Conservatism

Conservatism

He must increase. I must decrease—John the Baptist

***What do we hope to conserve? ***

I taught geometry to high-schoolers for 20 years. The most powerful, fundamental terms—point, line, and plane—were undefined. “Everybody” knows what a point is: What’s the point? Are you handing me a line? What did Tattoo announce each week on Fantasy Island? In geometry, undefined terms provide needed beginnings.

In governance, any candidate who defines a fundamental term—conservatism, for example—does so at great personal risk. When Barry Goldwater ran for president in 1964 as an avowed conservative, he defined the label explicitly. Voters knew that Goldwaterian conservatism made Social Security voluntary and sought to give each state the option of retaining racial segregation. What did Goldwater get for his honesty? In the election, he carried five states in the Deep South, his home state of Arizona, and nothing else. In the popular vote nationwide, he got about 37% of the vote. Goldwater had explicitly defined his conservatism to include dilution of the federal role in Americans’ social welfare, and he perpetuated the racist canard that those who opposed desegregation were not racists but merely supporters of states’ rights. 

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he (conservatively) tried to take away the medical insurance of millions of Americans, and he (conservatively) promulgated xenophobic policies against Mexican and Muslim immigrants. Why did Trump succeed with his antiwelfare and racism where Goldwater had failed?

• Trump      never calls himself or his policies conservative. Goldwater wore the banner proudly.

• Trump      has way more personal charisma—positive and negative—than Goldwater ever had.

• Hillary      Clinton’s negatives greatly exceeded those of Goldwater’s opponent, President Lyndon Johnson. Johnson had not yet heated up his Vietnam Waterloo.

• The nation was still reeling from the Kennedy assassination in 1964 and, collectively, was in no mood for radical change.

• The Obama presidency fired up racists. They could not abide a black president who consistently showed greater intelligence than they had.

• Trump ran a smear campaign against ‘crooked Hillary.’  Hillary failed to answer.

In politics, linguistic poverty sometimes trumps honesty and experience.

Don’t say we weren’t warned. In Paul’s letter to the Colossians (2:8-10), we are told to “beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power.”  What better way to seduce the gullible than to offer extrabiblical credos, unlabeled and undefined? 

* * *

Christian conservatives pay lip service to the Bible as God’s Word.

Was Israel supposed to be conservative? What were they supposed to conserve? Israelites were supposed to let their land lie fallow every seven years as a sabbath unto God. They failed to do so 70 times in 490 years. In about 586 B.C., the Lord sent them packing to Babylon for 70 years.

The year of jubilee, to be celebrated every 50 years, mandated not only non-cultivation but also forgiveness of debts and the negation of any economic advantages that had accrued in the previous half-century. In Leviticus 25:13,17, we are told that “in the year of this jubilee ye shall return every man unto his possession…ye shall not oppress one another; but you shall fear your God. For I am your God.”

Christian conservatives claim ‘free enterprise’ as the ideal economic system. They seek to conserve their wallets—often at the expense of those less fortunate. Often, they attract white voters who see government welfare as mainly benefitting brown and black people. Their attitude and God’s response are found in God’s description of the Laodicean church of Revelation 3: “You say, ‘I’m rich and increased with goods, but don’t you know that you’re poor, wretched, miserable, blind and naked?”

Conservatives place ‘the economy’ uppermost on their list of objets de conservacion. Most notably, we cannot deal with climate change because ‘the economy’ would suffer if we shifted away from fossil fuels to more easily renewable sources. Does scripture dictate preservation/conservation of the earth? This is one of those bible topics that was so presuppositional, so assumed, in ancient Israel that it is seldom mentioned.

Consider Psalm 24:1-6—

The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof

The world, and they that dwell therein.

For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods.

Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His holy place?

He that has clean hands and a pure heart

Who has not lifted his soul up to vanity nor sworn deceitfully

He shall receive the blessing from the Lord

And righteousness from the God of his salvation

This is the generation of them that seek Him

That seek thy face, o God of Jacob. Selah

Racism and antiwelfare manifest themselves in myriad ways. What better way to build up white America but to convince poorer whites that their poverty is somehow related to increased prosperity of non-whites, spearheaded by a health insurance program promoted by the black president. But is it conservative? What does it conserve?

If the whole earth belongs to God, how can we even consider using it up? Does a person with “clean hands and a pure heart” willfully take that which belongs to another person and ignore the rightful possessor? What if the owner is God Himself? 

