What Does Big Government Have to do with Jesus?

by Lisa Sharon Harper 10-13-2009

“I’m here to stand up for Jesus,” said the anti-health reform protester to a CNN correspondent. “Government is getting too big.”

What does big government — or small government, for that matter — have to do with Jesus?

Non sequiturs like the one above are demonstrating to the world just how twisted the faith of many Jesus “followers” has become. Faith is being trumped by fear-based Left Behind hysteria mixed with a hefty dose of political ideology.

So here is a gift to the Blue Dogs; a cheat-sheet to help them navigate the syncretistic Conservative/dispensationalist worldview they may encounter back home:

Small government = Jesus
Big government = the anti-Christ
Small government = individual freedom and the American Way of Life = Jesus
Big government = communism, socialism, despotism, fascism, and all the isms you could possibly think of — except racism and sexism, of course. (“True Americans” don’t care about those).
Small government = apple pie and baseball and pick-up trucks and gun racks and cheerleaders = Jesus.
Big government = death camps, tribulation, all that is evil, and all that is un-American

My Christian faith sprang to life in a birth-place of fundamentalist America — South Jersey. I remember the first time I saw the 1970’s rapture movie, Thief in the Night. In Russell S. Doughten’s end-times thriller, a lone electric razor buzzed in the sink when all God’s children were beamed up to heaven without warning. The Rapture had come and the Anti-Christ ruled the earth. U.N.I.T.E. (United Nations Imperium for Total Emergency) marked every person left behind with the “mark of the beast.” (Note: fear of “big government”.) In response, young people across the U.S. turned to Jesus for fear of missing the Rapture and being caught in the web of the anti-Christ’s big government.

Then, in 1998, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins passed the torch to the next generation. The Left Behind series, 16 best-selling novels-turned-films, warned of the Rapture and the rise of the Anti-Christ, a Romanian leader of the United Nations.

This same compromised movement has recently proposed a ludicrous new version of the Bible, the Conservative Bible Project. Right now, they are working to change the scripture’s language by taking out all hints of a “liberal” agenda and replace the words of Jesus, and Moses, and Luke, and James, and Amos, and Isaiah, and Micah, etc. with conservative-friendly lingo. Okay, can they get any more obvious? Can the faith get more twisted?

Significant swaths of Blue barking constituents have been influenced by LaHaye and will thump self-constituted Conservative Bibles at rallies coming soon to super malls everywhere. So, with all the ranting back home, the Dogs of congress might be feeling backed into a corner.

Here’s a Blue clue. It is possible to be a true-blue conservative and support monumental change that honors the role of government in civil society.

Sam Tanenhaus, author of the book The Death of Conservatism, explained in Newsweek (August 29, 2009), “Mature, responsible conservatism honors America’s institutions, both governmental and societal.” According to Tanenhaus, the conservative movement commenced its slow death when it veered from founder Edmund Burke’s call to be enslaved to no ideology. Rather, Burke said, take stock of societal changes and adjust for the good of the conservation of civil society and “a state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.” William F. Buckley Jr. followed Burke’s lead throughout the turbulent 1960s, choosing the stabilization of society rather than ideological loyalty. Now it’s the Blue Dogs’ turn.

Everyone agrees, we must reform the health insurance industry and control sky rocketing insurance costs. The American business sector, the middle class, seniors, and especially the working poor will be broken by the health industry’s escalating costs within the next generation if we don’t act now. For the sake of civil society, Blue Dogs must follow their constituents’ founder, Edmund Burke. They must be a slave to NO ideology. They must do whatever is necessary to conserve civil society — even if what is necessary is monumental systemic change … the kind of change that includes a strong public option.

Lisa Sharon Harper is the executive director of New York Faith & Justice and author of Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican … or Democrat.

Categories: Faith and Politics, Health

RadicalChristianLibrarian

It's so difficult to do and requires a boat load of grace. I literally made this same friend have to take a chill pill after a conversation in the run up to the election. She was pressing me on the Bill Ayers nonsense and Obama's former pastor, asking me if it bothered me. I said "No, it doesn't. It's guilt be association. Besides, is really silly, just a silly argument." She went apoplectic and, I'm serious, I went into the grocery store and she went back to the car to take a tranquilizer.

I felt SO bad. Here she was, nice enough to give me a ride so I could buy groceries (my bicycle is my only mode of transportation) and I'm making her so upset. I called her the next day to apologize, that I didn't mean to make her so upset and she said oh no, please, don't apologize, I do it to myself. She is hilarious and we laugh big and generally have a great time together. So I really don't want anything to come between us. Our friendship means more than being right or proving a point.

