On the Subject of Fundamentalist Scandals

So I'd been thinking about this for a while now, and I think I now understand why it is that Governor Sanford, who left his state in secret for five days to visit his mistress in Argentina, refuses to resign. In the same way, I'm also pretty sure I know why Senator John Ensign of Nevada refuses to resign. Simply put, it's because doing so would, in their eyes, be acting against God's will.

An explanation is required. Both Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign are more or less fundamentalist Christians. Even more, they are heavily influenced by 'The Family,' a strain of Christian fundamentalism that apparently weds the language and appearance of the gospel to a version of the explicitly anti-Christian philosophy known as Objectivism. They are a sect which has determined that to feed the hungry, to care for the sick, and to visit those in prison is a waste of time, and the group that really needs our love and service and compassion are the rich and the powerful, who are, according to this creed, the foundation of our society, the virtuous ones who innovate and produce jobs for everyone else, etc. It's sort of a 'prosperity gospel meets Ayn Rand and makes sweet sweet love while crushing organized labour beneath its boot heel.' When they speak of serving the poor, or having a heart for the poor, they mean serving powerful businessmen and having a heart for powerful members of congress: the 'poor in spirit.' The poverty of the spirits of businessmen and members of congress may even be well established, but that's hardly what Jesus was talking about, and is, of course, neither here nor there.

As dictated by their fundamentalist faith, these men do not believe that they were put into power by their constituents. No, it was God who appointed them to their current posts. They are His elect, you see. His chosen. It was His hand which guided the election, explicitly not the votes of everyday people. They are therefore, in their own minds, not answerable to the people, but only to God. To resign now would be to act against the will of God that they use the positions to which they were divinely mandated to receive for the advance of the cause of His kingdom on Earth, and is therefore impossible.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Theocracy or bust, and no amount of naysaying will convince them of anything else. Come face to face with their own moral bankruptcy? Well, God's only testing them. Testing their resolve, and their willingness to submit to his will and to remain in the office to which He appointed them. And besides, God doesn't care about whether or not they've shown themselves to be hypocrites, or whether or not they're virtuous men. God just cares that they're obedient men, doing the work for which they have been Chosen. And by their own reckoning, they are.

It's disgusting, yes. Hypocritical, yes. Unexpected? Hardly.

The Torture Memos

In all seriousness, I've been reading the torture memos lately, and what amazes me about them is the sheer clinical banality of... I'm not sure. Evil, maybe. This is not the work of barbarians, but of civilized men with well-scrubbed hands. These men, while discussing a very real, very horrifying act, while discussing a victim being tortured on a table, dissemble. They split hairs. They try to justify their actions. They argue that 'pain' cannot be considered to be a distinct concept from 'suffering,' and therefore because Waterboarding inflicts no physical pain, it also inflicts no 'suffering,' and therefore cannot be said to constitute inhumane treatment, or cruel or unusual punishment.

... and I look upon this, and I see people arguing back and forth, I see people arguing for and against, I see them making the inevitable good points on whether or not waterboarding can be said to inflict pain and suffering, and I see the inevitable result: the victim remains strapped to the table, and continues to be waterboarded.

There is a time for debate. It has passed. Now it is time to arrest the criminals who have so freely confessed to having tortured, having approved torture, having ordered torture, and to have them stand trial in a court of law.

We must, must, MUST prosecute. We must establish once and for all that even when the country's legal authorities themselves act unlawfully, they are still subject to the law. And we must establish that we are not a country which will allow such barbarism to be carried out in her name. Otherwise, we're no better than the very fanatics the Bush administration claims to have embraced barbarism to oppose.

Why I am Pro-Choice

I originally posted this as a comment on someone else's blog, in response to their question of how a Christian who supposedly believes that human life is sacred could possibly support abortion. After some urging from my brother, I've decided it's worth posting here as well. I'm going to tell you why, as a Christian, I am pro-choice.

First, I'm going to say off the bat that I am against abortion. I think abortion is a very big deal, is terrible, and that every time an abortion happens, a human life is ended before it can begin. However, I also believe that life should be brought into the world freely, not under duress. That is, I believe in free will.

When I look at the two alternatives, both of them terrible, I find the second worse than the first. While abortion is awful, looking into the eyes of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy and telling her, “You have no choice. We are going to make you carry this baby to term, whether you like it or not. We’re going to force you to have it, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop us,” is in my mind incomparably worse. Such is my horror at this utter negation of her personhood, this reduction of herself into little more than a glorified baby-factory, that I would rather abortion be legal and safe than put any woman through this kind of … rape. My horror of it is such that I must guard against the danger of thinking the pro-life position to be monstrous, understanding that it is held by those with no less moral conviction.

Perhaps there are holes in that argument. Perhaps it is overly emotional. But you must understand that my position is no less rooted in a strong sense of right and wrong than yours, and no less the product of intense emotion.
Yes, having a baby is the natural consequence of procreation. But we live in a time in which our science, outstripping our wisdom, perhaps, has given us not only the ability, but also the responsibility to decide when or when not to allow things to follow according to their natural consequences. In the literal sense of the word, it is an awful power, but it is ours, for better or for worse. Yes, we are responsible for our actions. Yes, it is arguably ‘against nature’ (if you hold to a concept of Natural Law) to abort a baby. None of that undoes the horror of the alternative. Abortion grieves me, and I wish that it never happened, but the alternative horrifies me more than I can possibly express.

God will judge, and judge justly, whether we were right or wrong. In the meantime, we must do as our consciences demand, and pray that when it comes our time to die, the mercy we have in Christ extends even to decisions like these.