Defeating Evil
Well,
it's official. Barack Obama will be president. It's pretty amazing,
really. Ryan mentioned in a voice mail to me that "something
happened that I wanted to happen". Somehow, he thought, the
Republicans were going to eke out a dirty win again like they seemed
to have done in the past two elections. I admit I had a similar fear,
irrational as it may have been. I'm
glad Obama will be president. Very glad, in fact. In Obama I see
someone who is at least willing to think about things and is
committed to dialogue, and someone who is intelligent enough to
conduct that dialog without preposterous epithets and blanket
accusations. No more "coalition of the willing" and "axis
of evil" speak. The fact that John McCain could utter
the belief that America must "defeat evil" as
exemplified in Islamic terrorists to rousing applause really bothered
me. How can Islam and its adherents constitute evil in this world to
American Christians when St. Paul spoke of our adversaries as
spiritual when he said to the Ephesians: For
we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against
principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this age, against spiritual hosts of
wickedness in the heavenly places. Furthermore,
the Apostle often referred to our very selves as "the enemy".
Our sinful passions, the "flesh", which war within us is
what must be defeated, and never the "other", the foreigner
who believes differently from us, even if he is willing to point and
shoot at us: If
we have been united with him like this in his death, we will
certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we
know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin
might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to
sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. This
notion -- that there is evil in the world which must be confronted
and defeated -- strikes me as a very UNchristian belief, unless the
locus of that evil is within ourselves. Until we are able to confront
the evil that is within us, we are only pointing fingers, reaching
for the speck in our brother's eye. This
is not to say that men and women do not DO evil things in this world.
The Muslim extremists who insist on destorying themselves and
everyone around them are I believe a true manifestation of evil in
this world, and I believe it is important that we act within our
means to keep them from trampling upon the helpless. But our actions
must never be out of self-righteousness, and in this case, I think I
fall much more in line with how Mr. Obama responded to Rick Warren's
question regarding evil: ...I
think is very important is for us to have some humility in how we
approach the issue of confronting evil. You know a lot of evil has
been perpetrated based on the claim that we were trying to confront
evil… In the name of good and I think one thing that’s very
important is having some humility in recognizing that. You know, just
because we think our intentions are good doesn’t mean that we’re
going to be doing good. I'm
willing to bet that most of the Christians at Rick Warren's
convocation were not hardcore fundamentalists, bent on the idea
that Barack Obama is the Antichrist. I'm willing to bet most if not
all of them were your average, conscientious mainline Protestant. Yet
McCain's response to Warren's question on evil was what stirred their
hearts so to resounding applause, while Obama's registered not even
an audible "Amen". Could it be that what they so heartily
approved of was more American than Christian, more Romantic than
Redemption? Are we indeed pursuing Christ in our pursuit of the
heathen extremist? Is this Christianity?
