Sarah Palin's
Blasphemy
September 27, 2008
By Eric Mader
To listen to the news media,
it would seem that John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate is a
big hit with American Christians.
I myself am an American Christian, and her candidacy is not a big hit
with me. Palin is not a good model for Christians. Those who support her should
be thinking twice.
As a fellow follower of Jesus,
I believe that the Alaska governor misrepresents our faith and that, as her
political star rises, she is likely to continue doing so. Giving Sarah Palin a prominent position
in our government would be good neither for our country nor for the Christian
faith.
Many have written of Palin's long-standing
ties to the extremist Third Wave movement, whose teachings she absorbed through
her membership in the Wasilla Assembly of God church. Third Wave church leaders cheerily seek to prod the world
toward Armageddon--an event they both welcome and, bizarrely, believe they can
foresee in detail. Third Wave
doctrine and its eager embrace of military conflagration for the Spirit are
frightening in the extreme, but become especially so when one imagines an
American leader subscribing to them.
One can already read about the
Third Wave and its twisted ideology in other places. Here I'd rather approach things on a simpler, more direct
level. I'll try to be as specific
in my criticisms as possible, because I've already found that those who support
Palin often misunderstand what I'm getting at.
To begin with, I should say
that I don't think it's always easy to know exactly what God wants of us. It's
not always easy to live so as to bring about the Kingdom, or even to know what
path one should choose. But as a
Christian I believe Jesus is the Messiah, and because of this belief I'll wager
the following: If a course of action accords with Jesus' teachings as found
in the Gospels, then we can be confident it is in accord with God's will--i.e.,
acting in
such a way might truly be part of the work of the Kingdom.
Most believers will agree with
me here. If we see something stressed by Jesus in the Gospels, then as
Christians we will recognize it is part of what God expects of us. Particularly
if Jesus returns to it repeatedly in his teachings, we should know it is of
special concern.
There's a corollary to this,
one that should be obvious, namely: If something is not stressed by Jesus in the Gospels, then we probably have
no business being confident it comes from God.
I stress Jesus' teachings
here, not the Bible as a whole, because I believe Jesus brought a New Covenant
that made the Old Covenant obsolete.
Again, most Christians will agree with me. Moses is important to the history of God's revelation, but
Jesus is much more so.
How does Sarah Palin relate to
all this? What do we see in the
Alaska governor?
In Palin we have a political
figure who evoked the Iraq war as a "task from God." Palin's syntax wasn't the clearest in
this instance, and it's hard to know for certain if she was claiming the war is a task from God or praying that it is a task from God. I incline to the latter reading, but the difference, in
terms of the statement's underlying theological nationalism, is not as great as
some would suggest. Palin also
said that a gas pipeline ought to be completed because doing so was "God's
will."
Now please don't misunderstand
me. I am not presently saying anything about whether or not the Iraq war was or
wasn't the right idea (I think it wasn't, but that is beside the point). I'm
not saying anything about that here. What I am saying is that evoking the Iraq
war as a "task from God" is not something one should do. Not in
church. Not in the barracks. Nowhere.
Why shouldn't one do so? The reason is simple. There is no way one can link a military
invasion, the firing of missiles and bombs on cities (whether "smart
bombs" or not) with what Jesus teaches us in the Gospels. I as a Christian
don't see any way one can make such a link.
Do we find anything like the
following in the Gospels: "And it will come to pass that you will have to
gather together in force, and your armies will attack the powers of evil, and
you will kill their leaders and put better leaders in their place."
Do we find any words like
that?
Or: "And those who are of
the Father's Kingdom will gather in force and will attack the evildoers
wherever they are found, and they will kill their leaders and raise up new
leaders in their stead."
I'm sorry, but, once again, do
we find anything even remotely like
this in Jesus' words? If we don't,
then it means, at the very least, that we shouldn't be talking of the Iraq war
as "a task from God." In
fact, if we really listen to Jesus' words in the Gospels, we should maybe be
second guessing ourselves and asking whether God might not, through his Son, be
forbidding us from any such action to begin with.
I won't even address the
ridiculous claim that God wants the gas pipeline to be completed. Is Sarah
Palin one of the prophets? Did God
speak to her during a meeting with the gas company?
