Beware the Terrible Simplifiers

I know it's been too long since I've chimed in...however the whole Wright thing has really gotten up in my craw.

I'm a lifelong church goer. Probably have missed fewer than 50 Sundays in my life. That means I've heard (and slept through) a lot of sermons from a lot of preachers. I've talked with them at the potlucks, eaten at their houses, been on mission trips with them, played games and prayed with them.

In fact, I spent my first eighteen years living with a pastor, my father. He was a minister, a man of the cloth, and of course he was my dad.

Which is why it strikes me as ridiculous when people play up the Wright controversy to be a portend of something that Obama is hiding. That he is some, off the hinge, angry black man, who lives and breathes the words of his Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

To me this is an utterly ridiculous thought.

I've spent a lot of my life disagreeing with pastors, including, and especially my dad.

There is so much I admired about my dad but there were also plenty of things I was embarrassed by, disagreed with and would've disowned had I needed too. He was a big fan of Rush Limbaugh (though I don't really hold that against him...I understand why...but that's another post) and, even though he went to great lengths to help the poor, he ultimately believed that the government shouldn't be in the business of helping out poor people (an arguable position but one I whole heartedly disagree with.)

The thing is this though, my dad never told me I had to believe what he believes. In fact, the day I told him that I had decided I wanted to follow Christ, he was pretty much silent, didn't tell me what to do next. I never took my marching orders from him (I mean there were times I kind of had to, since he was my father and all, I wanted to eat you know...) and, most importantly, I learned to think for myself, to find out for myself and to question authority (we're protestants after all.)

I not only heard this from my dad but from just about every pastor I've ever had.

I think this idea of discovering God on one's own terms is especially strong in the protestant tradition, and not as well understood in other faith traditions.

Not only have I disagreed (often to their faces) with pastors, but I've seen pastors make personal mistakes that have cost them their careers. There was always a side of the church that wanted to throw them under the bus but there was also side that had compassion, that understood these men and women were not and are not infallible (another protestant tradition.)

So when people got all up in arms about the things Wright was saying, I was able to shrug my shoulders, and say 'so what? What does that have to do with Obama?' After all, disagreeing with one's pastor was an integral part of the faith experience from my view. I didn't and still don't understand why this is so hard to grasp. Why is the assumption that what Wright spouts is what Obama really believes? Are the people who stayed in the Catholic church all really for child molestation? Aren't we all products of many different people and experiences?

Some, including Clinton, have wondered why he didn't leave if he disagreed. Again, this is a point I fail to understand logically. Maybe if you go to church simply to advance your political career this makes sense (I'm just saying) but if, as Obama writes in his stirring book, one's faith is central to one's being, and when one feels called to a community, they become family, then leaving isn't any easier than the choice to leave one's spouse. People who think it is so easy don't undertand the complexities of faith or of human nature .

Finally, and ultimately this is what it all boils down to, who are we to judge whether or not Obama should have left? We've never walked in his shoes, never known what it is like to be saved by someone then later betrayed by that person. Do politicians really want to play the game of guilt by association?

The answer, unfortunately, is that when political expediency and desparation dictate it, things do get this simplified and suddenly, we are all able to judge another man's heart.

I'm going to let Bill Moyer's take it from here:

"Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettles some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this — this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers"."

I couldn't say it any better.

Which brings us back to my dad. He would've been outraged by what the Reverned Wright said but he also would've have defended him and his right to say it. And most importantly, he never would've thought that Obama believed those things just because he went to Wright's church or condemned him for staying.

In fact, he would've lauded and admired Obama for that choice.

That's something he and I would've agreed on.