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WHO BLEEDS WHEN CHRISTIANS FIGHT? #3
NO WAY TO FINISH YOUR TERM
I don’t know if you’ve ever had the political appetite to wade clear through one of these presidential tell-all books that continue to flood the marketplace. Even President George W. Bush is experiencing the mixed PR that comes when aides leave the White House and take their laptop computers away from Washington with them. You can understand that America’s 37th President, Richard M. Nixon, has had way more than his share of press, as insiders and historians alike have chronicled the tumultuous years that culminated in the Watergate scandal and eventual resignation on August 9, 1974.
In his recent biography, President Nixon: Alone in the White House, historian Richard Reeves has reams of new material, gleaned from the tapes and notes from people like H. R. Haldeman. He describes an alumni meeting of sorts that took place in D.C., May 17, 2000, six years after the death of the former Chief Executive. Men and women who had worked for Nixon came together to reflect. Many of them still wore the Nixon-like flag pins in their lapels; Nixon’s grandson, Christopher Cox, led the group in saying the Pledge of Allegiance. And I’m sure many of those present had to be thinking, almost still in a daze: “What happened?” How could a President who won reelection by 18 million votes, 49 states to one, end up quitting in disgrace less than two years later? One man who died just a few months before this reunion was Elliott Richardson, who held three Cabinet posts under Nixon, and who resigned as Attorney General rather than fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox in the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre.” He commented earlier to this book’s author: “[Nixon] wanted to be the Architect of his Times.”
But then you read the book. And for chapter after chapter, there are tragic stories. Oh, there are some tender, noble, courageous moments. Nixon had greatness within him, and an amazing ability to gently comfort a hurting person, to be personal and warm. But most of the book chronicles the bitterness, the quarreling, the splits and the schisms and the splashes of anger.
In the introduction, Reeves writes:
“[Nixon’s] Inaugural address, lifted stylistically from Kennedy’s 1961 speech, was built on a sign held up by a young girl in Ohio as he campaigned there: “Bring Us Together.” But Nixon could not do that. He saw people as groups, to be united and divided toward political ends. The architecture of his politics, like that of his foreign policy, was always based on manipulating groups and interests, balancing them or setting them against one another, whichever suited his purposes or the moment or his times. He had a tribal and genetic view of peoples everywhere. He gloried in cultural warfare, dividing the nation geographically, generationally, racially, religiously. He believed that was what all politicians did. His ‘silent majority,’ a resentful populist center of working and middle-class Christians, loved him not for himself but for his enemies.”
And you know, friend, in our own lives — whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican or living unto yourself out under a tree someplace — the politics of division seems to be an ever-present reality. At our jobs and in our families and especially within our own hearts. Why do people thrive on warfare, on division and conflict? There must have been a lot of Nixon posters and ANTI-Nixon posters in the ancient streets of Colosse, because notice what Paul writes to the new Christians there:
“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
We find here an easy-to-read and hard-to-fulfill spiritual diagnosis, don’t we? “Bear with each other.” “Forgive each other.” “Forgive those grievances.” And maybe you want to say: “Yeah, but Paul wasn’t talking about MY co-worker!” Like the old retort to the Matthew 19 command: “Good luck; I’d like to see you love MY neighbor!”
Well, we want to continue to flesh out the why and the how of applying this spiritual tourniquet to our own wounds. But today let’s make just one plain point, and here it is: The politics of division and strife — and the spiritual life of division and strife — are doomed approaches. They simply are not going to work.
We see that in the various Nixon biographies that are piled up high at Barnes & Noble. Yes, those tactics succeeded for a while. There’s a famous story where Pat Buchanan, who was a young, conservative speechwriter for Nixon before deciding to run for President a couple of times himself, helped his boss engineer a political strategy regarding race and busing and affirmative action. Someone in the White House pointed out that the policies Buchanan was advocating were bound to divide the nation right in half. And the fiery young conservative smiled and responded: “If we cut the country in half, I guarantee you our side’ll get the bigger half.” And maybe you can win one election that way. But can you really create a generation of peace like that, forge a lasting prosperity for all Americans? Can you grow your political party long-term by calling a lot of other people “them”?
There’s an interesting political hot potato cooking in the little New Testament book of Titus. In chapter one, we read that Christians there had fallen down to the very bottom of the “Us. vs. Them” pit. Some believed that all new believers needed to undergo circumcision and keep the whole Jewish law. The Democrats in town said no. Some Christians were clinging to Old Jewish myths and “genealogies”; these were likely mythical stories attached to Old Testament history. Others were ready to be done with all of that. And finally Paul gives this warning:
“But avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels about the law, because these are unprofitable and USELESS.”
In other words, these discussions are doomed. These tactics are terminal terrain; they simply aren’t going to work or bear fruit. If you want to kill ten prayer meetings in a row debating those points, yes, you can sure do it . . . but at the end of the day, things will not be better; they’ll be worse.
And why, in our own lives, should we hitch our wagons to a mental attitude that we know going in is a falling star? It reminds me of the classic old book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie, who warns his readers that, hey, if they want to live their lives criticizing others, they can do that. But it simply isn’t going to work. It will . . . not . . . work. You won’t get what you want out of that other person; they WILL NOT change because you shout at them or embarrass them. It is simply a fixed reality that criticism and controversy are failed weapons. Richard Nixon himself once confessed to a speechwriter in describing his former boss, President Eisenhower:
“Everybody loved Ike. But the reverse of that was that Ike loved everybody. . . . Ike didn’t hate anybody. He was puzzled by that sort of thing. He didn’t think of people who disagreed with him as being the ‘enemy.’ He just thought: ‘They don’t agree with me.’”
So friend, how can we go out there and “be like Ike”? How can we love our enemies and stop arguing with them? First of all, by doing what the Bible says. Bear with each other. Forgive. Tomorrow . . . forgive again. When it’s hard . . . forgive. Overlook. Take the larger view. Ask God for help. Bear with each other. Forgive. And again. And again.
And often, it’s well to simply sit down and look in instead of out. Are you living a life marked by useless quarreling, by ineffective criticism and endless e-mailing to stoke the Internet fires of anger? Richard Reeves describes how President Nixon was a loner; he would often go off by himself and fill a yellow legal pad with notes “from RN . . . TO RN.” He would analyze himself, evaluate himself, try to understand himself. And then he would write down on the yellow sheets of paper how he wanted to do things better. Nixon really did love America; he had bright visions for the country. After being President for 17 days, he scrawled in earnest letters:
“Most powerful office. Each day a chance to do something memorable for someone. Need to BE good to DO good. . . . The nation must be better in spirit at the end of term. Need for joy, serenity, confidence, inspiration.”
What a tragedy that Nixon reflected and saw the high bar. But in his own power, he simply could not get over it. He could not get over hating, attacking, dividing. His adversaries were doing it to him, and he soon resolved to do it to them. “I just get up every morning to confound my enemies,” he once confided to Bob Dole. And after five-and-a-half years, the failed infrastructure of “enemies lists” and revenge and IRS audits brought the Presidency of this lonely, embittered, brilliant man to an end.
How the God of all peace and all peacemakers must look down in despair when WE repeatedly stumble in the low road of controversy! His divine yellow pad is filled with hopeful achievements for His church and His people. Plans for peace and unity. But He needs me, friend, and you, to do this hard-but-successful thing: “Bear with one another. Forgive. Bear with one another. Forgive.”
It’s a broken record that really works. It’s the only record that really works.
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