Religion, Politics

At sixteen, I was kind of a stereotype: Doc Martins, buzz cut, college guide in my lap in trig, the entries on Reed and Eugene Lang dog-eared. I held a little garden of political views that mattered more – I thought then -- than anything else: let the political prisoners free, feed people in developing countries, stop female genital mutilation/child slavery/factory farming.

A part of me deeply misses that kid and wishes I'd kept that passion, and the lack of ambiguity that made it possible. Another part threw up her hands at some point because, when I was like that:


1. I was missing out on huge parts of life, basically ignoring my terrific boyfriend and my parents, never more than 70% present at any given party, lunch period, or coffee shop outing.

2. I had no sense of my worth independent of what I did, had, and believed. As a consequence, nothing I did, had, or believed seemed like enough.

3. I essentially reduced the things that mattered to me to a catalog of hipster causes. I believed in them to the extent that I was capable of belief in anything, but my passion was shallow: in retrospect, I didn't take those causes to heart so much as I used them to identify myself.


Consequently, I'm a little anxious about the idea of letting my faith inform any kind of political activity. Gary Burge's commentary on John takes Jesus's storming of the temple and reads it as a call to "zealously pursu[e] God's passions in the world." But in my experience, the periods in which I have been most devoted to doing just that, I have also been largely absent from my own life – a lousy daughter, partner, and friend. I also tend to overlook the work I'm doing right now, which is never as important as what I could be doing. Writing papers on critical theory? But I could be teaching underprivileged kids to read! Tutoring at-risk kids? But I could be having a bigger impact! Supervising 220 kids after school? But I could be affecting the policies that impact them! Working in ed policy? But I just sit at a desk every day!

This isn't to say I disagree with Burge -- only that I feel the satisfaction derived from political action that can make it hard to know for sure that it's God's passion one is pursuing. And that I get held back from fighting for economic justice by the spectre of my own privilege: who am I to want Mitt Romney to pay more taxes when I've eaten out twice this week already? And that I often don't take the time to inform myself enough to have an opinion: is our current war unjust? What does God think about abortion?

I'm not sure which is worse: the appalling inadequacy of the Prosperity Gospel in a world where people are dying from dehydration and rotting alone in nursing homes, or the cacophony of crusaders whose God is apparently unambiguously against/in favor of abortion/a living wage/ gay marriage/ universal health care.

I mean, I know what "my God" thinks, at least about b, c, and d. But if my God is Rick Santorum's God, is George Bush's God -- well, what then?

I end up both compelled to act and incapable of action. I think of people who are oppressed, who are affected by the horrible systematic oppression, class warfare, actual warfare, and it seems there's really time for me to fear and tremble as I try to work out what "God's passion" actually is. But I'm not sure I'm in a place -- or ever will be in a place -- where I can see the world and its institutions as God does, or be fully convinced of the righteousness of my cause.