Political Circus Takeaways

What might we learn from the Ford -vs- Kavanaugh political circus.   I believe there are some key takeaways in a variety of aspects that have been revealed through it.  They are (but not limited to):

• Spiritual
• Educational
• Societal
• Relational
• Political
• Personal

Each touches the others, and begins and ends with our national rejection of God in all six arenas, and the principles that guided the founding of not only our nation, but most of the individual states.  To begin, it’s best that I insert here a quote from Dr. Dallas Willard as a framework.

Human persons were created to live and work in a domain of the mind and spirit from which we learn that out of all the aspects of reality God is the most primary. To miss this fact is to miss the most elemental building block of human existence. Sadly, such basic education is widely missing in our society today. From The Divine Conspiracy Continued: Fulfilling God’s Kingdom on Earth. Copyright © 2014 by Dallas Willard amd Gary Black

Following WWII and the burst of economic growth in America, there has been a systematic casting off of the very spiritual underpinnings of our society.  It doesn’t take much thought to see how life changed.  Some changes were long coming and needed – racial disparity, women’s rights, but in the midst of that we began to see both men and women throw off biblical guidelines for moral behavior that were included not only in the Bible, but in most other religions and societies.  Sadly, our decline became nearly worldwide as others tried to follow our excesses.

The sexual revolution of the 60’s led to the legal political funding of abortion, and free sex sent wrong messages to both genders. Instead of lifting good and moral behavior, we focused instead on the excesses – Haight Ashbury, race riots, Woodstock, protesting.

Puberty became, for too many, a challenge to copulate freely, and while those urges have been around for thousands of years, the restraints came off and both sexes began to desire the “fruits” of sexual freedom.  Sadly, for women, this has often brought young men into thinking that all women want what the boys wanted, and with the restraints cast off, too many young men have deeply traumatized young women.   Often the trauma has been pushed down and does not surface for decades.   Oh, and yes there are some men who have suffered at the hands of women as portraited in The Graduate.

One lesson to learn from this is that what happens to us in our formative years forever alters our behavior.  Some of that is for the good, too much is negative and affects every aspect of our relationships the rest of our lives.  With the breakdown of the family, young children have too often lost the healthier aspects of a home life with both a mother and father.

Our memories are faulty at best, and it is no wonder that Dr Ford, has only sketchy details of the incident that has scarred her life.  Over time our minds alter what was, into what we think “was”, as filtered by all the dysfunctional things that happened in our lives over time.

My sister and I were blessed as our parents loved each other.  Dad worked, mom raised two kids.  I’m blessed with a fairly functional set of parents that loved their children also, but dad’s work meant very little father time as a child even with the clear message that we were loved, so I managed to struggle with rejection and abandonment – some of it environmental but much of it because of my own temperament during the 1940’s and 50’s.

I have tried to recall the bullying that took place in my own life – recalling specific instances – the situation, the individuals, and at best I can recall only some of the emotional response six decades later.   When pressed I can come up with certain details (paying protection to peers in High School), but I can only guess at who they were, and how I was able to be in such a place to be bullied in the first place (what was it about me that made me a target?).

Even my conclusions, I can see, are suspect by the environment of the 40’s and 50’s.  As to the “who”, I’d probably pick those that I recall having a hard time with, even though they may not have been the ones who corralled me in the halls and demanded money.   And is my memory clear that it happened once or often?   NO, it is not.

The year we graduated from High School, I had somewhat come out of my protective shell, but still I’m often haunted by even a hint of rejection and abandonment, and it has altered my life too often over the years.  Seeing the environment today, I hate to give thought to what my life would have been like had I been raised in the 60’s and beyond.

While alcohol, drugs and sex outside of marriage have existed for generations, societal restraints kept most of us from such things.  That and tight family structures that would not allow us to hurt our families by such moral failures.  My class had no dropouts, no known pregnancies, no known drug use, and only moderate to no alcohol use.   Within a couple of years there were multiple pregnancies, many dropouts, and major addictions.

