Maikimo.net taxonomy tags

With Sojourners, I assess that the 2006 budget bill passed by the Senate yesterday — at Christmas! — is immoral because it cuts spending for those among us least able to sustain further financial burden, even as U.S. military spending spirals out of control ($6 billion per month on Iraq alone).

That my senator Bill Frist declared this vote “Victory No. 1” conveys more to me than he probably intended.

Because the bill has been amended, the House of Representatives must vote on it again soon. Hence with full sincerity I write to my representative again today:

As a person of faith from Tennessee, I ask you to please vote NO on the new budget bill that the Senate passed. Please do not take away health care from low-income families, the elderly, and others, as this budget will do.

I believe the scriptural wisdom, “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God” (Proverbs 14:31).

As a U.S. taxpayer, I want to help my neighbor in need. In contrast, I do not want my tax dollars going into the bottomless pit of military spending.

Yes, be vigilant about controlling federal spending, but please do it in a way that accrues blessing according to the Bible, not a curse.

Thank you.
Mike

We can do better than this. And indeed we must, else “God bless America” will be drained even further of meaning and likelihood.

Magnificent quote of the day from The Village Gate:

Ultimately, this election persists in becoming an intelligence test for the American people. It’s not only on policy matters, either. Do we still have the moral discernment to detect the difference between a total fake and a flawed but honorable and competent human being?

I think it’s also a test of Have We Learned Anything? Has our attending church all these years (for those of us who have) been for naught if we still can’t discern wheat from chaff? Wheat-sowers from weed-sowers? Fertile ground from hardpan? Figs from no figs? (Or, to go extrabiblical here, cattle from hat?)

Thanks, Allen. This is what I was trying to say, though not achieving this succinctness, in last month’s The elect on Judgment Day.

2004-09-02 update: In addition to Allen’s election-as-intelligence-test and my election-as-life-learning-test, William Saletan at Slate powerfully makes the case (in the wake of Zell Miller et al. at the RNC) that the election has become “a referendum on your right to hold the president accountable,” which, given that in a democracy the president works for us and we can fire him for poor performance, “a referendum on democracy.”

Thom Hartmann discusses well the differences between conservative vs. liberal perceptions of morality:

[Conservatives] define [morality] first and foremost in terms of personal behavior: What goes on in people’s bedrooms, what drugs others may be taking in their own living rooms, whether a woman should be allowed to prevent or terminate a pregnancy. In their fervor for these issues, many conservatives think they are the only ones concerned about morality in an otherwise decadent society. …

While personal morality is key in the conservative world-view, public morality is the overarching concern of liberals. Some are so passionate about this morality that they’re led to acts of civil disobedience.

Then Thom mentions a most compelling reason for conservative Christians to rethink/expand their understanding of morality, IMO: Jesus, according to the Gospels, indisputably emphasizes public morality:

Perhaps best summarized in Jesus’ description in Matthew 25 of who will (and who won’t) get into heaven, liberal morality asks: “Are the hungry fed? Does everybody have the housing, clothing, and health-care they need? Are those in prison treated humanely? Are we caring for the “strangers” — the less fortunate or less competent among us — in the same way we’d want to be cared for if we fell on hard times?”

Many liberals would say that what people do in [their] private lives is their own business, and that if we hold to the ancient standard that only those among us without sin may cast stones at those with personal failings, we’ll have a more humane and decent society.

It’s not that personal morality isn’t important. It is. But it’s not a useful behavioral emphasis because we’ve all fallen short. Personal morality is a fruit of the Spirit, an ongoing outcome of a changed life; it’s nothing we can effort into place. (As Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Bennett are learning.)

Public morality, OTOH, is a behavioral choice that’s crucial toward effecting a just and sustainable society. That is, if you’re theologically inclined, toward effecting the real Kingdom of God. Hence, it’s the kind of morality Jesus emphasizes we’ll be judged for.

What I observe here in the U.S., to my dismay and revulsion, is a thoroughgoing lack of public morality among loud conservatives in general and the Bush Administration in particular. There’s no excuse, and there’s no hiding: more and more, by their fruit we recognize them. The time of playing along that black is white, up is down, is drawing to a close.

See also related Farai Chideya encouragement, Avoiding the Rush to Gloat.

2003-10-28 update: Bob Herbert in a New York Times op-ed illustrates present intra-U.S. consequences of this Administration’s lack of public morality quite clearly IMO (also archived at Truthout).

And absolutely square-on to the point: Bill Moyers interviews Union Theological Seminary’s Joseph Hough —

There is a definite intentional move on the part of political leadership in this country … [that] is not at all compatible with the prophetic tradition in Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. And that is the obligation on the part of people who believe in God to care for the least and the poorest. That central teaching, that sacred code, I think, is very well summed up in Proverbs [14:31] where the writer of Proverbs says, “Those who oppress the needy insult their maker.”