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TOP-DOWN TYRANNY

If I was feeling a bit hung-over this Wednesday morning, July 4, in terms of flags and fireworks and loud booms in the air – I could probably get out of doing today's program by simply saying three words here on the radio. Three simple words . . . and then just open up the phone lines.

And those three words would be: "Roe versus Wade." Then step back and let callers debate back and forth. I wouldn't need to come back on for about the next five years.
Now friend, I don't say that to make light of the discussion over abortion. There's nothing light about the passion and the pain and the hurt that "Roe v. Wade" has brought to America these past 28 years. But I bring it up today for one reason.

Back on January 22, 1973, this ruling came down on ALL of us . . . courtesy of exactly seven people. That's right. It wasn't grass-roots. It wasn't the Moral Majority. It wasn't the Christian Coalition with their millions of voter guides. It was seven men wearing black robes. That's it. Regarding Case # 70-18, justices Blackmun, Burger, Douglas, Brennan, Stewart, Marshall, and Powell voted aye. White and Rehnquist cast the two dissenting no votes. As a result, after January 22, not only could Norma McCorvey get an abortion, but ALL women living in the fifty states could. These 31 words gave them permission:

"For the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation MUST BE LEFT to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician." That's page 163 of the decision.

And there you have it. A ruling by seven men, which had instant jurisdiction over 280 million Americans.

In the book we're studying together this Fourth of July week, entitled Blinded By Might, authors Ed Dobson and Cal Thomas suggest that lasting political victories by concerned Christians simply cannot happen by making rules and packing the House of Representatives with born-again candidates, and getting your man in the White House. Cal Thomas writes:

"We will never have ‘trickle-down' morality in America. We can only hope for ‘bubble-UP' morality, and we may not get that."

In other words, you can't achieve "top-down" success. You can't clean up messes from the top: abortion, pornography, drug abuse, divorce. You can only impact a hurting nation by helping hurting people, one at a time, one victory at a time. You and your church get one kid to practice abstinence; you help get one crack addict off drugs. You encourage one pregnant mother to go ahead and accept the help of a shelter or a Christian adoption agency. But you can't sweep out evil by a ruling on Capitol Hill.

The problem was, as Chuck Colson points out, that Roe vs. Wade was itself a HUGE top-down ruling. Christians have always tried to work from the bottom up, but here came this disastrous decision FROM THE SUPREME COURT! Seven men making policy for everyone.

"What really galvanized [Christian activitists], however," he writes, "was the liberal victory in Roe v. Wade. In one swoop, the Court struck down abortion laws in all 50 states, turning around an entire culture on the most crucial moral issue of the day. The lesson was not lost on moral conservatives: they concluded that top-down political action WAS the most effective means of cultural transformation. If liberals could do it, so could they."

And here, nearly a third of a century later, we all are. Still torn asunder by probably the most difficult, fraught-with-emotion policy issue — and maybe spiritual issue too. And after years of being right in the very thick of the Moral Majority organization, Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson confess:

"We failed because we were UNABLE to direct a nation from the top down. Real change must come from the bottom up or, better yet, from the inside out." And then they add: "Abortion is not the CAUSE of our social problems, it is a reflection of them. If the Religious Right wants to fix things at the top, it must attend to repairing things at the bottom. A stable house requires a firm foundation."

Referring, perhaps, to the fact that Christians get abortions in about the same proportions as the general population. Same number of divorces. Sometimes pornography gets sold to preachers, and TV evangelists make the news when they get caught with a hooker.
Well, friend, in addressing a challenge like this one, it feels like we're taking a toothbrush and trying to paint the Statue of Liberty. Because simplistic answers frankly don't suffice. Should Christians NOT try to change bad laws, overturn bad Supreme Court decisions, vote out ineffective presidents? Shouldn't they have fought against slavery and segregation and 14-hour workdays for nine-year-old children? Undoubtedly, yes. And there are many effective Christians who are trying both to save victims OF pornography, AND also enact laws AGAINST it.

