Politics According to Schinstock, Gerson, and Hank the Cowdog

It's a good day when both Jim Schinstock's and Michael Gerson's common-sense columns appear on the editorial page, as they did today.  Schinstock is a retired philosophy professor, now turned community columnist for the Hutchinson News.  Michael Gerson is a columnist who was once a speechwriter for George W. Bush and is now associated with the Washington Post.

Schinstock made fairly limited references to politics, noting that more heat than light is being generated on that front right now, and "More heat isn't what I want to experience right now."  He noted further that he sees nothing ahead but "stifling, searing, sweaty, soul-shriveling heat."

Gerson's column is titled "Republicans Have Ceded the Ground on Faith."  He notes that the Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine is variously described by his Republican Senate colleagues as "very bright, genuinely nice, unfailingly courteous and positive, faith-oriented, and a deeply spiritual guy."  He also states that "Trump has cut the party off from its religious, ethical and moral moorings.  He appeals almost exclusively to anger at perceived wrongs and to feelings of economic distress."  In summary, Gerson says that he feels "moved and saddened, since the GOP nominee for president has so intentionally abandoned the ideals behind them.  It is one of the great tragedies of 2016 . . . that Republicans have ceded the ground of faith without a fight."

As an onlooker offering occasional comments on the political scene, I've begun feeling a bit of optimism on one front in this election cycle:  a few Christians who have long placed far more stock in political solutions and active involvement than is warranted have reconsidered those solutions and their involvement.  This is particularly true of some Republicans whose party loyalists actually should never have claimed that they occupy the only high moral ground in politics.  While in a few areas the party's policy did align with Christian principles, that was certainly never the pervasive condition (which could also be said of the Democratic party), and Christians who accepted the Republican package as a Christian one were seriously misguided.  The current presidential nominee has made it abundantly clear that being identified as a Republican can happen with Christian or even moral constraints nowhere in evidence. Rational thinking, careful crafting of policy and civil discourse can be absent as well under the Republican banner.  Some thoughtful Christians have been jerked to attention by these developments and have disassociated themselves from party involvement--at least in the presidential election.

Some have gone so far as to state that prayer is the most powerful force that can be exercised in a political contest, in contrast to earlier impassioned pleas for Christians to vote for the "right" candidate.  Amen.  This change gives me hope.

I believe that politics has never been a good fit for Christians.  Disappointed Republicans (or Democrats) would do well to turn their disappointment in 2016 into a permanent repudiation of involvement in partisan politics.  Merely searching for and gathering under a better political label won't do.  Libertarianism is not to be confused with Christian liberty.  The only trustworthy place to gather is under the banner of the Lordship of Christ and God's Sovereignty.

A long time ago our boys used to listen to Hank the Cowdog stories on tape from the library.  One habit of Hank's comes to mind as a parallel to some of what I see happening in politics.  Hank fancied himself to be clever and sophisticated, but his habits betrayed him. He loved to drink from, play in and cool off in a very small body of water on the Texas ranch he called home--the lagoon.  Politics is more like a lagoon than a place where Christian people should play and drink, and can come away from refreshed.  People who immerse themselves there may be as deluded as Hank.