And this is why I won’t go into politics

I was, in fact, invited to run for a fledgling political party in a federal election many years ago. I took all of a nanosecond to turn them down — graciously, of course — largely because the sitting MP — the one I would have been running against — was an old friend. She wound up losing, anyway, as would I have, because the riding swung to the far-right on the political spectrum (actually, members of the party that won that particular election look like the “Waffle Faction”* compared to today’s far-right).

Late last week, a Liberal candidate in the current federal election made a statement about the situation in Afghanistan, in which she referred to members of the Taliban as “brothers and sisters”. The backlash — particularly in right-wing media outlets like the National Post and the Toronto Sun — was predictable, and fierce.

Earlier this summer, the leader of the Green Party faced an internal revolt for (are you sitting down?) calling for a peaceful solution in the Middle East, without taking sides. Because she did not condemn Israel and Zionism and come down firmly on the side of the Palestinians, many in her own party were in an uproar and one of their few MPs crossed the floor to sit with the Liberal government.

In the case of the Liberal candidate, Maryam Monsef — who was born in Afghanistan — was doing nothing other than what any Christian would do if criticizing another Christian: we are all brothers and sisters in Christ; even if I vehemently disagree with something another Christian advocates in the name of the Lord (and heaven knows, I do, particularly when it comes to race, women, or welcoming strangers), they are still my brothers and sisters. As Peter reminds us:

Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous;

not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing.

For

“He who would love life
And see good days,
Let him refrain his tongue from evil,
And his lips from speaking deceit.

Let him turn away from evil and do good;

Let him seek peace and pursue it.“

— 1 Peter 3:8-11

Both she and Annamie Paul, the Green Party leader, are victims of the current state of political discourse, which has degenerated in the past couple of decades to an Orwellian chorus of “Four legs good! Two legs bad!”. “Omigod! Maryam Monsef called the Taliban brothers! Doesn’t she realize that if we’re going to hate and fear them, we can’t see them as humans and especially not brothers and sisters! Hmm … maybe she’s a terrorist herself!”

Hmm … given that terrorism thrives on the people being terrorized fearing and loathing the terrorists, wouldn’t the best way to de-fang a terrorist operation be to regard the terrorists not as sub-human, radicalized automata, but as people no worse than we are? Remember this one?

Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men.

If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men.

Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.

Therefore

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
If he is thirsty, give him a drink;
For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

— Romans 12:17-21

(Sadly, many Christians forget those exhortations.)

My 8th-grade English teacher, Don Dashwood-Jones, would be turning in his grave: he taught us to construct our arguments in the “because/therefore” format: “because of X, therefore Y, and if you accept Y then therefore Z”. Today’s dialectic follows a similar pattern, although the steps take a quantum leap from X to Z.

Both Maryam Monsef and Annamie Paul can offer lengthy, well-constructed reasons behind their positions. (Ask Mayim Bialik about shaking the “anti-vax” label, because she happened to tell an interviewer that she didn’t vaccinate her children.) Sadly, in today’s culture, nobody wants to sit still long enough to hear it. Their minds are made up: their points of view sufficiently narrowed down to fit a 15-second sound bite. Maryam Monsef must be a terr-symp; Annamie Paul must be a hater of Palestinians.

Should Maryam Monsef have been more judicious in her words, particularly during an election campaign? One commentator notes that she hesitated before saying the “b-word”. Perhaps, but in speaking as she did, she brought a needed dimension to this situation.

Should Annamie Paul have toed the party line when it came to the Middle East? For one thing, she’s the leader of the party and her words should be the party line, no matter what others in the party think of it. But for another, she brings up another necessary point: that true peace is not a “zero-sum” proposition. True peace comes when both sides win. It’s the way God wants it.

Which is one reason why I wouldn’t go into politics: the horse-trading, compromising and adversarial nature of politics is, I believe, antithetical to letting God’s will be done on earth. But more than that, the current climate of diatribe rather than dialogue, of dumbing down issues to put people into camps from which one cannot stray, just doesn’t work for me.

