Church Socialism 5/5

"In a world, where no man can be trusted, everyone knows the conspiracy, but no one can say it..."

If our politics and media had a movie trailer, this is the opening line setting up the tone. You look at both of them and you can't help, but feel like it's the End Times. It's depressing. It's dumb.

Governments and politics around the world are different in unique ways..some have Kings and queens, but they don't mean anything, others have a dictator and we're told they're bad, but then some say dictators aren't bad (my family is from Cuba..I think they're bad), others have universal healthcare.

For us in the US our politics finds its identity in culture and our government is motivated by the past.

We are known in the US for our cultural wars; pro-life vs pro-choice, gun rights vs gun control, gay marriage vs traditional, left vs right, the founding vs the future. Things that should be secondary in politics are primary to us (minus abortion, that one is important, but our political approach is poor.) It's easy to take what we feel as important traditions or necessary for progress and hoist these issues up to our politicians so our government can make it a priority, but we're not taking the good of all into consideration when doing it.

This comes from our political view being more culturally centered than people centered. We're not a big fan of stepping out of our beliefs and talking with people who might be different than us so we're constantly saying and doing things that actually lessens someone's humanness. And our government doesn't necessarily have black and white rules that says "we can focus on this, but we can't focus on that;" we have a political system that is open so we're able to shape the government's purpose by simply replacing the people who run it, which in turn only perpetuates the fight to have our culture in the White House. The government can laser in on whatever we want, it was economically focused in the past, then it was focused on civil rights, now it's domestic vs foreign focused + whatever is tweeted 🙄. This freewill to make our federal government care about what we want is what's keeping us distracted. Too many things to choose.

This is why an either/or frame of thought is toxic. Either/or is no bueno in a place that has as much diversity as politics. We push people away and band together so it becomes us vs them when we are supposed to listen to all sides and work "across the aisles." We need to fight the temptation to isolate ourselves, because talking to another person who is "different" will drastically disarm us from our preconceived notions. It will cause us to not want to live out of an either/or mindset, but fight from a both/and position and work hard to meet in a middle that is honorable.

The church is supposed to be this both/and group of people, because our purpose is to witness and be an example, not to be a political party's #1 groupie. We can't be so immersed in a political party that we believe every word they say or action they take are gold, these are organizations being ran by flawed humans so they will make pretty big errors in their platforms and the leadership could very possibly suck as humans. Letting the current political trends determine how we should view others will keep us glued to Fox News vs MSNBC; Christian Republicans will be stuck believing the economic system isn't broken and they will never be open to a community-supported giving to support the community and Christian Democrats will continue to be swayed away from biblical social truths. The gospel should dictate our political views, not the other way around.

However, I know this is all pretty sounding and won't happen..but for the Church Socialist this is a major piece. Regardless of what economic system we have in place the gospel helps us to live and flourish in it. If it's Capitalism, then we know the only way the people can survive as a whole is with compassion and generosity, because Capitalism naturally allows collecting and hording the $. If it's a Socialist system then the gospel centered church knows the only way the system won't crash is if everyone works as diligently as they can. The Bible doesn't say Trickle down economics is God's way or universal health care is the answer, but God empowers the church to navigate in either worlds and help everyone flourish. Our number 1 priority isn't how much or how little tax is being taken out, or at least it shouldn't be, but we should primarily care if the people are okay; the Church Socialist knows whatever the federal government has put in place, we can find a way to put aside what we prefer and make it work.

It's the sanctity of all human life we can't budge on: abortion, race, the poor, marginalized, genocides, human trafficking, slavery, the oppressed. The way the church socialist does their part in the world is by assuring the well-being of their neighborhood's people is healthy and then asks their community to focus on other neighborhoods.

The (&) Campaign is a Christian organization that is trying to bridge that mind set of what we see as traditional biblical values and social justice. If you'd like to check them out here is their link: http://theandcampaign.com/

#government #politics #socialjustice #capitalism #socialism