"Moderates do not have principles." Time to switch back to the station I usually listen to. I was on my way home from a fundraiser breakfast in Salem and had stopped by to see my son at college. As the favorite station was getting a bit fuzzy, I had moved over to AM. A famous radio talk show host was bombasting away, explaining to the world why there was only one way to think. At the least, he kept me awake.
Yesterday was election day in a few places across the country, places like New Jersey where I grew up, local and state elections that I hadn't been following. Limbaugh was attacking moderates who advocated for the Republican "big tent" concept. Moderates like the big tent idea in the two main parties, otherwise they'd have to be independents and independents don't usually fare too well in this nation, especially moderate ones.
I take what Rush was saying to mean that people on the political right and left (as we Americans traditionally define right and left) have principles. But those in what is called the middle are compromisers. They lack principles. He did use those terms that way.
I'm not sure my political beliefs line me up in the middle -- or on the right or left for that matter. Which is why I put "unique" as my political persuasion on both my website and on my Facebook info page. I find it a very arduous task to sort out Biblical and Kingdom principles in this human life -- a task nonetheless worth pursuing.
In the life of Faith, there are no neat categories of actions to be taken or positions to be staked. The Bible is not a one-answer fits all catalog of dos and don'ts. It is filled with principles and parables and perspectives that cover all areas of life -- along with some very specific commands, some of which are for all times and all peoples and some of which are very time and people specific. If the Bible were more catalogish and specified, we would not need faith's other two anchors -- the Holy Spirit and the Community of Faith -- to help us sort out life.
So I don't feel totally comfortable with any one position on the traditional left-to-right line on which we tend to paint political, moral and religious persuasions. I like better the idea that, at the least, this line is more a circle in which the most liberal libertarians and the most conservative libertarians meet somewhere on the other side, opposite those big tent moderates who hang between the Republican and Democratic parties. (Every country has its own variations on these themes, so to my non-USA friends, please pardon my culturally specific applications.)
Even at that, I am not sure such a circle captures the heart and passions of God. Make it into a sphere and you get closer. But God is so beyond our three-dimensional world, the sphere would have to have an unlimited number of dimensions.
However, we mortals don't live in more than three dimensions, at least not on an ordinary basis, though I think that is what the Ancient, Paul, was referring to by being caught up to a higher level. Still, it is hard to bring those dimensions into everyday life -- witness the intense and passionate controversy surrounding applications of John's book known as "Revelation".
I don't think God purposed that life be all so complicated for us earth-bound humans. The complications are what we theological and philosophical types call "sin" and "evil". Which is why God sent Jesus, to help us rise above sin and evil and complications, and why Jesus said he'd come back and why many Believers talk about something called the Millennium, a futuristic time when he would show us what God intended all along, a time of living uncomplicatedly in the unlimited dimensions of God here on earth as human beings.
Most Christians agree to some degree with this notion of God's Kingdom on earth. Where we really disagree is how and how much God's multidimensional intentions and expectations impact our here and now. It is what theological types have called the "Already but not yet" of God's reign on earth, something people like Rush and other Righties and Lefties don't quite get.
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