To claim something as
"God's will" without any justification is to commit blasphemy. The Alaskan governor's way of talking
of God's will skirts this kind of blasphemy; the remark on the gas pipeline is
a straightforward, if banal, example of it.
But let's return briefly to
the question of the Iraq war: If there's any distantly faint possibility of
linking the war to God's will as we find it in Jesus, then I suppose it would
have to be in the claim that we launched the war to liberate the Iraqis from
evil. The Iraqis were "in chains," and we invaded their country to
liberate them.
But again: in the Gospels
Jesus does not teach us to use military means to accomplish anything of the
sort. It is not His way, and I
believe most American Christians know it is not. That they act otherwise, supporting pre-emptive military
action just because it is called for by their president, does not change what
is there in Jesus' teachings.
There is in Sarah Palin, and in much of the religious right, a
completely unfounded mixing of national politics, particularly in its military
aspects, with faith in Jesus. That
this perilous mix has a long and complex history should not prevent us from
addressing it in the simplest critical terms.
We should repeatedly be saying
to these people: Where, in Jesus' teachings, do you find such an agenda? And if you don't find it in Jesus'
teachings, why do you think that is?
Why did He not mention it?
Why is it that you can only extrapolate this agenda from certain
tortured readings of the Old Testament and Revelation? Are you so confident in your ability to
interpret these ancient texts?
This penchant for linking
government policies with "God's will" has been growing for decades. I want to say something about just why
it should bother us.
Anyone who has studied history
can see what happens when political leaders start down this path. And when
citizens willingly, often enthusiastically, follow them. I won't write here of the
potential disasters (such as nuclear war) that might result from extreme forms
of this nationalist theology gaining ascendancy in America in the 21st
century. No, I will write instead
of how this mix of mundane politics and faith can ultimately harm the faith.
Consider: The first result of
going down this path is that it takes our faith and makes it into a banner that
leaders then wave about as advertisement for their policies. Yes, our faith becomes a kind of state
advertising. I don't know about
you, but I find advertising an often dishonest business. The problem here is that the policies
advertised for usually aren't as clearly linked to what God wants of us as the
leaders would imply. Once again,
the Iraq war or the gas pipeline are good examples. Often the policies in question, even if they do have
virtuous elements, will also have as much to do with power and greed and
corruption and profit. Thus our leaders begin using something holy, using what we should hold sacred, to
drum up support for what are really secular political agendas. Many citizens,
unfortunately many believers among them, don't seem to notice this is so.
Linking policy initiatives to
faith often simply politicizes faith and, finally, when the political projects
in question don't work out, which happens as often as not, it discredits
faith. Which means that it hampers the
spread of our faith to those who didn't accept the political agenda to begin
with.
If we are wise, we should
carefully protect our faith from politicians' pet projects. Leaders who imply
they are making policy under some kind of direct link to God should be
criticized by the general public and--even more so--by believers.
To repeat my basic point: if
we can't link some policy to Jesus' teachings, we don't have any basis, as
Christians, for saying it is what God wants or expects from us. And if that policy is to make war, in
particular to launch a pre-emptive war, I believe we are on especially shaky
ground as far as Jesus' teachings are concerned.
If Sarah Palin attains high
office, I think it likely she will do more of just this kind of damage to the
reputation of Christians and the faith she espouses. I think this because of the overconfidence I see in her, her
tendency to link whatever she supports politically with God's will.
Palin has all the marks of the
outspoken smart alec. She appears
to believe that whatever she wants personally, or whatever her party's
leadership wants, is something God also wants. Christians should recognize that this is, first of all,
delusional, and, secondly, blasphemy of a particularly shallow kind. They
should be assessing her nomination with this recognition in mind.
I've done my best to make a
variety of points regarding this "blasphemy" issue. To insist in her support
that Palin is a Christian woman who wants to "do good" for our
country is to ignore the issues raised.
Because I'm not as concerned here with wanting to "do good"
for our country as I am with following Jesus' teachings. But whatever one's priorities, Palin
gives reason to be wary. Shallowly
using faith as a banner to press this or that political agenda is neither good
for the country nor for the Kingdom.
Email: inthemargins03@hotmail.com
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