* * *

In the world of liberal Judaism, civil rights were seen as a necessary part of social progress. In confirmation class, we listened to speakers from the black communities. My dad’s family had spent three years in Dallas as California transplants during the Great Depression. He and his sister had stepped aside on a sidewalk to let an elderly black couple pass. A car full of rednecks drove up and let them know in no uncertain terms, “Don’t you go messing with our niggers.” I grew up believing that conservatism is a cover for racism and greed. I still do.

We had opportunities for racism. Our main in-house contact with blacks consisted of interactions with domestic workers. I remember being hospitalized at the age of ten. The vast majority of nurses that I saw were black females. I distinctly remember thinking of them as ‘maids.’

What cured me? Attending an integrated high school certainly helped. Doing political work on the ‘no on 14’ campaign—which sought to keep the (anti-discriminatory) Rumford Fair Housing Act—showed me that southern style racism was alive and well in California.

The best experiences came while caddying at age 15 at the public golf course. The caddy master, who was black, got 50 cents a bag from each caddy’s take. I was considered a class “B” caddy. About 90% of class “A” caddies were black males. They made more money than I did per bag, and most of them carried two at a time, a fete I tried once and vowed never to repeat. Oh, blessed subservience and role reversal!

* * *

What do “conservatives” want to conserve? If we seek to conserve the truth and value of scripture, then we must consider the entire revelation of God. Commands such as “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” and “be ye filled with the Spirit” provide needed encouragement. To Christians who lead difficult lives, the promises of God are indeed “precious.”

What do we do with those promises that we don’t like? What if we lack scriptural support for doctrines that we zealously follow? If “all scripture is God-breathed,” as Paul writes, then a truly ‘conservative’ approach to scripture requires that we seek the full counsel of God. Consider pro-life. Understand: This writer hates abortion. When I hear Phil Keaggy singing, “Who will speak up for the little ones, helpless and half-abandoned,” I often start to cry. I survived an aortic aneurism several years ago, and I have become weepier when considering spiritual truths.

In most contexts, I enjoy my new weepiness, but there are pitfalls. First Corinthians 2 speaks of the “natural” man being unable to receive truths from the Holy Spirit. “Natural” translates the Greek ‘psuchichos,’ meaning “of the soul,” or soulish. When we treat scripture “as we feel like doing so,” verses may be yanked from context and used selectively. As an example, consider the pro-life group’s use of scripture. They routinely cite King David’s affirmation (from Psalm 139) that God ‘knew me in my mother’s womb’ as proof that life begins at conception, abortion is murder, and all non-pro-lifers must be stopped by whatever means possible. Pro-life becomes (sub)cult(ure). Pro-lifers posit that those who oppose blanket prohibition of abortions are not real Christians. Does David’s statement prove that life begins at conception? Emotions are tricky—especially when they echo and misapply thin or non-existent scripture. How do we get from one verse to accusing our brothers and sisters of murder?

When we misapply scripture, we hardly conserve it. What if we change a verse, or ignore a crucial-but-unattractive passage completely? Consider Ephesians 4:17, “Don’t walk as the gentiles walk, in vanity of mind.” In over 45 years of church-sponsored services and bible study, I have yet to encounter any citing of Ephesians 4:17. Some translations deceptively add an other before ‘gentiles.’ This is not supported in the original language.

When (mis)translators changed ‘gentiles’ to ‘other gentiles,’ they completely altered the meaning of Ephesians 4:17. The Ephesians were not to walk as gentiles. The clear conclusion: They were to walk as Jews. In Romans, Paul speaks of gentiles as ‘grafted in’ to Israel. Joining Israel? This questions the truth of what has become a Christian article of faith—that Christianity is all-new, that it has even replaced Israel/the Jews in the plan of God—permanently.

With the latter approach, with some profit but little prophet, we focus on the precious promises of God. A conservative approach also requires that some verses be ignored—or altered. Myriad verses show Israel’s misbehaviors. Israel’s history is largely locked up in scripture, so the writers could not lie. Most writers of American history prettify their subject by soft-pedaling our racist past as well as our offenses against the poor. Then, we compare Israel’s honest history to our whitewashed version, and we conclude that we are somehow better those Jews.

What is supported? In God’s program for His people, Jews and gentiles are supposed to need each other. Jewish willfulness alone is a recipe for disaster. Gentile silliness? Look at Trump. In the first generation after Jesus’s death, church leaders foolishly separated themselves from any positive identity with Israel. In a world of rapidly expanding knowledge (Daniel 12:4) and resulting desire for stability, we must define what we wish to conserve. Otherwise, mankind faces the grave danger of reaping the whirlwind.