The Washington Epidemic in Loggy-Eye Syndrome
Mt 7:3 “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
Any hypocrite who votes against making gay bashing a hate crime, and who consistently voted in favor of denying homosexuals equal rights, probably deserved to be exposed as a flaming hypocrite. But how exactly does that make Larry Craig any different from all the hypocrites in Washington who forced his resignation?
True, Craig pleaded guilty to a crime – misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Wow. I mean seriously - Bush pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 1966, after getting drunk and stealing a Christmas tree – so when is Mitt Romney going to get around to calling Bush “disgusting”? Is there a statute of limitations on disgusting behavior?
More recently, Bush went into a bloodthirsty fit: lying about WMD’s, illegally invading a sovereign country, and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. He’s still on a stubborn and disorderly, murderous rampage. So when is Grandpa McCain going to get around to calling him “disgraceful”? After Bush is convicted of spitting on the sidewalk?
How is touching a man’s shoe with your shoe under a bathroom stall “unforgivable,” (in the words of minority leader Mitch McConnell), but turning a blind eye to torture is OK? Why is it that men can sexually harass and come onto women every day of the week, but when somebody comes on to them in the restroom, all hell breaks loose? I ask the question, not because I don’t already know the answer (homophobia), but to point out how incredibly hypocritical it is. The tragic thing about Larry Craig is that the same people he spent his entire life emulating and trying to please - were the first to toss him under the bus the first time he got into trouble. The cold-blooded political calculation is chilling; even more because they seem so proud of it.
Then there’s David Vitter from Louisiana - the married Senator who pays prostitutes to diaper him before having sex. (Vitter also co-authored the “Defense of Marriage” act.) There’s no law in Louisiana against diapering a Senator. So obviously, in the estimation of our elected officials, it couldn't be as “disgraceful, disgusting and unforgivable” as touching his shoe. Though how those prostitutes managed to get Vitter's pants off without touching his shoes, I’ll never know. It’s emblematic of an attitude that says anything is OK, just as long as you’re straight and get away with it.
Newt Gingrich recently admitted to having an affair with a woman (and lying about it) at the same time that he pushed through a resolution in the House of Representatives, impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich finally resigned after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over using tax-exempt funds to advance his political goals.
Pointing the moral finger at somebody else’s lifestyle is something done primarily by those looking to avoid any scrutiny of their own. It’s not that some politicians are much better at discerning right from wrong (though they’d like us to think so). It’s that they’ve become experts at diverting our attention from what’s really going on. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees made hypocrisy their religion – they said one thing and did another. Now, the religious right and their flunkies in Congress have stepped into their shoes.
What they look at as a moral failing in others is most likely only a projection of that log in their own eye, which keeps growing and adding more rings year after year, so that they can never see the matter clearly. Till finally, one day, they end up like Larry Craig: campaigning publicly for heterosexual marriage in Washington DC and Idaho, while playing footsie in public restrooms at stopovers in Minneapolis. What we presume to be someone else’s moral failure is, more often than not, something visually enhanced and magnified by that unacknowledged log in our own eye. That’s the point Jesus was making.
Though no definitive studies have yet been done, it would be no surprise to discover that the more people are having affairs, the more they are secretly involved in pornography or prostitution, the more completely they’ve abandoned their souls to greed or lust for power, the more heartless they behave towards the poor and persecuted, and the less likely they are to do anything meaningful to aid the sick and suffering of the world … the more stridently they champion ‘family values’ and rail against the ‘homosexual lifestyle.’ The people most likely judge and condemn others for their perceived moral failings, are those most motivated by their need to draw attention from their own sins and shortcomings.
It’s fine to have a political party dedicated to doing the same sort of things that Jesus did – like helping the poor, healing the sick, and loving (rather than killing) your enemies. But whenever politicians pretend to have the inside track on morality, it’s like watching pigs throw mud: the ones throwing the most are always the deepest into their own.
