When the apostle Paul wrote the words "speaking the truth in love" in his second letter to the Corinthians, he wasn't just waxing poetic. Things weren't going great in the church - divisiveness, arguing over petty things, lots of discord (and go ahead and admit it - it's kind of nice knowing it went on back then too!) Paul was not one to refrain from calling a spade a spade, as the expression goes. But he issued two criteria for his dialogue: he spoke the truth (whether they were going to like it or not), and he spoke it not out of hatred or malice or anger, but out of something radical: love.
I find the need this Saturday morning to emulate Paul, as much as I'm able to. What had been a leisure morning sipping on a cup of coffee and checking the morning news turned kind of sour when I came across this - an article about a "letter" put out by Focus on the Family called "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America". This is a new attempt by elements of the religious right to try and scare people as they head into the polls. It's pitched as a letter from a Christian in the year 2012, looking back on four years of an Obama presidency, imagining all sorts of horrible things that have happened to our country. You can skim the letter if you dare, but it's not all that difficult to fathom the kinds of things that are conjured up, knowing the political platform of the letter's origin.
(It's not just on the presidential stage, either. Senator Elizabeth Dole from my home state of North Carolina has come out with a Youtube ad linking her challenger, Kay Hagan, to a PAC group called the Godless Americans. Interesting that the video never mentions that Hagan is, in fact, a lifelong Presbyterian and an elder in her home church in Greensboro).
I have said it before - I do not intend for this blog to become a political forum. If I did, you can bet your hanging chads that I'd be blogging once, perhaps even more each day about the wacky and exhausting political season over the past year or so, as strongly as I feel about some things. But when it comes to stuff like this letter, I do feel called as a person of faith to stand up and "speak the truth in love."
So here's the truth about the letter - it is garbage. It is nothing more than fear-mongering intended to influence you when you step into the polls on or before next Tuesday. I've commented in a previous blog about how some have tapped into our basest fears in this election (and you can read that blog right here) and how this totally flies in the face of all things Christian. "Do not fear" is a phrase repeated dozens of times throughout the history of the Old Testament, the Psalms, and even by Jesus himself.
Amazingly, this fact doesn't seem to register with organizations like the ones that wrote this letter. A significant part of their operation hinges on the understanding that there is no room for thinking or stances on certain issues that differ even slightly from their rigid platform. And that has always amazed me, since Jesus himself sought out the companionship of twelve individuals (men and women) who couldn't have been more different - zealots, tax collectors, fishermen. These weren't just people with different jobs. They were people who saw the world in extraordinarily different ways, who differed in both their religious and - dare I say - political stances. How amazing that Jesus chose as his "family" the modern-day equivalent of a motley crew of democrats, republicans, libertarians, green party members, and extremists from all ends of the spectrum. The fact that organizations like Focus on the Family seem to miss this is a mystery to me.
I've said it before: in this election season (and in all of life, really), as Christians we are most faithful when our actions (and our vote) are carried out not based on our fears but on our convictions. Over the past few months, I've engaged in many conversations with people from both parties. And I've found that the ones I enjoy most are not necessarily with people who agree with me, but with people who have thought through the issues and made a rational decision about who or what they will vote for. The conversations that are much more difficult and exasperating are with people who are hell-bent on voting against a candidate out of their fears of him or her - because there is no possibility for honest dialogue. There is no potential for "speaking the truth in love" in these kinds of situations. Which makes us no better than that Corinthian church that had Paul banging his head against the wall.
This election season has been going on forever, it seems. Hard to imagine that it will all be over in just a little more than a week. My hope and prayer is that after it's all said and done, whomever is elected to whatever office will work to heal the rifts that have been created out of our fears; and that we as a nation will strive to do the same. If that happens, then maybe there will be something after all to speaking the truth in love. As my faith calls me to do time and time again, I remain hopeful.
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