To My Fellow Republicans

Okay, I admit it - I stretched the title a bit to get your attention.  I'm more independent than Republican these days - Republican all my life until John McCain, the last two election cycles I have voted for a third party in protest that the GOP would nominate such tepid men.  But I still understand these guys (the Republicans, that is) inside and out, and these days I am feeling some brotherly concern for them.  There is trouble in paradise, and I would like to list several suggestions for the Grand Old Party to follow if they are going to turn things around and stop getting trounced by 'dem Dems.

1. Realize you are making a lot of people angry with your immigration policy.  Why did you lose the Hispanic vote?  Because you want to close the borders.  This is persnickety, territorial, small-hearted, and all kinds of things like that.  You are reminding people of the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Think about it, my friends.  How did you get to this nation?  Your grandfather got on a boat and came over here to escape the potato famine in Ireland or the Nazis in Germany or the Communists in Russia.  You have no more right to this place than anyone else in the world - it was a gift, opened up to you by God.  If you received such grace, who are you to deny this to anyone else?

You may say, I am not against immigration; I am only against illegal immigration.  Well, the fact of the matter is, that legal immigration has become so difficult that it's out of the reach of most people.  And these people suffer poverty, war, disease, and joblessness in their home lands.  Their lives are a dead-end street.  So, we need to do two things:
1. Loosen the immigration laws, making it easier for people to get in, and
2. Support a graduated program of amnesty for the current illegals and their children.

Look, I want to keep my job as much as the next guy.  But I have lived in Philadelphia for the last 20 years and can tell you, these people are not stealing our jobs.  They take the jobs no-one else wants, and do fantastic work at them.  They are our janitors, gutter cleaners, fruit pickers, and factory workers.  They are honest, hard-working, polite, law-abiding, and friendly.  I love these people, and by George, they are way better for our society than a lot of the legal citizens I see.

We worry that there will not be enough land to go around; there will not be enough workers.  But the U.S. has become great because we have always been a giving nation.  If we stop this now, we will regress into miserliness and ingratitude.  We will think that what has been given to us is something that we deserve.  This attitude lacks compassion, understanding, and appeal with Hispanic votes, which we need to attract before the window of opportunity closes and we lose their trust for generations.

2. Convince people that they were born to work.  Mitt Romney debated job creation with President Obama, touting his ability to fix this economy and create jobs.  Kudos to Mr. Romney, and I believed him.  (The reason I did not vote for him had nothing to do with his economics, which I believe are light years better for our country than Obama's.)  But his point made no difference, because he was talking to  about half of a potential workforce that, well, would prefer actually NOT to work.  The reason they voted for Obama and not Romney had nothing to do with whether or not they believed Mitt could give them a job - more likely, they were afraid he just might.

You see, we are living in a day and age of entitlements.  The devil's bargain made during the Great Depression by Franklin Delano Roosevelt has become the insatiable monster called the entitlement society.  FDR cut ties with personal responsibility and bailed the people out of their misery.  In exchange, he expected their votes.  Well, the people liked being bailed out so much that they never returned to the personal responsibility track.  Why work when Uncle Sam will pay the bills?  And so now, we have 42 million Americans on food stamps, a 25% increase from only 4 years prior.  Millions more take disability, unemployment, Social Security Income, and welfare checks.  According to an inner city nurse I know, who works at a clinic serving the poor of North Philadelphia, about half of these need them, and half don't.

So, the message the GOP needs to be bringing to the populace is not, "I can get you a job," but rather, "A job is what you need not just economically, but as a human being.  You will be happier if you work, because that's how you are wired."  People need to be persuaded of the Republican philosophy of life.

3. Third, and last, the Repubs need a little compassion.  I have been thinking about compassion these days.  What is it?  Paul Miller in Love Walked Among Us suggests that compassion begins with considering and not judging.

"Judging is knee-jerk, quick, and bereft of thought, while compassion is slow and thought-filled.  By slowing down so that I could feel compassion, I was closer to both Courtney and Jill.  If I'd speeded up and judged, I would have been distant from them.  Judging separates and, thus, destroys community; compassion unites and creates commmunity."

Republicans are often accused of lacking compassion and being judgmental.  We don't think this about ourselves, myself included.  It is obvious to us that our way of life is right, we have done the right things to get there, and the deadbeats who want to take governmental handouts or live illegally in our society or legalize pot are irresponsible, lazy, naive, and dishonest.  People should take responsibility for their lives, and buck up.

If, however, compassion is slow and thought-filled, and begins with looking, I think we have to ask ourselves, how much have we actually looked at the situations of those who think differently than we?  How many Republicans live, for example, in urban areas?  How many even know illegal immigrants?  How many have friends who are gay, or a single mother on food stamps?  How much have we tried to understand the situations of those whom we oppose before judging and separating ourselves from them?  Like Jesus, let us look, consider, and try to understand before forming our conclusions.  If we do, I think that we will see we have it far less together than we normally think, and that the possessions and titles we think are "ours" are actually results of heritage, birth circumstance, and societal inequalities over which we had no control.  These realizations will make us more humble, loving, and generally likeable to the voting public.

Well, take it or leave it, but this is my blueprint forward for the party that I think has a lot to offer to America.  Revise the immigration policy, convince people they were made to work, and exercise more compassion.  These three things will make the message of the Republican party more palatable in our rapidly changing public square.

Where are the Bereans?

The old joke among seminarians that "I went to cemetery" is really funny because, well, it's true.  Seminary, to which I went for three years, holds many pitfalls, among them spiritual pride, intellectualization of faith, factionalism among conservatives and loss of faith in the reality of God among liberals.  However, in my detoxification over the last few years, another danger I did not notice at first has been coming more and more to light for me, that I thought to share because it relates to all who seek to follow Christ sincerely.  That danger is to box the Bible into theology rather than let the Bible shape our theology.

I used to read the Bible through in a year.  For 10 years I did this, faithfully, and then I went to seminary.  There, I read all about the Bible, learned the original languages and translated the Bible, and read books commenting on the books that commented on the Bible.  But rarely did teachers open the Bible and challenge us to read it for ourselves.

The end result of this experience was, that I came out thinking I knew enough about the Bible to not read it as much.  I had been filled, and now I just needed to fill others with what had been given me, and seek to live by the light I had been given.

But recently, I read the biography of C.T. Studd, pioneer missionary to Africa.  One striking feature of his life was his copious Bible-reading, especially in his waning years.  He was a man of one book, rising at 4 a.m. each day to read for several hours and enjoy God speaking to him through the Word.  So that he would not be influenced by his own notes in the margins, he got a new Bible each year, the RSV, and started reading all over again, with an open heart, asking God to speak to him in the early, quiet hours.  His theology was constantly being shaped by the Word and Spirit, not the other way around.

I wonder, do many of us, like me, come to the Bible with so many pre-conceived notions that we can't hear what it is saying?  (If we read it at all!)  Have we ceased to become like the Bereans in Acts, who Luke commends as "noble" for going home and "searching the Scriptures" to see if the message Paul had for them was true?  Are we seeking truth?  Or, are we seeking confirmation for what we already believe to be true?

This year, let us sit down with open hearts, in the early or late hours, alone with God.  Let us open our hearts and ask God to teach, for his Spirit to lead, and may the Spirit guide us into all truth. (John 16:13)  Then, our theology will be shaped by the living Word, and not the other way around.