Washington is the last place we should look to for moral guidance. Not only because politicians spend most of their time collecting bribes from special interests, but because it’s not their job to be our spiritual councilors. It’s not what they were hired to do. They need to stay OUT of our private lives, OUT of our bedrooms, OUT of our churches, Mosques and Synagogues, and just attend to public business. It is NOT their job to be our Priests, Confessors, and Inquisitors.
Politicians are little more than highly-paid, overly-dignified prostitutes; they are paid to protect the Constitution, say what we want them to say, and do what we want them to do - not tear down the Constitutional separation between church and state, while informing us that’s what God wants. We pay their salary, and their job is to represent us – not squander more lives and money in a war that 72% of the public wants ended.
Some politicians have gotten as good at manipulating our fears and prejudices as they are at exploiting cultural and religious divisions within the country. Perhaps if they didn’t rely so heavily upon the money of special interests, and maybe if public service wasn’t just first step to making much more money in lobbying firms, they wouldn’t need to find ways to avoid doing their job.
Any hypocrite who votes against making gay bashing a hate crime, and who consistently voted in favor of denying homosexuals equal rights, probably deserved to be exposed as a flaming hypocrite. But how exactly does that make Larry Craig any different from all the hypocrites in Washington who forced his resignation?
True, Craig pleaded guilty to a crime – misdemeanor disorderly conduct. Wow. I mean seriously - Bush pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in 1966, after getting drunk and stealing a Christmas tree – so when is Mitt Romney going to get around to calling Bush “disgusting”? Is there a statute of limitations on disgusting behavior?
More recently, Bush went into a bloodthirsty fit: lying about WMD’s, illegally invading a sovereign country, and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. He’s still on a stubborn and disorderly, murderous rampage. So when is Grandpa McCain going to get around to calling him “disgraceful”? After Bush is convicted of spitting on the sidewalk?
How is touching a man’s shoe with your shoe under a bathroom stall “unforgivable,” (in the words of minority leader Mitch McConnell), but turning a blind eye to torture is OK? Why is it that men can sexually harass and come onto women every day of the week, but when somebody comes on to them in the restroom, all hell breaks loose? I ask the question, not because I don’t already know the answer (homophobia), but to point out how incredibly hypocritical it is. The tragic thing about Larry Craig is that the same people he spent his entire life emulating and trying to please - were the first to toss him under the bus the first time he got into trouble. The cold-blooded political calculation is chilling; even more because they seem so proud of it.
Then there’s David Vitter from Louisiana - the married Senator who pays prostitutes to diaper him before having sex. (Vitter also co-authored the “Defense of Marriage” act.) There’s no law in Louisiana against diapering a Senator. So obviously, in the estimation of our elected officials, it couldn't be as “disgraceful, disgusting and unforgivable” as touching his shoe. Though how those prostitutes managed to get Vitter's pants off without touching his shoes, I’ll never know. It’s emblematic of an attitude that says anything is OK, just as long as you’re straight and get away with it.
Newt Gingrich recently admitted to having an affair with a woman (and lying about it) at the same time that he pushed through a resolution in the House of Representatives, impeaching Bill Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Gingrich finally resigned after being reprimanded by the House ethics panel over using tax-exempt funds to advance his political goals.
Pointing the moral finger at somebody else’s lifestyle is something done primarily by those looking to avoid any scrutiny of their own. It’s not that some politicians are much better at discerning right from wrong (though they’d like us to think so). It’s that they’ve become experts at diverting our attention from what’s really going on. In Jesus’ day, the Pharisees made hypocrisy their religion – they said one thing and did another. Now, the religious right and their flunkies in Congress have stepped into their shoes.
What they look at as a moral failing in others is most likely only a projection of that log in their own eye, which keeps growing and adding more rings year after year, so that they can never see the matter clearly. Till finally, one day, they end up like Larry Craig: campaigning publicly for heterosexual marriage in Washington DC and Idaho, while playing footsie in public restrooms at stopovers in Minneapolis. What we presume to be someone else’s moral failure is, more often than not, something visually enhanced and magnified by that unacknowledged log in our own eye. That’s the point Jesus was making.
