A friend forwarded me a link to an Alternet.org article “Why Are So Many Christians Conservative”.
This article by Mike Lux basically implies that conservatism is incompatible with Christianity.
Lux says; ” I decided about four decades ago that since there was no way for sure [sic] about the nature of God or the soul or all that metaphysical stuff, I wasn’t going to spend much time thinking, caring, or worrying about it.” That he hasn’t spent any time seriously trying to understand either Christianity or Conservatism is readily apparent in his views of both.
Most modern-day Christians don’t even ascribe to the “every jot and tittle” interpretation of the Bible, but Lux does….when he wants to. He jumps in and out of literal interpretation of various verses so many times that it is dizzying. Noticibly, he ascribes to the literal interpretation any time that it supports the distorted picture that he wants to paint.
From his first premise; “Conservatives believe that the rich and powerful got that way because they deserve to be, that society owes its prosperity to the prosperous, and that government’s job when they have to make choices is to side with those businesspeople who are doing well, because all good things trickle down from them.”, right down to his ending summary, Lux misrepresents, juxtapositions, takes out of context, and generally butchers any meaningful discetion of either the Bible, Christianity or Conservatism. To admit that four decades ago he walked away from trying to seriously understand the subject, and yet to expound so pompusly on it is either astoundingly arrogant, or massively ignorant, dishonest and disingenuous.
There are too many problems for me to go into detail on all of them, but just one example: Lux is blatantly dishonest in his representation of Mathew 25. Lux uses the last half of Chap 25 to show how we should help the poor. But Lux ignores the first half. Read the first 13 verses for yourself. The example is given of 5 women who “wise” and prepared for the future, and 5 women who were “foolish” and didn’t prepare. The wise women got what they were after and the foolish women missed out. And when the foolish women asked the wise women to “share” the oil for their lamps, the wise women said “no”. The next 17 verses is another story about being responsible and making the most of what you have instead of being slothful. So you see, Christianity is indeed about compassion for the poor, but it is also about being responsible and paying the price for the choices you make.
What Mike Lux fails to do (as most if not all progressives/liberals do), is achieve balance. In the 25th chapter of Mathew we have both: FIRST: A call to responsibility with the warning of the consequenses of not taking responsibility for oneself. SECOND: an admonition to help those less fortunate. Lux deliberately ignores the entire first half of the chapter and skips to the 2nd half that agrees with his dysfunctional view of the world.
Christianity is about balance:
But most of all Christianity is about getting people’s heart in the right place. My father used to tell me that if you get a person’s heart in the right place, all of the details will take care of themselves.
Lux also laments that no political decision is win-win, and that for somebody to win, somebody must lose…thus Lux admits that he views life as a zero-sum game. The world view that life is a zero-sum game is patent liberalism and progressiveness. Inherient in the “religion” of liberalism is the belief that there is only so much to go around, and that is one person becomes better off, that others by necessity have to become worse off.
Neither Christianity nor Conservatism falls for the “zero-sum” lie. True Christianity and Conservatism are the only two real, truly win-win trains of thought that I’ve ever encountered. Christians and Conservatives know that if people work together,they achieve more together than they can as individuals…but they MUST be accountable, they MUST be responsible, and if they aren’t, they MUST suffer the consequences themselves instead of expecting somebody else to suffer the consequences for them.