Conservative vs. Liberal pt II: A Better Way of Thinking

My last post attempted to illustrate the semantic and philosophical disconnect between the terms conservative and liberal. This post is an attempt to provide a better way of thinking and talking about the issue of social change.

Here's by basic assumption: the problems conservative people have with liberal people and vice versa are not in fact, fundamentally, with their methodology regarding social change, but that both relative positions are unaware of their own historical and cultural conditioning. This is the root of the problem. Each person is shaped in innumerable ways by the experiences of not only their own lives but by the lives of their ancestors, friends and acquaintances. Furthermore, they are shaped by the place, the location, in which they live.

This shaping means that what a person feels, assumes, thinks, to be universally true may only be true where they are from. And before you go running off and taking this statement to be universally true, remember that I myself am also shaped by my history, and I am not talking in those terms. I am saying that what you consider normal is not necessarily what I consider normal, and what I am conservative about is not, therefore what you are conservative about. Conservative to me means keeping the values I grew up with, which weren't the values you grew up with. Liberal to me means abandoning the values I grew up with, which weren't necessarily the values you grew up with. Moreover, I am conservative and liberal on these points, in that there are some things I grew up with that I want to keep and some that I don't.

What makes the difference is that I am aware, at least to an extent, of how I have been shaped, and that my shaping is not how everyone else has been shaped. I am conservative and liberal because I am aware. The fundamental difference is not between people who are predominantly conservative or liberal, but between people who are aware of their shaping and those who are not. This is actually the line that divides.

If you truly want to overcome these nitpicky differences, learn your history; know where you come from. Understand that the factors that have shaped you are myriad and far reaching. And seek to see beyond that shaping to be able to engage others. If we must draw lines, let's draw them between people who are aware and those who are not.

Conservative vs. Liberal: Thoughts on Why These Positions are Unhelpful

There are always words that get thrown around as if they have the weight of the world in their meanings. Conservative and Liberal are two of those words. In the banter that has become Western Christianity in America, these words are the razor's edge in a knife fight, the trump card that within any circle signifies the end of an argument as a two sided affair; "that's a liberal idea" or "you're too conservative."

I would like to propose the inadequacy of these terms and propose a radical thought: that what these terms denote is not the problem each has with the other. In fact, I want to suggest that the misunderstanding of these terms is in fact the problem. Here it goes:

Conservative and Liberal are relative, derivative terms in that they depend on a particular position to reality and derive their significance from that position. You are conservative or liberal relative to what is; to what the current situation is perceived to be. In short, conservative actually means supporting what is, where as liberal means being unsatisfied with what is and straining for something else (the denotative meaning). Yet this is not in fact a complete understanding of the terms, as conservative also connotes the supremacy of what was, implying a situation of decline from an earlier, more idyllic time. Liberal connotes an assumption of progress, that the earlier ways of doing things were not any better and were in fact worse than the current (the connotative meaning).

Interestingly, both assume that the current situation can be improved upon, which is inherently a liberal idea. The difference is the method taken to reach that improvement; conservative perspectives want to reclaim where as liberal ones want to press into something new.

Now here's where these terms are inadequate. People who are rhetorically learned, such as politicians, know how to use the connotative vs. denotative aspects of the terms to their advantage, pandering to their audience to gain the vote they desire. The dual meanings of the terms then release them of responsibility to act in accordance with what their constituents heard them say, because they are able to claim, and with a degree of scientific honesty, that what they meant by conservative or liberal was not what their constituents thought they meant.

Furthermore, because of the derivative, relative nature of the denotative meaning of the terms, they are not static; their meanings change in relation to what is. When a value is assumed to be static and universal, it becomes an entity, and once an entity has been assumed, it can become a weapon. These weapons are the words that are used like arrows to pierce the armor of those we oppose, who interestingly often share the same conservative or liberal perspective we do.

This post has already gotten too long, and so I will leave you in suspense until tomorrow, when I publish my conclusion. Until then, sound off as you wish on my incomplete treatment of the subject!

Who's the most irreligious?

Not too many years ago I found myself uttering these incredibly cliched words: "I'm not religious, I just have a relationship with Jesus." This was an echo of the words that I had heard time and again from my church leaders-"We're not into religion, we're into relationship."

So, what is "religion?"

Over the years, I've begun to question what we mean by these words. I've struggled to reconcile what we who use this language project by it and what we enact by it. See, on the one hand we seem to have a firmly constructed idea of what constitutes "religion:" empty repetitious sayings and doings, and esoteric ideas about the nature of the world and life and death.

The True un-religion

Of course, each group of people who use this type of language claim (and I am only slightly generalizing here) that they are the true irreligious group. All others are still religious. This has struck me as incredibly ironic, as it was not that long ago that each group was proclaiming itself as the true "religion."

But how is that not religious?

What has struck me as even more ironic is how much each of the irreligious group's practices look an awful lot like what I consider religion. Without fail, each group claiming irreligiousness has some perspective that is in line with a seemingly irrational belief, or "superstition." We've all got them, even the most diehard rational person has in some dark closet a superstition they cannot transcend.

Full disclosure: I am not against religion.

But I say this only with the understanding that religion is relationship. False religion is irrelational. Nope, that's not a typo- irrelational. At a fundamental level, nothing we do or think can be completely justified from a rational point of view; we are simply irrational creatures. Our strange, "religious" practices are only empty when they are devoid of relational concern.

Religion is a particular way of being in relationship.

For Christians, our particular way of being in relationship is inextricably rooted in our fundamental faith in the redemptive and restorative work of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Our religion is a way of living with others that acknowledges and participates in this reality. And ironically, this reality cannot be participated in without practice, action; doing, saying, thinking and making.

Done with the bait and switch.

All of this boils down to a simple relational truth: you cannot be a Christian without religion, and you cannot be positively religious without positive relationship. I'm done with sloganeering and posturing to make Christianity sound like something it isn't, or for that matter with only telling half truths to get people in. I'm done with the bait and switch. We are religious, and it's time we acknowledge this and strive to be faithful in our religion.