Wednesday Miscellany: On Freedom and Curiosity
So, another Trump presidency. Today, I have very conservative Christian friends and acquaintances who are exultant and triumphant. I have very progressive Christian friends and acquaintances who are utterly crestfallen and/or enraged. As anyone who has read this blog for more than a minute likely knows, I have a deep and abiding suspicion of politics on both the right and the left, a disdain for the way in which politics has become little more than tawdry entertainment and has hollowed out our social discourse, and a profound concern that for too many Christians, politics has become their religion. But I’ve written about at least some of these matters before, so I won’t go there today.
Today, I will simply offer this. If the only thing that we take away from yesterday’s result is either, “Wow, I can’t believe that half the country is even more evil and stupid than I thought!” or “Wow, it feels so amazing to have thoroughly defeated all those evil stupid people!” then it may be time to start being a bit more curious and asking better questions about our neighbours. If we (and by “we,” I am of course referring both to Americans and the rest of us who live vicariously through their culture wars) don’t start asking better questions, genuinely trying to understand our neighbours in non-condescending and self-righteous ways, we will just keep reproducing this pathetic cycle of revenge politics.
I’m not optimistic about any of the preceding, mind you. Revenge politics is enormously entertaining and profitable. And it taps into some of our most primal desires and instincts. It feels better to hate our enemies than to try to love them. So, on with the show, I guess.
***
I saw a photo yesterday from somewhere deep in red America. Two people side by side wearing political t-shirts, one saying “Trump 2024” the other saying “Jesus Christ, 2024.” My guess is that these people imagined they were on the same team. Underneath the latter, it said “Only Jesus Christ Can Save this Nation.” Indeed.
While waiting for the guys to arrive in the chapel at the jail on Monday I picked up a bible and began leafing through it. Sometimes people try to leave messages (or worse) in the bibles. We’re supposed to be at least a little suspicious. I paused in the gospel of Mark as there was some writing in the margins beside 10:45:
For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
In the margins, someone had written: FREE ME.
A cheeky reference to wanting Jesus to unpick the lock of the jail? Perhaps. More likely, a deep longing to be free of the burdens of the past, the captivity of addiction, the crippling weight of sins committed and endured. Earlier in the day, I had met with two men who desperately wanted to leave their addictions behind but had failed over and over and over again. One of them wept as he told me his story. The guilt, shame, and hopelessness were palpable.
I said a silent prayer these two men. And for whoever wrote those words in the margins of the chapel bible. FREE ME.
Before putting the bible back on the shelf, I read the verses that immediately preceded verse 45:
Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.
The one t-shirt wearer was right, if probably not in the way they thought. Only Jesus Christ can save America. Or any of us. From our idols (political or otherwise), from our selves, from our preening self-righteousness, from our guilt and our shame. From our sins.
***
Speaking of freedom and curiosity…
I was talking with a friend over coffee yesterday about how our theologies “age.” We don’t (and probably shouldn’t) think precisely the same in our late forties as we did, say, in our twenties. Hopefully as time goes on, we grow up, pick up a few better categories, leave some things behind, etc.
I thought back to an experience I had at university. I was very excited about this new thing called “Open theism,” the idea that maybe God doesn’t know the future because the future isn’t a thing that can be known. This, I imagined, took God off the hook for the problem of evil. It also allowed for “meaningful human freedom.” We, with God, would shape the future! How wonderful. And added to these delights was the pleasure of heaping scorn upon Calvinists and any other pitiful souls who believed in a micro-managing, puppeteer God.
I wrote a very impressive paper on this and submitted it to my religious studies professor. I got an A. I was very pleased with myself. I went to talk with the professor, stupidly imagining that he was probably equally pleased with me. I yammered on for a few minutes about the topic. He listened politely. When I was done, he smiled and said, “You made your case reasonably well, but let me know what you think in twenty years. Let’s see how well this ages.” Like the rich young ruler, I walked away sad for I imagined that I possessed great theological wealth.