On the other hand, you have a point about not being silent. I think this is why, when I'm pressed, I just have to counter lies with truth when I encounter them. I hope that one day we'll be able to have conversations about everything- that nothing would be off limits.

Fox News is an agent of the devil.

sgillesp

I don't know, folks. It seems to me if we all bite our tongues while our friends/family who are glued to Fox News assert what they believe to be true, they have no way of knowing they aren't in the majority, and quite possibly have been misled. Not looking for smackdowns in the middle of Thanksgiving Dinner, but I'm beginning to think we ought to be gently letting the apoplectic Christian population know there is another way.

sgillesp

but I don't believe that the vast majority of Christians who oppose Obama's health care plan don't actually believe this stuff. Unfortunately, the Christians I know who oppose Congress's health care plans (Obama doesn't have one yet) say all these same things, like they're reading from cue cards. It's very, very discouraging. I'd like to hear from 10 Christians who oppose Congress' health care plans and DON'T quote any Republican talking points, much less, Rush, Sean or Glenn.

Stein

I quite agree with what you say here about freedom. It makes a lot of
sense to me.

We were talking about a free market economic system. Your easy shift
from that to talking about freedom in the abstract leads me to conclude
that you implicitly equate the two topics. Justifying the free market
system by extolling the virtues of freedom assumes up front that the
free market is the only or the best way in which freedom is practiced
(or achieved?).

I disagree with the assumption.

I am NOT interested in pursuing a long discussion about the relationship
between freedom and free market economics and the Gospel. I propose
that we agree to disagree and move on.

xfree9

You pretty much made my point for me. It's not that deep, really. The essence of an "act" by a human being means they are choosing the act. We profit by every act, even if that profit is merely internal and makes us feel good. Abstaining from an extra piece of dessert may seem like a "loss," but the choice was made because, at the moment of decision, the alternatives were less appealing.

The point is, you cannot divorce self-interest from choice. Even Christ's death on the cross benefitted him because it glorified the Father. God is glorified by the pleasure we seek in God. The more pleasure we find in God, the more God is glorified. So the problem with self-interest is not that we seek it, but that we don't seek it in the most satisfying way: in God.

striper111

Obama is not addressing the cost problem, other than the cost of insurance premiums. There is a far bigger cost problem and that is the cost of medical care. There is nothing addressing this in anything being discussed in Congress right now. Medical care will only continue to rise, which means, even with the reform being proposed, the cost of insurance will also rise. And how is govt. going to pay for it all? You really haven't answered that question.

How can you bring insurance costs under control if you don't bring medical costs under control? Insurance has to pay for the cost of the care, and if the cost of the care is costly... well, so is the insurance.

striper111

"You don't get people saved by threatening them with eternal damnation."

I saw "Thief in the Night."
I heard about hell.
I found out about Jesus.
I believed and was "born again!!"

The fear of hell is exactly what led me to Christ.

The fear of hell is what led the criminal on the Cross to ask Jesus to remember him. He was a criminal on his death bed. He knew he was headed for hell.

Jesus saves us. From what? Damnation. Hell. Separation from him, and all that is good. The knowledge of this does, and should, produce fear, that leads people to Christ.

I wasn't raised in a Christian home, and I knew about God, but I had no knowledge of salvation and the gospel message. Hearing about hell and wondering what would happen to me after I died is what led me to the Lord, and afterwards, I grew in my knowledge, my love, and my maturity. But the initial fear is what caused me to first examine myself and question anything spiritual.

Read Revelation and see if the fear you might experience doesn't draw you to the Lord. God's wrath is a reality, and those who don't know Christ have every reason to be filled with fear, and it's our realization of God's wrath and our need for salvation that draws us to Him.

Everyone's story is different, and God works differently in people's lives. So don't discount the things that God can use to bring others to Him.

striper111

There is no Obama plan. There are about 5 plans currently being synethesized behind "closed doors," of course. And what is presented to the public could very well change behind those "closed doors."

Reports have, though, been coming out about the fact that taxes, mainly on the middle class, will increase, and premiums will go up tremendously. Medicare will be cut, abortion will be funded, and care will be rationed-- this is all clearly spelled out in the Baucus plan, the one that was most recently voted on.

We are naive to think that escalating costs will be "limited." And we are in for a sore awakening if we tell ourselves that lie. With more people being covered, and coverage being provided by a government with a trillion dollar defecit, costs will go up, and coverage will be cut. We will basically pay more for less.

As for "suffering lives," there will still be plenty of "suffering lives" with the new govt. plans. In fact, reports are saying that there will still be 25% of Americans still not covered.