Will we ever see a shift back to respectful disagreement and abandon the current habit of jumping on the minutiae of a position or statement? It’s something to be hoped for — prayed for — and yet, I doubt it. Jesus told us that there would be a time when “the love of many (would) grow cold,” and while we’ve seen that happen for centuries already, it’s getting worse, and getting worse faster, these days. Of course, He also said that would precede His return, and that is truly something to watch for and pray for.

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*The “Waffle Faction” was a group of members of the New Democratic Party, a social democratic movement in Canada. In the 1970s, this group demanded that the party move even further to the left and embrace what today would be called “progressive” policies.

A Face(book) of darkness?

I confess: I often look at Facebook.

That is a confession. I’ve found Facebook to be the McDonald’s of social media: lots of people go there, but no one wants to admit it.

I kind of like looking at the silly things some people post: one former radio colleague comes up with a different theme each day and solicits suggestions for songs based on that theme; another — mayor of a nearby community, no less — posts certified groaners throughout the day. (He still manages to run his municipality pretty well, and this is one way to keep in front of the voters, like Fiorello LaGuardia reading the funny papers on the radio during a newspaper strike.) I’ve also re-connected with a number of old friends whom I hadn’t seen or heard from in ages.

But lately, something else has been creeping into my Facebook feed: subtle attacks on my faith. When I say “attack”, I don’t mean outright, full-frontal, mistheistic* assaults on Jesus, God and anyone who worships Them: I mean little doubt-sowing jibes, quotes from some of the great atheists like Christopher Hitchens, using reductio ad absurdum logic to shake people’s faith. One wants to engage, but also knows that it’s a mug’s game: trying to argue back to someone on such topics only drags the discussion onto the devil’s turf and too often, turns the situation into a debate over “who’s right” rather than “what’s right”. It’s actually starting to make Facebook a rather dark place to go to.

I wonder if professing Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and others who aren’t afraid to state their faith online are getting the same treatment? Is there some Facebook algorithm (I have no idea how an algorithm works, except that it’s some kind of high-tech alchemy) directing certain content onto my/our feeds in some nefarious ploy to sow doubt or make us think twice about expressing ourselves?

(Lately, I’ve been playing a little game with the newsfeed that comes up on my iPhone. For a while, I, like many others, was fascinated to watch Donald Trump’s out-of-control spiral and the various sideshow acts connected with his presidency and the continuing Big Lie. But a few months ago, I realized I was getting practically nothing but Trump news. “Where the heck are the other stories in the world?” I asked myself. “What about Canada?” So I stopped with the Trump-scrolling and started deliberately checking out stories on other topics. My newsfeed is now much more balanced. Things that make you go “hmm …”)

In other words, it’s entirely possible, and the way things are going these days, I wouldn’t put it past the techosauruses to pull something like that. Either they’re mistheists, themselves, or they’re simply doing it Because They Can.

In any event, I know it’s hard, but we can’t allow this to get to us. Jesus tells us we are not to return evil for evil; the way to conquer doubt is through faith: the way to conquer hatred is through love: the way to conquer lies is with Truth.

This is not a time to recoil from the darkness, but to bring even more light. We have an opportunity in front of us.

And so I have made it my aim to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build on another man’s foundation,

but as it is written: “To whom He was not announced, they shall see; And those who have not heard shall understand.”

— Romans 15:20-21

Remember: Jesus never said it would be easy, but He did say He would never leave us nor forsake us and the Holy Spirit is always there to give wisdom.

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*Not to be confused with “misotheistic”, which is a hatred of God or (as in Greek mythology) the gods. “Mistheistic” and its noun, “mistheist”, are words I’ve coined to mean someone who directs their hatred at the people who worship God. They’re a little more than atheists: not simply non-believers in God, but actively out to destroy the faith of anyone who is. For what it’s worth, I’ve submitted that word to the Oxford English Dictionary for inclusion. Haven’t heard back.

