context to which I was applying the opinions. Sometimes I would find myself thinking that there must be a middle ground somewhere between the two extremes on political issues, but often ended up on the far right view of the subject. Let’s be honest, for a passionate person the extreme is a whole lot easier and – embarrassingly – more fun to support and debate.

I have a good friend named Phil who is a passionate liberal. At first glance, we were polar political opposites. Yet we remained good friends despite our disagreements on many issues. We would discuss those issues, discussion would turn to debate, debate would turn into argument, arguments would turn heated, and when we finally realized things were getting out of hand we’d use humor — typically involving an offer for a hug or a your-face joke, to lighten the mood. That’s when we’d start looking at the issue from a reasonable perspective; bringing things like logic, empathy, and compassion into the discussion. To my surprise, many of these issues that rose to the level of heated arguments landed – when emotion and allegiance to party lines where stripped out – with both of us meeting somewhere in the middle. Each time this happened, I began to realize how unreasonably dualistic my views had become on the surface. I’d noticed this before, encountering similar feelings after becoming disenfranchised with political leaders I had once been passionate about. People often assumed that I was for certain issues or were fans of certain political figureheads, when in-fact in many cases I wasn’t.

Another of many insightful experiences came later with a conversation that I had with my good friend Jason. He asked me how I felt about the death penalty. Without thinking very deeply I told him I was for it, in certain cases. Part of my support was based on the party line, and once again part of it was based on my world view that depended more on what I thought to be best for the country and my family than what the bible had to say on such matters. Jason immediately noticed the hypocrisy in my answer, and called me out on it “Doesn’t the bible teach that murder is wrong?” he asked? “Yes” I replied, but then jumped quickly to how it’s more about deterrence and not being able to afford keeping people in jail forever. I realized the flaw in my argument as it came spilling out of my mouth. I was giving more credit to what was good for the country and myself than I was to the teachings of God. God, as we know, had a different plan for criminals and murderers – he changed their hearts and turned them into apostles, disciples, and followers of Christ. Paul is a great example. In his earlier years, Paul made a career out of violently hunting down and sometimes killing Christians. Instead of making sure that Paul got what he deserved, God decided to change his heart and use him to write a good portion of the New Testament. Like it or not, that’s how God works. I believe there is a place for justice in society, but I was allowing it to supersede the teachings of God with my insufficiently hashed out opinion.   

Although I’m not Catholic, I make it a practice each year to give something up during Lent. This year, I gave up something I had given up before – talk radio. However this time it was different. Instead of replacing the talk radio with music, I popped in the bible on CD for my two and a half hour daily commute (thanks Merritt!). Something incredible happened – I was no longer able to push back the creeping belief that there is so much more to what God has called me to than passionately supporting a political agenda. In fact, other than a few issues, I found that the bible is pretty ambivalent to most of either party’s talking points. I don’t mean that as a jab to anyone who is a gun toting republican or a Birkenstock wearing liberal, I really don’t – as I still believe these aren’t bad or “evil” things in and of themselves. In fact, I’ll say it again; I believe many conservative principles make the most sense when thinking about the individualistic prosperity of America. Yet, there’s the catch; Jesus did not call us to make our country more prosperous than others. Nor did he call us specifically to be prosperous ourselves. I was finding that although Republican and Christian had some true touch points, they by no means where attached at the hip. These are all things I knew deep down already, but for some reason it’s as if I was hypnotized for years into ignoring that point. I want to be clear again, I’m not implying that if you are political, prosperous, or you care about the prosperity of the country that you are doing anything wrong as a Christian – that’s between you and God. I’m simply explaining why it is no longer where I want to focus most of my energy and time. And then there’s that whole thing about the left supporting things the Bible teaches as sins. While I agree on that in some cases, abortion for instance, I am starting to realize that in many other cases I was spending much more time focusing on the symptoms (behaviors) than the disease (hearts). What good is it to simply stand up against a behavior when the one exhibiting the behavior is pushed further away from God in the process?  

The undeniable truth I couldn’t escape is that in my case politics was taking a much higher place in my life than the actual activities that Jesus called his believers to – learning more about God, loving everyone, feeding the hungry, helping the hurting, clothing the naked, and most importantly bringing God to a world desperately in need of him. By spending my time engulfed in politics instead of the Bible, I had made it my religion. By passionately arguing one sided political points more than passionately telling people about God, I had made politics my god. By treating people based on what they believed instead of who they were (children of God), I was denying others of the love of God. By falling into the sometimes hypocritical conservative clichés that push people further away from God, I had let down God.

The great thing about coming to this realization was that it meant I still had time to change, and that’s what I started doing. Lent ended, and I didn’t turn the talk radio back on. I am staying aware of the issues, but I’m not pouring my whole heart out into them. I’ve got much more important things I want to focus on now, some of which you’ve been reading about in previous blog posts. I am losing my religion, my religion of politics, and at the same time finally finding God. I am not turning liberal, but I am moving center, and stepping back from the political world. I may register independent, I may not, but I do believe if I had to be categorized into a political group right now, that’s where I’d fall. I will consider the teachings of Jesus to cast my votes and join debate when applicable, not the teachings of the Republican Party or even evangelical Christianity as a whole.

I won’t lie; the fruits of these changes have been incredible. I’m on fire for God and people like never before. I have felt an incredible weight lifted off of my back; or more appropriately my heart. Politics hasn’t been the only area I’ve been making changes in my life, it’s one of many, and the combination of everything goes beyond explanation. God is teaching me things on a daily basis and then reinforcing those teachings through scripture, conversations, sermons, podcasts and literature. I’ve recently found tremendous peace through several major trials that would have likely broken me down just years earlier. I’ve taken all of that energy and passion I was exerting on politics and focused it on growing closer to God, my family, and my friends – and I couldn’t be happier. God is teaching me that he’s got an incredible narrative written for my life that can play out now that we’ve finally landed on the same page. I hope to keep you informed of all of it through this blog and our relationships. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope if not anything else that you’ve got a better idea of the man I am today and a deeper look at the God I love. I hope to get back to consistent blog posts now that I’ve gotten this one out of the way – so keep an eye out for those!

Matthew 25: 34 – 36

“Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; ³⁵for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, ³⁶I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

Advertisement

~ by cterhaar on August 6, 2010.