Basically, what's going to happen with this plan is that the poor will get their coverage and the middle class won't. The middle class will be the ones unable to afford the premiums they'll be forced to pay so that coverage can be provided for the poor.

This has been Obama's goal from the beginning. The poor, after all, vote for him. The poor, are the ones dependent on govt, and who vote Democrat because they buy into the belief that all these Democrat programs... welfare, free health care, etc... are good for them. And the middle class, will be the ones footing the bill, while meanwhile, their own families will suffer and they will be unable to afford health care because their premiums and taxes will rise, and they will also continue to lose jobs.

Let's get real about this and not use all these metaphors about "God being crushed to earth." There's so much more to this than meets the eye, and it's foolhardy to believe that the end outcome is going to cover everyone, help everyone, and limit costs. It won't. It can't. Government doesn't have the money for it to.

And sadly, we're all going to find that we'd be "better off" being poor and on welfare because those who are will have far more "perks" (and far less taxes) than those who work and pay for things. That is ultimately the direction that this nation is headed.

striper111

"The U.S. government isn't the Church, and it isn't God."

And it's mind-boggling the way that people look to govt. as if it is indeed God! We have a God who is so much greater than government, who can do so much more for us when we trust and obey Him; yet people, since the beginning of time, reject him and would rather look to man to help them.

In the O.T. (1 Samuel 8), the people of Israel demanded a king. Demanded and demanded. They rejected God. They wanted a man. They wanted to be like other nations. Finally, God said "Fine" BUT... !! There was a very big "BUT." God gave them their king, but told them that basically they would become enslaved. Enslaved by taxes, tyrnanny, and man's power.

Are we any different? NO!

And after Samuel told them what life would become like under the King's power, he said, "When that day comes, you will beg for relief from this king you are demanding, but then the Lord will not help you. But the people refused to listen to Samuel’s warning. “Even so, we still want a king,” they said." 1 Samuel 8: 18, 19

RadicalChristianLibrarian

I'm not sure I agree with you and the impossibility of a truly selfless act. Although it is food for thought. Cynical, but food for thought nonetheless.

I suppose a case could be made that the only truly selfless act in history was the Cross. That humans are self-centered by nature and will act accordingly. I still believe that if Christ lives within us, that we are capable of acts of selflessness- without expectation of reward. Although a reward may come afterward, in the form of feeling good about "doing good," I still believe that many people commit acts of selflessness without this expectation beforehand.

Your point does make me question my own motivations, however.

xfree9

Upon further reflection, I think what I'm trying communicate is that advocating a society where people are free is not irreconcilable with the message of the gospel just because it gives consent to a structure whereby people are free to choose not to follow Jesus. I'm perfectly comfortable with people choosing to not follow Jesus or behave in a manner according to the gospel. When I was a teacher, one of my elementary students asked, "Why doesn't God make people love him?" to which I responded, "Do you really want somebody to like you because you made them, or because they want to like you?" They immediately got the point.

xfree9

I don't believe that is the core of free market principles. Don't confuse the liberty to pursue one's own ambitions with the responsibility to pursue one's own interests ethically. Liberty is not license.

As a human being interested in the rights of others, I advocate liberty. As a Christian, I advocate that anyone who wishes to find true freedom will find it in the self-pleasure of serving others to the glory of God. No act can be entirely absent self-interest.

Stein

I'm also not a philosopher or economist.

The very core free-market principle as I understand it (working for
one's self-interest) seems to me to be opposed to the very core of the
Gospel as I understand it (God-centered rather than self-interest
centered).

I have not yet heard you reconcile the two satisfactorily.

xfree9

I'm not a philosopher or economist by any stretch, so perhaps my brief explanation was not enough to satisfy the questions that it raised in your mind. I don't think that it is fair to say that "those who are not able to produce something of external worth will not survive," because history has proven otherwise. Under what conditions are these people living in abject poverty? Is it under freedom? Or is it under a system where bribes, favors, and political clout rule the day?

What I'm describing is not at all counter to the teachings of Jesus. I'm not advocating an externally-based value system, which is I think what you consider my brief synopsis to be.

Stein

My opinion differs from yours. No big deal. I don't want to spend a
lot of time arguing, but just let me try a little bit.

From a "true free market" perspective, acquiring that which one needs
for living depends on being able to offer something that someone else
needs. Those who are not able to produce something of external worth
will not survive. How different this is from what Jesus teaches. Some
people live in abject poverty (and misery) because their talents don't
mesh with marketable values -- and your own definition of "true free
market" convinces me that this would be even more the case there -- "can
ONLY acquire ... by offering something ... in exchange". How different
this is from what Jesus teaches.

xfree9

Self-interest is still self-centered (as opposed to others-centered) however.

