Everyone has an opinion, especially me...

I guess this will be a little briefer than usual, but I suppose everything now demands a response. Most of my own responses are intended to reveal some sort of perceived truth. However, my facebook experiences showed me that, if truth cannot be properly articulated in less than 100 words or so, I can indeed show everybody how witty I am. Of course, this invites others to show that, I may be witty, but I am seriously misinformed. This is properly referenced by a quick google check, and some well-placed sarcasm. As it turns out, my responses to each and every event – my need to have an opinion, is really not much more than wanting to feel vindicated in my world view, and feeling victorious. I like winning.
The reality is, however, that only elections seem to be won, and everyone else is suffering losses of dignity and respect. We want to win, and when we realize that the vast array of media outlets that give us more and more opportunity to share our voice serve just as well to show us how little meaning our voices have when presented within the context of opinion and self-validation instead of servanthood.
Of course, most opinions of late have to do with the death of bin Laden at the hands of special forces. Amazingly, or, perhaps not, is that now that the end has come for this individual, there is debate over whether people should cheer for his demise, or whether the killing was legal according to international law. There is also debate over the effectiveness of torture (enhanced interrogation) in gleaning information that may have potentially led to locating the “enemy of the state.” Obviously, every Quaker needs to have an informed opinion, not only about the reach of international law, but the legality of killing, and the poor taste indicated in torture.
Yet, certain questions remain. Do all the online arguments about the moral ambiguity of war and international conflict serve to provide clarity of our own beliefs, or do they exist to mock the intellectual shortcomings of our opponents. Quick wit and straw man attacks do not an argument make, a seminary ethics instructor assured me. I would drive him crazy by calling any theologian or ethicist I disagreed with a “hack.”
In fact, to speak about the morality of killing, whether it be an assassination, by bombing, in combat, or by flying airplanes into buildings, is somewhat moot if we are not changing our lives in a manner that reflects our willingness to step back from the nature of killing and reject the benefits we receive from it. It amazes me that pacifist would speak to the morality of lethal methodology and certain weaponry, when our own moral witness is that all violence is “bad” and that we should be “better” than that. It often seems to me that Friends are properly concerned with the plight of the oppressed, but rarely concerned with the plight of our opponents, and less concerned with the self-degradation that comes from our marginalization of those we see as a threat to our beliefs.
The notion that others might cheer for,an individual’s death may indeed offend our Quaker sensibilities. But arguing in a self-righteous manner that this is a poor exhibition of human nature are failing to accept folks where they are at, and how fear drives responses as much as a thirst for vengeance. More than one Friend has indicated verbally that they feel satisfaction when a politician is pointed out as having failings, though we rarely recognize our own. The other side cheers murder and accepts torture. We simply benefit from it, and I will personally be the first to admit I have the high ground. Pass me the car keys, please, and give me more stuff. I hate torture, and murder and drones make me uncomfortable. Let’s write a minute to indicate to other Friends that we are as indignant as they are.

The Politics of Faith

Faith might be one of the more difficult things to explain to others, but it might be even more difficult to identify it in others. So many of us (and them!) seem to define faith in a manner that insists upon political manifestations of our theology. How many people voted for the current president because they felt that he was representative of “Christian” values, hoping that the faith of George Bush might somehow prompt some god to erase the evils of liberalism. Political power, while possibly a more abstract idea for some, seems to be the primary task of much of Christendom in the United States, as if though YHWH might only be made real through the ballot boxes of liberal democracy.
This is not just a problem of Republicans on their knees, however. There is much of the same behavior evident among the more left-leaning church-goers, spiritualists, and of course, Quakers. I still recall the time I ran across bumper stickers for John Kerry on the table at Meeting, and the time that some Friends engaged in vote-trading with Nader supporters in other states.
It is troubling that faith in God, or a persons’ theology, is often most visible during an election cycle. Gratefully, not many Quakers seem to suggest that their vote reflects the will of God as some other voters or politicians have done. But just the same, many of us seem to have a faith that is more informed by our personal socio-political desires than by a community of faith that reflects a revelatory experience of the divine nature.
Quite often, Friends are defending the Peace Testimony as a political construct, instead of a corporate experience of God. Of course, it might be argue that the Peace Testimony originated as a political construct - or a political necessity – and that may be true. But the foundation of the Quaker Peace Testimony is the tradition of the Believers’ Church that takes seriously the example of Jesus. It is, inherently, a statement of faith in the example of Jesus as the proper reflection of YHWH’s desire for human relationships. Without Jesus as the central aspect of our witness, the language of the Peace Testimony loses its intelligibility.
Yet, when we strive for the political implementation of our witness to peace as the primary manifestation of our faith, or the most appropriate means to an end, not only does it relieve us of the responsibility to sacrifice on behalf of our belief, it relaxes the importance of a community of faith committed solely to providing an example of faith, so that others may know what peace looks like. How dare I attempt to legislate an ethic that I cannot fully engage in as an act of faith. How dare I engage in legislating what is inherently a voluntary act of sacrifice for an individual or community.
I would like to vote for the redistribution of wealth, but I fail to properly share my own. I would like to vote for an end to war, but I so enjoy my privileged consumer status as an American. I cannot in good conscious vote my faith, because I am in no position to ask others to follow a path that I cannot navigate.
Yet, I also have certain beliefs that I try not to compromise (though I often fail). One being that, in the example of Jesus, dominance and power are located furthest from the edges of the realm of God. If Jesus is reflective of God’s desire, then loving one’s enemies and praying for those who might persecute us takes priority over the dehumanizing of political opponents as being less than God’s beloved. It takes a lot of faith to believe that God will work for peace and justice over and against the machinations of human politics. It takes even more faith to live them out alone amongst an unfaithful world. As for voting, well, it simply lends credibility to a system that thrives on domination and power.