Outrageous

This much is obvious - when I read what some of my friends from the South write on Facebook about their distrust of our President, of the current administration or of the government in general a vast majority of what is written is not as an outrage against injustice. More than anything, what is written is an outrage against a democratically elected Democrat led government.

Lets be honest - for most of those referred to, there was no outrage upon the revelation that we (America) have tortured individuals for the sake of "truth." There has very rarely been any outrage for the plight of those who slough through the swamps of poverty and destitution. The orphan and the widow remain on the margins, but what comes to the forefront on the minds of those who would carry the banner of Christ in America is the downfall of capitalism by the likes of a president who pushes to enact universal health care and fix the financial & budgetary problems left behind by a previous (Republican) administration (that I, admittedly, voted for - both the current and the former).

All the while, the hungry are still hungry.
The sick are still sick.
The marginalized are still off to the sides.

And the unfortunate thing is that I walked with the mess that is the myopic strains of a faith that is more political than actualized. When it comes down to it, I think that Jesus cares less about your government than He does about how you're treating (loving) your brother.

Maybe...it's a sort of temperament thing. I've never been a huge proponent of talking politics. I just think that the weight of importance given to the American political (and lets be really honest - ideological) process is generally wasted energy and has become more divisive and visceral than well thought and unifying. And this is come about with some difficulty in a faith that declares that Christ is the head over all authority (Col 2:10) and that we are to Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution. At best, it's problematic even as we have declared our democracy to be supreme (which is why Arminianism plays such a huge part in our religious dialogue, I suspect) and, by association, God to be mistrusted even as we mistrust our own leaders.

Our failing, then...is that we are not outraged about the thing that Christ was outraged about. I don't weep over the brokenness of the world like Jesus - and in the end, this is only proof of how vast the separation is from Him and me (which is good, because I would make for a very poor Jesus). And that's the crazy thing - right - that Jesus gets outraged about how people are treated (how they are unloved, how they are overlooked, how the image of God is slandered, how the worship of God is corrupted) and not what government is in power.

I have failed to some degree by trusting that certain political powers have in mind the things of God while the reality remains that certain political powers have in mind the elevation of self and the propagation of an ideology that is not Christianity.

We cling to this false assumption that power is found in a vote - a voice amongst others in a democratic republic. We generally abhor the idea that Jesus would have us loosen our grips from the illusion of power (a vote... a voice... in other cultures, all that you have - Luke 18:18-30) and see what following and loving are...