posted by Damozel |
This social conservative gets it: ""It's the hypocrisy that people can't stand," said Michael Cromartie, a
social conservative himself who chaired the U.S. Commission on
International Religious Freedom under President Bush. "It's not the
fact that people are frail and given to sinful behavior. It's when they
try to pretend to be morally upright and end up being self-righteous
because they preach one thing and live another.""(The Politico)
Yes, that's right. I don't actually care what people get up to in the privacy of their own marriages or elsewhere with one or more consenting adults, and am prepared to feel sympathetic if they overstep, get caught out, and suffer public humiliation.
But when someone tries to impose religious and ethical values on me by writing them into law, they should expect me to assume that they at least have those values themselves.
The moment for David Vitter to stop pushing his religious/marriage agenda was the moment, whenever it was, that he himself acted in a manner that violated the sanctity of marriage, an institution he claims to consider sacred.
As Howard Kurtz points out at The Washington Post, sexual peccadilloes are not the sole province of Republicans---not by any means.(Media Notes/WaPo) The reason for the consternation (and glee) over the indiscretion of certain Republicans is due to the discrepancy between the standards they claim to represent and those they actually follow. This isn't unfair; it's inevitable. And it places the persons involved directly in the sights of Larry Flynt, who has vowed to expose hypocrisy in government. (Media Notes/WaPo)
[T]he Mark Foley scandal put the hypocrisy question on full display. The ex-congressman was, you may recall, co-chair of the caucus on exploited children even as he was sending nasty IMs to young men in the House page program. Newt, of course, was doing it with a House aide while demanding Clinton's impeachment over Monica. And the reason that Hustler was happy to out Vitter for playing speed-dial with the D.C. Madam's operation is that the Republican senator from Louisiana was an outspoken proponent of the sanctity of marriage and other moral causes. (Mrs. Vitter's seven-year-old promise to turn into Lorena Bobbitt if her husband strayed adding a certain cutting edge to the tale.)....[Flynt] along the way, back in '99, he cost speaker-to-be Bob Livingston his House seat..."(Media Notes/WaPo)
Don't these right wing Christians even read the New Testament? Even a leftward-tilting God-botherer like me understands better than they seem to why it matters more when they stumble and fall. This is why hypocrisy, particularly when backed by arrogance, is such a dangerous sin.
If there is one thing Christ is clear about, it's his detestation of hypocrisy. While teaching that God would be merciful to a repentant sinner, he himself was implacable on the subject of those who make a production of their righteousness in order to receive praise (or political power)----
From Matthew ch. 6:5:
"Be careful not to make a show of your religion before men; if you do, no reward awaits you in Heaven...When you pray, do not be like hypocrites who make a production of saying their prayers standing up in the synagogue and out on street corners for everyone to see. They have their reward already; they will receive nothing further. When you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door, and pray silently to your Father who is present in secret; and your Father who sees what is secret will reward you. In your prayers, don't babble like heathen who believe that the longer and the louder they pray, the more likely they are to be heard. Don't be like them; don't imitate them. God already knows what your needs are."
----or who focus on other people's sins rather than on getting rid of their own---
From Matthew ch. 7:5:
Don’t pass judgment on others and you won’t be judged yourself. As you judge others, so you will yourselves be judged, and whatever action you take against others will be dealt back to you. Why do you look at the speck of dust in your friend’s eye without dealing first with the huge splinter in your own? How can you say to your friend, “Let me get that speck out for you” if there is a splinter the size of a plank in your own eye? If you do, you’re a hypocrite! First, get rid of that splinter in your own eye. Only then can you see clearly enough to be helpful in getting the speck out of your friend’s.”
----or who seek the appearance of righteousness and moral superiority (and the credit for it) without addressing the mess that's inside----
From Matthew 23:7:
"You scribes and priests are accursed! You are like the resting-places of the dead, which are made white, and seem beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and of all unclean things." (Online parallel Bible)
See, even Christ was disgusted by public displays of sanctimony by those who made it their business to assess the sins of others. He pointed out something that I think we've all noticed: the sheer ludicrousness of attempting to cure the sins of others when you yourself are conspicuously lacking in righteousness. And while he was all about forgiveness, he seems to say in more than one place that he doesn't hold out much hope for people who talk the talk but don't walk the walk:
Not everyone who calls me “Lord, Lord” will enter Heaven, but only those who do God’s will. When that day comes, many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, cast out devils in your name, and in your name perform many miracles?” Then I’ll tell them to their faces: “I didn’t know you; get out of my sight, with your evil ways!”
“Why do you keep calling me “Lord, Lord”—and never do what I tell you? …If you hear and don’t act on what I say your are like a man who has built his house on a sinkhole. The house will collapse and fall with a great crash.”
I realize that in writing this I am passing judgment myself, but at least I know it is going to be dealt back to me, and that I'll pay for it.
