There has been no shortage of
interesting events lately. Take the recent comments by Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo)
discussing rape, pregnancy, and abortion rights. Or take the not-as-recent
remarks by President Obama that he personally thinks that homosexual couples
should be permitted to marry. Or the half-gaffe that VP Joe Biden made,
apparently to a mixed race crowd at a recent rally, in which he insinuated that
the republican party wished to “put [them] back in chains.” Or take the
several-weeks-old comments by Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy regarding
homosexuality and gay marriage. These sorts of events are fodder for this blog.
It seems to me that when controversial remarks are made by prominent figures
concerning high-profile or significant ideological topics, immediately, like
those magnetic kids’ games, all the little steel flakes get sucked off to
either one side or the other. This seems to be a reflexive rather than a
reflective movement, and the respective sides soon commence the spin cycle of
justifying what was said, or of defending the person who said it, or of
accusing the other side of politicizing it, or accusing the media of warping
the facts and stirring up trouble by incessantly covering it. And it happens
with reflexive wagon-circling, that the truth often takes the hindmost. But for
me, the truth always must take the foremost position.
I am an Evangelical Christian who identifies
with no particular political party. I have voted for both liberals and conservatives.
Part of my motivation for writing about sizzling issues like these is that it
seems to me nationalism and “us-vs.-themism” is creeping into the American church. And if
it creeps into Church mentality and church practice, invariably it will
infiltrate our theology, and subsequently our presentation of the Gospel. This
should never be permitted to happen. There are, however, pragmatic reasons for
writing this blog as well, such as the belief that a quarrelling people are
less productive, less protective of the weak among them, more self-centered
than a people group the members of which seek to work together toward a common
good. It is so easy to imbibe an ideology, to allow it to become bone of your
bone and flesh of your flesh, and to forget or never to have known what reasons
there were for accepting it in the first place. These ideologies and their pronouncements
about social issues are icons of a sort, and as the name of this blog suggests,
they deserve to be challenged and, if necessary, destroyed.
