Grace and Politics

Is there room for "God's grace" in politics? I wondered about this a few days ago after getting into a spirited debate about politics with a good friend of mine. He happens to be a die hard Republican, who has no real liking (putting it mildly) for president Obama, and sees fault with practically everything that the current president is doing; I, on the other hand, happen to be a person who voted for Obama, and believe he should at least be given a chance to lead. This is not to say that I agree with everything that the current administration is trying to do, but I understand their sentiment and believe that he (Obama) means well and loves the country no less than those on the opposite end of the political spectrum. He inherited a tough set of challenges and it is going to take a lot of work for him to succeed. Unfortunately, we live in an age of little or no patience, and when people don't see results yesterday, they pile on the blame and ridicule..

But this blog entry is not about political theory or whether you call yourself conservative, liberal, independent or are totally indifferent when it comes to political matters. What really concerns me is the vicious and vindictive tone that our political dialogue has taken. To be fair, when president George W. Bush was in office, he was catching hell from his critics on the Left, especially over the war in Iraq, and it seems like the Right could not wait to pounce on Obama once he won the presidential election last fall. This is, after all, how politics works, you demonize your opponents until they can't take it anymore or until the public gets the impression that your side is always right and their side is always wrong. You ignore the fact that healthy political debate is actually a good thing, realizing that all side do have something good to the table. As a person who believes the message of God's grace, I realize that no label can accurately describe a person, even in the political arena. We are all people of some paradox, there is some liberal in the most conservative of us, and some conservative in the most liberal of us.

The talking points in politics would have us believe that:

• Liberals are people who hate America; they're socialists or communists, abortion-loving heathens, who find fault with everything that America does; their agenda is to take God away from the public discourse and take away guns from even licensed gun carriers. Liberals have no moral compass and simply want to change the constitution to fit their moral lasciviousness.
• Conservatives are war mongering, fascists, self-righteous capitalists, who have no compassion for the poor and favor big corporations and the rich more than the every day working American; they are racists who hate immigrants and other minority groups and have no bigger goal than to preserve the status-quo (meaning, protect the interest of white males).

Of course, we know that these Labels do not fit everyone, and they are gross exaggerations that do not often reflect reality, but because perception is often people's reality, many of these stereotypes end up sticking. but if you really got to know the people who are demonized with these labels, you will realize that they are actually much more complex than these labels suggest. But because we live in such a politicized arena, it is almost impossible to have a substantive dialogue about anything political across the aisle without demonizing others. There are liberals in Red States and conservatives in Blue States, and you will find out that not all liberals agree, and not all conservatives agree. There are people on the "Left" who are very religious and there are people on the "Right" who don't believe in God. I can't tell you how shocked I was watching C-Span the other night when I found out last night that a rising star in the conservative movement, writer S.E. Cupp, is an atheist. Being a conservative and an atheist are two things that just don't go together amongst most conservatives, especially here in the South, (she live in N.Y. though), but that just goes to show that these labels just don't fit everyone, which goes to show why the fact that most African-American Democrats being staunch Christians is often under reported.

I am not writing this to criticize anyone's political views. I just want to emphasize that if we are to look at each other from the standpoint of "grace" and not "self-righteousness", then we would be less likely to demonize each other and more likely to have empathy and compassion for each other. One of the things that makes the Bible such a compelling piece of literature and inspiration is that even in the most admired of Bible characters, their flaws are glaringly obvious for us to see. I often say that most of the people whom we revere in the Bible, could never make it in today's political climate, because we are not kind to those whose fallibility is so obvious. Can you imagine someone like king David or Solomon considering running for office today? They would be run out of town, especially with their known sexual indiscretions obvious for the world to see.

Maybe it is time that we all embrace a little bit more humility when it comes to how we deal with each other, especially in our current contentious political arena.

Stephen Oladotun Akinduro