What do individuals do with God when the restraints once imposed by family and society are withdrawn?   They either cling to God, or take a stand that ultimately says there is no God, or that if there is, times have changed and His word needs to be updated.  Witness how few churches still have worship music instead of praise music that looks a lot like performing arts.

In America we’ve seen our schools no longer use the Bible to teach right from wrong, and moved all the way to the only “right” things are what’s right for the individual.   Young men and women now want to do with their bodies only what seems right to them at the moment, not caring for who else is hurt.   School rules try to cope with it, but do not teach moral values and the behaviors that come from godly character.

It’s clear that someone hurt Dr. Ford, and Mr. Cavanaugh is the one in her memory that did that.   His memory and records seem to deny that, but the process as it has unfolded in our troubled society has deeply hurt not only the two of them, but countless others close to them, and I believe our society as a whole – as we’ve been dragged through it by various news media that are trying to keep us riveted to their particular vein of patter.

In a society where it’s all about “me”, the relationship aspects have stripped away the unconditional commitment to marriage, and taken us to a place where more than half of those that identify themselves as a couple are not married, but cohabiting.   Cohabiting that is, as long as if feels good, but when it stops feeling good, one or the other bails.  I don’t trust the divorce statistics because they range from 38 to more than 50 percent failure and from what I have read they all are based on somewhat skewed analytics.   But we do know that the level of divorce has risen until recently, and the lowering today is in part due to the fact that fewer couples are marrying.

Our partisan political structure has become equally sad with what’s good for the nation as a whole turned into what’s best for what each politician thinks best serves him/her.   We’ve so eliminated God from every part of our public and private worlds and what He has said is good, right and unchanged, that we’ve become a nation of ridicule to the rest of the world.

What would happen to our land if:

• our schools brought back biblical training to the classrooms,
• we had a political leader or leaders who took us back to the basic goodness that was once found in our land as rooted in the Scriptures and did so with the humble demeanor of Jesus,
• our newscasters went back to reporting the news instead of creating things to keep viewers attached to their particular views,
• R-rated movies went away and were replaced by those that lift up right living,
• as a nation we restored God’s plan for relationships as one man one woman in lifelong committed marriage,
• we chose as a people to give highest regard to human life at all ages and our government repealed Row -vs- Wade,
• all of us began anew to put on Christ’s armor and think, give and receive the unconditional love that Jesus gives, and
• we thought more highly of others, giving preference to the good and acceptable things in Christ alone that we’ve forgotten.

This blog could go on much deeper, but I think to conclude it I should like to complete the quote from Dr. Willard that I began above.

Again, we will state the objective here perhaps more clearly: the principle responsibility of ministers is to faithfully and accurately represent to others the nature of God and his ways so that people who are willing and able to listen (those with ears to hear and eyes to see) can begin to think about and imagine who God is, who they are, and how the world is designed to work effectively in harmony with God’s good will. From The Divine Conspiracy Continued: Fulfilling God’s Kingdom on Earth. Copyright © 2014 by Dallas Willard amd Gary Black

As a pastor to marriages, I am compelled to call myself and those who would ponder their lives anew, to open themselves to a deeper understanding of God’s call on our lives.

Again Dr. Willard suggests:

We cannot behave “on the spot” as Jesus did and taught if in the rest of our time we live as everybody else does. The “on the spot” episodes are not the place where we can, even by the grace of God, redirect unchristlike but ingrained tendencies of action toward sudden Christlikeness.

The answer for much of the ills of America today is found throughout the entirety of the Scriptures.  The Great Commandment in Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus tell us that we are to love one another as we love God and ourselves.  And in 1 Timothy 4:7-8 Paul writes:

“Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.” 

Perhaps we might alter the future for the good if our own individual behaviors would better reflect Christ in our actions.  Without Christ, I don’t believe much will change in a positive vein here in America, but the pell-mell continued deterioration of our society will no doubt one day lead to His judgement on America even as it will in our individual lives when we stand bowed before Him.