You cannot separate human action from self-interest. You cannot name a single act that is others-centered and not self-centered at the same time, for even those acting out of goodness are acting because they profit from the benefit of doing good to one's neighbor. Whatever our action, we are doing it because we want to, which is inherently self-centered. That is not a bad thing. It becomes bad/evil/sin when it becomes self-centered at the expense of somebody else. that is why capitalism is the best way to restrain greed, because it forces those who would normally take advantage of the less fortunate by acquiring their possessions without offering anything in return. When upheld by rule of law, capitalism restrains greed more than any sort of arbitrary rules meant to add painkiller rather than address the source of the pain: greed.

RadicalChristianLibrarian

Isn't it terrible? The members of my immediate family are all liberal, although my brothers are more fiscally conservative than the rest of us, so we can discuss politics. Religion is another matter- I have one sister-in-law who left the Mormon religion (which I'm glad she did- she was able to marry my brother!), is an atheist, and is very sensitive to any religious talk. She feels like religion was forced down her throat. My brothers and I had the luxury of choosing our own paths as we got older- mine was from Catholicism to agnosticism and back to Christianity (of the non-denominational kind- I hate labels). So, I understand her repulsion to all things religious.

My uncle, who recently had a quintuple bypass, is so upset by Obama's election, I fear that he will give himself another heart attack. He truly believes that Obama is ruining our country, although I understand that too because I remember feeling the same way about Bush. I guess the lesson I've learned is not to take these things so seriously and to try to keep a sense of humor about things. Even though I have to sit and grit my teeth sometimes, too.

xfree9

Could you explain the "economic system" that glorifies greed? Are you referring to capitalism? Or are you referring to the current system in the U.S., which is essentially a corporatism of sorts?

We do not have a free market in the United States, yet capitalism becomes the scapegoat because we have a nominal free market. Those who are inwardly "greedy," under a true free market, can only acquire that which they want by offering something to somebody else in exchange. If I want your money or other possession, I have to give something to you in return for it. Sounds to me like a natural incentive for trade, which is the essential element in wealth creation. And from a moral standpoint, that to me is a very natural way provide incentives for "doing good" to one's neighbor.

xfree9

This article is a great example of framing the debate in a way that only shines light on one particular aspect of the opponents of a debate. The opponents of big government are cast as "dispensationalist" and out of touch exegetically and theologically, therefore (so this article seems to be saying) all believers who are against big government are simply laughable and out of touch.

While Jesus never specifically endorsed a position on the big- vs. small- government debate, his ministry demonstrated a remarkably stark contrast to the many groups of reform in his day. The Zealots, Herodians, Pharisees, and Essenes all had their own positions on reform. The Herodians wanted to cooperate with the empire. The Zealots wanted to take violent action against the State. The Essenes essentially were the "Amish" of the group. And the Pharisees were the fundamentalists who wanted everybody to be morally upright.

Jesus' mission, however, was very different, and was indeed a very political message. It provided an alternative way of life, the "kingdom," which not only challenged the revolutionary mantras of the above, but in fact changed the idea of revolutions in the first place. In part, it was a revolution of peace, of power-under servanthood, not power-over control.

Partnering with the State was not advocated by Jesus. Indeed, doing so is merely a power-over tactic. Those who cry out for social justice must come to terms with their methodology: force. Joining hands with the State in advocating the State's control over our lives is not Christian, it is not moral, and it is certainly not the message of the Kingdom of God.

From the perspective of this Christian, all this complaining about the injustices of the current health care system, with the accompanying "solutions," reveals a naiveté about basic economics and an anger toward the rest of society who simply aren't doing what they themselves would be doing were they to be in control of all our money.

Control is not Christian. Advocating a system whereby nobody can be free from that which enslaves us is another form of slavery. And contending that it a "social good" does not redeem it. An embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny.

kansasmennonite

I hear ya. I can't talk to my wife's family about politics or religion. They are extreme right wing politically and religiously. We were discussing the election and conversation led to Bush's time and I made a comment like Bush lied about the WMD's and my brother-in-law slammed his glass cup on the table (in a restaurant) and wanted to speak to stand up for Bush (actually it didn't matter whether he lied or not to me at the time but it bothered him so much that I said it). Last time we'ver spoken about politics although every time we get together I have to "bear" how bad the unions are, etc. Just grit my teeth and go on. On my side of the family we can argue and not take everything so serious and it makes wonders. My son who's staying with my sister and brother-in-law are die hard Fox news fans but my son knows this and just goes along (wonderful people otherwise).