Fast forward twenty years or so. My professor was, of course, absolutely correct. Open theism has not aged particularly well. I can’t think of very many people who take it seriously or who have even talked about it in the last decade. It hasn’t aged well in the academy but more importantly it hasn’t aged well in my own spiritual journey. I am no longer (arrogantly) driven to come up with some rational system that explains how evil coexists with an all-knowing and all-loving God in a nice tidy theological package. I care far less about human freedom these days and far more about a God who knows all and sees all and loves all and can be trusted with the fate of the world and my soul. I’m happy to leave some things—many things, actually!—in the theological box marked “mystery.” I look forward to our freedom being overruled.
Perhaps another way of saying all this is, I probably should have been a bit more curious in my twenties about how people could be so obviously stupid as to not take human freedom as seriously as I did.
In theology, as in politics, as in life with other humans, we would be well-served to be far more curious than we often are.
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Well, Ryan, as you know, I’ve always appreciated your writing. And, of course, your call to more curiosity here is well-founded. But may I invite–with respect– the same of you for those of us who may be crestfallen this morning after the election, truly lamenting, or perhaps even angry? Somehow your disdain, your wide-swath judgment about and admonitions to those who become involved in these matters of politics, simply doesn’t land well for me at this moment, and I would like to say as much.
I have no disdain for anyone, Dora, nor do I have any judgment for those who choose to engage in politics. I am simply weary of the predictable avenues that our discourse takes, our reactions and counter-reactions, our vilifying and caricaturing of those who do not share our views, etc. This, it seems to me, is a losing game, to say nothing of what I see as the more substantive problem of many Christians treating politics as religion (on the right and the left), as the primary domain in which our hopes, fears, victories, and defeats are negotiated.
I of course sympathize with those who are sad and angry today just as I would want to urge a lot more self-reflection and humility for those who are exultant. I, too, was hoping that the world would be spared another Trump presidency. But the needle on the bitter polarization of our cultural moment will never move unless and until we at least try to move in the direction of our enemies, to understand what animates them, what they aspire to, what they might be afraid of or anxious about, etc.
For what it’s worth, I do try to be curious and to ask questions across the political and ideological divide. As I said in the post, I have friends and acquaintances that cover pretty much the entire breadth of the progressive to conservative spectrum. I try to listen well, to understand, to seek common ground, to see things from the vantage point of others. I of course don’t always get it right, but I do see it both as a fairly essential pastoral muscle to exercise as well as a basic human duty for all of us who live in these times.
Thanks.
Media has been manufacturing a narrative for some time and only one side of the political spectrum controls that narrative and seeks to censor it’s critics.
In my honest opinion if anyone doesn’t see the globalist threat to democracy, an emerging one world order authoritarianism and a long term strategy to severely depopulate the world, I don’t think their seeing the truth about the real powers that operate in the west.
Rather than regret another Trump presidency I’m hoping history sees this 2nd term as the turning point that saved Judeo-Christian culture in the west. The key will not be Trump but rather, who follows Trump as the next president of the United States.
There is cause for hope. Rather than being a political neophyte who was reviled by Dems and viewed with great suspicion by the GOP establishment, Trump is vastly more experienced and has attracted some of the best and brightest in America.
Musk, RFK, Gabbard and others are clearly people of great intelligence, energy and morality. Their political instincts emerge from wanting to do what is right and just for the people and not grounded in partisan talking points.
We are better off today than we were before this election but the enemy is powerful and will stop at nothing.
Time and the true strength of our faith, will determine if we even have a faith to pass on to future generations.
I, too, am deeply concerned about the role that media, in all its various forms is playing in our world.
Musk has saved it. A new generation will need to recreate it. Legacy media needs to be ignored.
I voted for Harris, reluctantly. No party aligns well with my values. I decided ahead of time, whatever the results, to practice detachment. With malice toward none, with charity for all, as Lincoln said. My citizenship is in heaven.
I’ve always felt that people should be able to vote for whoever they wish, without being judged or condemned, or having to offer an explanation. People have their reasons, which make sense only to themselves.
Your words on being curious remind me of the dart scene from Ted Lasso. He praises curiosity.
Peace, Chris
I get your reluctance, Chris. I feel it nearly every time I go to the ballot box here in Canada. So often, voting feels like an exercise in voting for the least terrible option. You are wise to remind us of where our citizenship ultimately lies.
The dart scene in Ted Lasso is awesome.