Why I'm a political pariah - Introduction

I'm going to apologize up front in the event that this post ends up being rambling, or incoherent, or both, or whatever. There's also a good chance I may be inadvertantly starting a series of posts, because I may not be able to contain all this in one post. However, I'm about to inflict you with some mullings and musings that have been rattling around in my head for the last several weeks, and also scattered across a number of conversations in that time, and I feel the need to write about them to try and bring them all together. We shall see if I succeed.

It's interesting to me that, despite my largely successful efforts to shield myself from the onslaught of the election (I watched all of 5 minutes of either convention, and that was primarily by accident), I've spent a relatively significant amount of time evaluating my personal politics in the last number of weeks, primarily on a foundational level more so than an issue by issue level. It's probable that one of the main causes for this was an upcoming series of messages at my church, entitled "When Kingdoms Collide: A Closer Look at Faith and Politics" That series began last night, and despite some trepidation on my part, I was very pleased with it's beginnings, as it seems we're really going to be looking at what it means to be citizen's of God's kingdom first, while still living in an earthly kingdom as well. I've been conditioned to worry about such topics in church, simply because too often they became a soapbox for the politic leanings of the pastor or denomination, which "of course" are the leanings that all people of true faith should have. As I'm sure I'll get to at some point today, tomorrow, or whenever, I think the idea that "true Christians" should all fall along a similar political line is ridiculous, and extremely.

If you've been on this blog for a while, you know that I'm a pariah politically. By that, I mean I'm a registered 3rd party, and that party happens to be Libertarian. That's right, I'm a card carrying (okay, not really, who carries their voter registration card around?) nutjob! I used to be a fairly traditional member of the "religious right", and like so many, believed (though I probably never would have said it) that that's where all "true Christians" should find themselves. I have voted in two presidential elections in my life time, and voted for George W. Bush both times, the first time enthusiastically, the second time much less so. The years since the last presidential election left me disillusioned with the Republican Party in particular, but really more so with the political process as a whole. That left me diving for the Libertarian way of thinking. I figure, since I can't stand any of these guys, why not advocate for there to be less of them, and for them to have less control over my life, and my money. In the message on Sunday, the question was asked as to whether our political leanings were based more in our personal preferences, or in our faith and how we read Scripture - more on my thoughts on this question itself to come in a future post. I'll be flatly honest, as I made my shift from mainline evangelical voter to the right fringe of the political spectrum, I didn't really give anything much more thought than my frustration with the norm and the appealing nature of less government involvement in my life.

That began to change about 9 months ago or so, at an event our young adult group held for a discussion of, what else, faith and politics. I'm still not really sure why I even went to that thing, except that I had nothing else going on that particular night. Anyhow, it ended up being myself and a few other Libertarian leaning thinkers explaining ourselves to several folks, including the guy in charge, who definitely fell to the left of us (though I can't say they were classic liberals). I thought overall it was a healthy exchange of ideas, maybe a little heated a times, but still good. I think I blogged about it here, but I'm too lazy to go look. Regardless of all that, the one thing that really impressed me about the leader was that, whether I agreed with his views or not, he was clearly looking to Scripture for guidance and wasn't willing to overlook certain things just for convenience. And what concerned me was that, while I had a lot of the practical rhetoric worked, I really couldn't come back strongly and discuss my political worldview in the context of my faith,or at least I couldn't do it very well.

So, bit by bit, little by little, I've been asking those questions ever since - not from the perspective of "what should Christians believe about politics?" but from the perspective of whether my politics and my faith are consistent. I think I've finally got some answers, and so that's what I'm going to attempt to lay out here over however many posts it takes me. And with that, we've reached the end of post one!