| I woke up on Wednesday morning, February 6th, quite angry. I scanned the horizon for a cause.
I had gone to bed well. No ugly dreams. Woke up after nine hours. Not too shabby!
Checked emails to see if one of my peeps was in trouble. Didn’t see anything.
I gingerly made my way to work, keeping a tight cork on the volcano so no innocent people got buried in lava.
Finally, I realized that I was feeling the nation. The night before, the President gave his State of the Union Address and across the political spectrum, the responses were framed around hate with an intent to exacerbate the deep divisions we face.
From the bar to the boardroom, reconciliation and collaboration are not in vogue. 
The cultural climate today very much resembles the ramp-up to the Civil War.
In 1844 James Polk was a dark horse candidate who won the election on a Democratic ticket, defeating Henry Clay the Whig. Polk worked hard to establish legitimacy in office by changing tariffs, negotiating international treaties, reforming the banking industry and challenging Mexico.
President Polk wanted the southwest portion of the continent and Mexico showed no desire to cede it on any terms. In spite of warnings from Mexico, Texas was annexed by the US in a fairly sloppy manner which led to an ambiguous border.
Polk – and many Americans – desperately wanted war with Mexico for political and economic purposes. He deliberately moved some American troops into the contested land along the border.
On April 25, 1846, the Mexican cavalry bit on the bait and attacked the Americans, killing a dozen or so.
President Polk cranked up the political rhetoric with his proclamation to Congress that America’s “cup of forbearance has been exhausted, even before Mexico passed the boundary of the United States, invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon American soil.”
Congress obliged with a declaration of war, even though many northern Congressmen had issues with it. The invasion of Mexico (an Exhorter nation) by “Old Fuss and Feathers” (an Exhorter general) was successful. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was a travesty, but it ceded the Southwest and California to the US on February 2, 1848.
As predicted by the political observant of the time, this treaty disrupted the tenuous balance of power over the slavery issue and effectively triggered the Civil War 13 years later.
The defining tone of the rhetoric in that season leading up to the Civil War was hatred, personal demeaning and a deliberate focus on peripheral issues, instead of careful conversation about the core issues. Whenever possible, complex issues were reduced to a simplistic right/wrong litmus test of political orthodoxy.
The same is true today. Congressmen and women invited highly adversarial people as their guests at the SOTU, in order to fan the flames of division. The press was extraordinary in seeking out sound bites that could be framed to offend. And so, anger was empowered over our nation.
 Leading up to the Civil War, religion was part of the problem, not the solution. The Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodist all split their denominations over the issue.
In his epic Second Inaugural Address, Lincoln commented on that paradox.
“Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.”
 Today there are passionate citizens in our Tribe who believe Donald Trump is God’s man, doing a majestic piece of work.
There are others who are horrified at the man and consider him a plague on the earth.
And, as in the pre-Civil War era, civilized debate is hard to come by. Positions are settled. Tempers are hot. Words are absolute. Relationships are fragile in the light of the radicalization of thought and the normalization of rejection and alienation.
In other words, we are positioning ourselves well for something awful if the inflammatory debate continues to escalate.
What is the alternative?
I start with the Curse of Jotham. Jotham appealed to God. God agreed with His complaint and the two sides in the subsequent localized civil war destroyed each other. And that is what happened with America. The slaves cried out to God for justice. He heard. And America lost over 600,000 people in direct deaths during our Civil War in addition to an incalculable collateral damage to the nation.
Compare that with 400,000 US deaths in WWII.
It behooves each leader in the Tribe to revisit the abundance of passages in Scripture about leaders who abuse those under them. The American church has chewed up and spit out a stupendous number of people in the last 50 years.
We will have no moral or spiritual authority when we have not handled leadership authority with integrity.
 Second, the crisis was triggered by illegitimacy in fact, but was rooted in illegitimacy of the spirit.
Abimelech was the son of a concubine, not one of Gideon’s many wives. Illegitimate.
But the core issue was Gideon’s legitimacy struggles. In spite of all the drama leading up to the battle with the Midianites and the enormity of the victory over them, he still lacked legitimacy.
That is why he demanded as booty enough gold to make himself an ephod – a priestly garment. God had called him to military and political leadership. In that place, God would bless him.
When he reached for legitimacy through spiritual posturing, it became toxic for the entire nation.
So each individual needs to explore his own basis for legitimacy. To the degree that we use spiritual posturing to prop up a deficient sense of legitimacy, to that degree we will have no moral or spiritual authority in the nation.
Finally is the issue of rights and responsibilities. The anger throughout our nation, on the right and the left, is rooted in a focus on rights.
 No matter what the issue, whether personal or global, the bias toward rights inflames debate. Nowhere do you see that more clearly than the great religious debates. Few of them are directed by builders, doers, people deeply invested in their personal responsibility.
Today, more and more Christians opt out of voting. Most opt out of researching judges and obscure issues. Few believers understand the electoral process and fewer still have bothered to ever attend a precinct meeting. And hardly any could name two city officials in the town where they live – much less the issues facing them.
Next time someone scalds you for having a political view that they don’t share, walk away from the conflict and look inside to see where you could raise the bar on your own personal responsibility as a citizen.
My belief is that the external climate is going to continue to spiral down for a period of time.
It behooves us as believers to be seriously concerned about raising the level of our spiritual authority.
That comes one choice at a time, not one argument at a time.
Arthur Burk
February 2019 |
