A Visit With Ben and Jesus

Ben Franklin said once that it was an amazing thing:  Humans build flammable houses and then build fires WITHIN them.  A fireplace is an ironic thing, isn't it?  Of course, Franklin was always talking about more than one thing at a time.  Building a fire is a thing to be carefully done - in the fireplace rather than the middle of the room!  And Franklin knew all about the power of political speech, understanding the old truth that the pen is mightier than the sword.  (Examples are easy to find.)  His expertise, in fact, was a powerful enabler of the American nation!

In Arizona, after the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and others, Sheriff Dupnik spoke for lots of us:  far too much vitriol in political speech.  What is vitriol?  A noun:  1)  sulfuric acid, 2) cruel and bitter criticism.  Both eat away the treasures.

America has always had VIVID political debate.  Read the newspapers from colonial times, in the first century of our Constitution, right up to today.  But lately the imagery of targets and cross-hairs, of "elimination" and revenge has become so heated that common debate disappears.  Speech that motivates violence may be within our freedoms, but hardly within any form of wisdom.

Christians have a stake in this.  Without common debate, a society makes decisions based on threats and intimidation.  Everyone loses.  If we love our neighbor, and love our country, and love our family, then fear-generating rhetoric serves no constructive purpose.  People who make their living generating "vitriol" are no friend to either liberal or conservative.  We are called to another thing altogether:  to love our neighbor above all things, exactly as Jesus told us to do.

I pray for every elected official who feels threatened, even if they never speak of it.  And I pray for every "spokesman'" who has never stood the test of the electorate, but continues to intimidate with fiery language, that they will see that their fire threatens the house.  While there is money to be made in their ventures, the cost is so much more than anyone can imagine.

All people, every one of us, will do what we are motivated to do with our freedoms.  Followers of Jesus now have a new and above-politics mission:  Whatever the outcome of public debate, we are to remain models of the love of Jesus, even in the midst of a hard, hard world.