In a very effective rebuttal against some of the points in this book, Blinded By Might, Jerry Falwell has this to say:

"But if families do not also lead the battle in defense of the unborn, who will? If believers do not oppose same-sex marriages, who will? . . . If Christians do not cry out against wickedness in high places, who will?"

And yet the track record of the past twenty-seven years is in front of us. Top-down change to affect certain moral problems simply hasn't happened.

Dobson and Thomas, both of them insider professionals in the world of politics, AND born-again believers, are able to share from their unique perspective why citizens like you and me are bound to experience frustration if we pour our major efforts into legislative victories instead of spiritual ones.

"You can't apply the principles of a kingdom NOT of this world to a kingdom OF this world," they point out. "The purists want to apply the principles of a kingdom that knows NO compromise to a kingdom that is ALL ABOUT compromise."

Up on Capitol Hill — and of course, the same thing is true in London's Parliament buildings and all around the globe — politicians operate under the principle that half a loaf is better than none. "If you take a crumb at a time, sooner or later you end up owning the bakery," was the metaphor Congressman Rick Santorum, himself a devout Roman Catholic, used in describing the way things are in the U.S. Senate. Trading this vote for that new post office or highway funding. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Tying up Bill #22 in committee so Bill #23 can sneak in ahead of it. And of course the games get ever more frantic and phony. But when Christians storm the gates of government and demand a Human Life Amendment — human LIFE — the innocent life of an unborn baby — compromise simply isn't possible. How can you compromise on life?

One challenge Christians face in the political arena is to follow the example of Jesus in ALL things, ALL issues. First of all, to care about the hungry and the homeless as much as the unborn. To have the same concern for racial equality as for the gay rights agenda. Cal Thomas writes:

"The strongholds and pretensions can only be demolished under two conditions: one, that we don't fight with the world's weapons, but with divine ones; and two, that our OBEDIENCE is complete. We have been trying to use the world's weapons of political power, and we have not been sufficiently obedient to the call of Jesus to CARE as He cares and DO as He did. No wonder conservative Christians continue to run into brick walls."

Throughout history Christians have also failed, they point out, because to put it bluntly, people don't like to be told what to do! You don't. I don't. Slaveholders never did. Saloon owners didn't. People who like alcohol didn't during Prohibition. Today abortionists and desperate women and drug users and homosexuals don't either. Nobody likes being told by someone else what they can do and can't do. Prohibition ended up, Cal Thomas reminds us, "[making] religious people look like a band of moralizing killjoys."

And sometimes the tone of our debate, our red-hot rhetoric, has hurt the cause when Christians tried to take over government. Just that expression — "take over government" — makes some people want to fight back. "(Quote) America is a Christian nation" — that failed and flawed line of reasoning has caused a great deal of resistance in this pluralistic world we live in today.

And sometimes just plain meanness . . . where Christians have picked up the mud of their accusers and thrown it right back. Pastor Ed Dobson, who left the Moral Majority to be the senior pastor at Calvary Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, describes how he instituted a policy there of "no organized politicking." The church didn't get involved in campaigns, voter drives, marches, picketing, or any of that. And Pastor Dobson got hit in the face by more than a few verbal pies . . . from Christians in his pews who wanted to get out and rumble for Jesus, so to speak, on a gay-rights issue. He refused. The church didn't participate. And he confesses in a chapter entitled "Let the Church Be the Church":

"The tone of the conversations and letters [I received] was HATEFUL. I am thankful I am not gay: seeing the way other Christians treated me, I can only imagine how they would treat gay people."

Well, friend, time's up, but not the discussion. I'm just one person. So are you. One vote . . . and one helping hand. One Christian example. One cup of cold water. One hug. One lowered voice; one caring friend. One trying-to-be-holy life. Working for Jesus from the bottom up.