Afghanistan, peacemaking and a prophecy unfolding before our eyes

As we watch the current horror in Afghanistan — the sight of thousands of people trying to be evacuated from their homeland as the Taliban take over — there is a prophetic statement that keeps coming to mind.

If you launch a devastating attack upon a Muslim country, killing thousands you will make 10,000 Bin Ladens rise up instead of the one whose head you have cut off.

— George Galloway, MP (Labour)

Mr Galloway’s remarks were reported on September 14, 2001 — three days after airplanes full of passengers were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Washington and — thanks to the heroic actions of other passengers — into a field in Pennsylvania. Osama bin Laden was fingered as the mastermind behind those attacks and other Islamic extremist terrorism, and the debate was over whether a military response, targeting bin Laden, was the right way to deal with it.

And here we are, twenty years later, finding out how right Galloway was. And at the same time, many are shaking their heads, wondering “How did we get here?”

Interestingly, in all that reportage in The Guardian, there is no mention of whether Galloway offered a solution of his own. He had no problem calling out what was wrong in the military approach and pointing an accusatory finger at The West for creating the monster, but he failed to call out the real enemy.

And who or what is the “real enemy”?

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.

— Ephesians 6:10-12

Translation: when you’re dealing with an ideology, you don’t shove, push, threaten or bully someone into changing their beliefs. People insisted on a flesh-and-blood, guns-and-bombs solution, when the real conflict is spiritual. Even now, it appears the USA has chosen simply to end its military involvement without substituting a spiritual solution.

The situation in Afghanistan is beyond any worldly solution. That goes for the other humanitarian horrors that are going on, such as Yemen, parts of Africa, the Uyghurs in China and on and on. But there is a solution, which is complicated, takes time and patience, and, on the rare occasions that it’s been tried, never fails: Jesus. It’s a solution we can all take part in, by turning to Him in prayer: prayer that people will recognize the real “enemy” and that the right people will step in as peacemakers, revealing Jesus as the Prince of Peace that He is.

A Commandment for Our Generations

Then one of them, a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question, testing Him, and saying,

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

Jesus said to him, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’

“This is the first and great commandment.

“And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

“On these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.”

— Matthew 22:35-40

A few days of blissful disconnection from the internet (and cell phone service, for that matter) at a friend’s cottage in central Ontario has given a lot of time to reflect on various things. I haven’t had the usual distractions of checking things like Apple News, Facebook or my email account “just in case”.

Frankly, had I been born two generations later than I was, I would probably have had a whole dispensary of drugs shoved into me to control what I imagine would have been diagnosed as ADH – hey! How many loons are on that lake over there?!

Right.

So, gliding around Oak Lake on a kayak early yesterday morning, my mind flashed onto those two great commandments. From time to time, I’ve wondered about the concept of loving oneself, and projecting that onto one’s neighbours. After all, are we supposed to love ourselves? What if I don’t particularly like myself on a given day? Do I get to treat my neighbour like crap on those days, too?

One way to look at it, is that the job of loving me belongs to God and to our neighbours. My job is to love God and my neighbours. So some years ago, I came up with another interpretation: love your neighbour as you, yourself, are loved by God – unconditionally, slow to anger and quick to forgive, putting his or her own interests ahead of your own.

But there’s something airy-fairy about that interpretation and it’s not exactly in line with Scripture. Instead, isn’t Jesus calling us to take our natural narcissistic tendencies and turn them inside out, projecting them on everyone else around us?

But here’s another way of looking at that. God knows – Jesus knows – that we do love ourselves, in that we look out for our own interests first. We defend ourselves, we lie to protect ourselves, when we do something wrong, we come up with a million and one reasons to rationalize the action or mitigate the damage; we sacrifice someone else’s convenience for the sake of a “better offer” or “what works for us”.

Jesus’ Second Great Commandment calls on us to take that “me first” concept and apply it to the people around us. Love your neighbour as yourself.

We’ve always been self-centered, but it seems like our generation, with its fixation on “identity” and a worldly concept of “freedom”, has pushed the boundaries further than ever before.

The two Greatest Commandments. Something we need to embrace, and cling to.