Though no definitive studies have yet been done, it would be no surprise to discover that the more people are having affairs, the more they are secretly involved in pornography or prostitution, the more completely they’ve abandoned their souls to greed or lust for power, the more heartless they behave towards the poor and persecuted, and the less likely they are to do anything meaningful to aid the sick and suffering of the world … the more stridently they champion ‘family values’ and rail against the ‘homosexual lifestyle.’ The people most likely judge and condemn others for their perceived moral failings, are those most motivated by their need to draw attention from their own sins and shortcomings.
It’s fine to have a political party dedicated to doing the same sort of things that Jesus did – like helping the poor, healing the sick, and loving (rather than killing) your enemies. But whenever politicians pretend to have the inside track on morality, it’s like watching pigs throw mud: the ones throwing the most are always the deepest into their own.
Washington is the last place we should look to for moral guidance. Not only because politicians spend most of their time collecting bribes from special interests, but because it’s not their job to be our spiritual councilors. It’s not what they were hired to do. They need to stay OUT of our private lives, OUT of our bedrooms, OUT of our churches, Mosques and Synagogues, and just attend to public business. It is NOT their job to be our Priests, Confessors, and Inquisitors.
Politicians are little more than highly-paid, overly-dignified prostitutes; they are paid to protect the Constitution, say what we want them to say, and do what we want them to do - not tear down the Constitutional separation between church and state, while informing us that’s what God wants. We pay their salary, and their job is to represent us – not squander more lives and money in a war that 72% of the public wants ended.
Some politicians have gotten as good at manipulating our fears and prejudices as they are at exploiting cultural and religious divisions within the country. Perhaps if they didn’t rely so heavily upon the money of special interests, and maybe if public service wasn’t just first step to making much more money in lobbying firms, they wouldn’t need to find ways to avoid doing their job.
What we call privacy and personal freedom is the secular side of the liberty that we have in Christ as Christians, and just because some people may abuse that freedom to their own harm, doesn’t mean that we all must live under religious tyranny. To advocate laws that infringe upon the private lives and personal liberty of others is to stand in direct opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Passing laws that restrict the rights and freedom of homosexuals and others, is not a way of establishing God’s law; it is a way of putting a lot of demonstrably corrupt and ignorant pastors and politicians and their Newly Revised Mosaic Law over us, and taking the liberty guaranteed by the Gospel out of both religious and secular life. It’s building up again what Christ died to free us from.
The original Mosaic Law was a combination of both civil and religious laws, because at that time there was no separation between church and state. Why not? Because at that particular time, the mediator between God and humanity was not Christ, but the Mosaic Law itself. The same situation exists in some fundamentalist Islamic states today, in their enforcement of Sharia law. At one time in history, the idea of personal rights and moral freedom simply didn’t exist, because the Gospel had yet to be preached. The Mosaic Law instructed people not only in how they should live together in a just community, but also how they would honor and worship God, and what sort of personal moral standards they should practice and uphold.
However, the Gospel tells us that there are no written laws that could show us how to more perfectly worship God in spirit and in truth, and there are no laws that could enable us to love our neighbors as we ought to. That sort of information and that kind of ability can only come directly from God, through the love of Jesus Christ working within our heart. As it says in Jer 31:33 “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.”
Strictly speaking - because a Christian answers directly to a ‘Higher Law’ through faith in Jesus Christ, he/she is completely free - not only from any religious laws, but from civil and secular laws as well. That isn’t to say a Christian is free to be a rapist, an anarchist, a troublemaker, a murder, or a thief. But Christians refrain from rape, theft, and murder, not because there is a law against it, and they’re worried they might get caught and end up in prison, but because they are already obeying the law of love that is written in their heart.
Certainly what Larry Craig did was wrong, but whether he is gay should not be the moral concern of our government (unless he is discriminated against or beaten up because he is gay, and in a way, he has been). It’s between him, his God, and his own conscience. And the total lack of any pity or compassion by his hypocritical Senate colleagues demonstrates exactly why they are the last people we should look to for moral or spiritual guidance, because clearly, they don’t have the love and grace of God in their hearts.
posted by R. Stephen Hanchett at 12:50 PM