It's a good thing if, as The Politico tells me, social conservatives are "demoralized" by the recurring scandals in their ranks. So they should be. Now is the time for them to begin examining whether they are right to attempt to write their standards of moral conduct into law in order to impose them on people who don't accept them. "The gulf between the professed values of conservative political leaders and the way some actually conduct their lives has sapped energy from a movement that was a powerful engine for the Republican Party over the past three decades." (The Politico) Thank God if it is so, and I mean that with all my God-bothering heart. Sadly, the movement's leaders aren't talking about that; instead, they're talking about how far they should go in tolerating their representative's sins.
"All politicians' private lives should comport with their public policy," said Pat Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition and a veteran social conservative activist. "Sen. Vitter is known for having very strong conservative moral values; that's what he's known for. Yes, [social conservatives] should be held to a higher standard.
"Is it hypocritical for any candidate like former Speaker Gingrich or Congressman Mark Foley, who actually worked on missing and sexually abused children?" Mahoney continued. "Yes, it is absolutely hypocritical and needs to be challenged." (The Politico)
This is admirable, but unrealistic, and misses the point. What they really need to be asking themselves is whether they should be focusing their energies on pushing a political platform instead of on the sort of work that Christ suggested is the proper province of a Christian. Gary Bauer, a former domestic policy adviser to Bush, said, ""If a voter is looking for Jesus on the Republican ticket, they're not going to find him,""(The Politico)
This is true; but fails to recognize the key point: that even if Jesus were to return, he wouldn't run for public office. That's not how he worked. He didn't try to implement widespread social change by imposing it on people; he realized that for people to become virtuous, they first have to want to be good. You can't make a society virtuous; and in fact, the respectable lawyers and priests of his time who were charged with overseeing and enforcing the law were---according to him---anything but.
Furthermore, trying to impose your own religious beliefs on others so that you can feel comfortably surrounded by (outward) righteousness is not only counter to what Christ taught; it's also counter to what the Founding Fathers intended. (BNPolitics) Those who believe that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman should behave accordingly, but they have no right to impose this definition on people who think otherwise. If they think those people are wrong, they're free to try to persuade them, but they're not free to force them to fall into line so they can feel validated in their own views. The same applies to other views on which reasonable people differ. Let them work day and night to persuade people to change their views, but they should get out of politics and stay out. (BNPolitics)
Many of us became a part of the Republican Party so that we could find a home for traditional beliefs regarding marriage and family and the sanctity of human life," said former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who is also a Baptist minister.
"If those things really don't exist in the party, then we have to ask, 'Why are we here?' Yeah, I'm a fiscal conservative as well, but that's not the only thing that motivates many of us to be involved in politics."
Maybe it's time for people like Huckabee to get out of politics and back to preaching. It's not as exciting, true; it's much harder and takes much longer; and it doesn't come with any perks such as worldly power or Monday. But it's the only way to create a virtuous or Christian society: slowly, with difficulty, one soul at a time. You can't do it by indoctrination. You have to work by example and persuasion. ocial conservatives are seeking an efficient and quick solution to the problems of society and to sin generally, and there isn't one. If they want a godly society, they need to stop trying to do it from the top down and go back to the work of winning individual hearts and minds.
I'd like to conclude with a couple of quotes from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. which are on point here. These are from the homilies of the starets (holy man) Father Zosima:
One may stand perplexed before some thought, especially seeing men's sin, asking oneself: "Shall I take it by force, or by humble love?" Always resolve to take it by humble love. If you so resolve once and for all, you will be able to overcome the whole world. A loving humility is a terrible power, the most powerful of all, nothing compares with it.....
And if, having received your kiss, he goes away unmoved and laughing at you...it means that his time has not yet come, but it will come in due course; and if it does not come, no matter; if not he, then another will know, and suffer, and judge, and accuse himself, and the truth will be made full. Believe it, believe it without doubt, for in this lies all hope and all the faith of the saint....
If the wickedness of the people arouses indignation and insurmountable grief in you, to the point that you desire to revenge yourself upon the wicked, fear that feeling most of all; go at once and seek torments for ourself, as if yourself were guilty of their wickedness. Take these torments upon yourself, and suffer them, and your heart will be eased, and you will understand that you, too, are guilty, for you might have shone to the wicked, even like the only sinless One, but you did not. If you had shone, your light would have lighted the way for others, and the one who did wickedness would perhaps not have done so in your light.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans.) The Brothers Karmazov, 319-321 ((Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
- Kuhn & Harris, GOP Fears for Credibility After Scandals (The Politico)
- Damozel, Gimme that [Real] Old-Time Religion....and that Old Time Separation Between Church and State (BNPolitics)
- Howard Kurtz, Sex, Lies, and Republicans (Media Notes/WaPo)
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