Jesus Was a Loser
I have a friend who participates with me in an online forum. I’ll call him Bill, not his real name. Bill has long disliked Mike Lee, senator from Utah, and condemns him because many of the conservative bills Lee votes for don’t pass. Rated by Heritage Action for America, Lee has a lifetime conservative score of 96% compared to 80% for the average senate Republican.
Bill here proves once again that he simply has no grasp of - or just doesn't care about - what conservatism really is - or what are the nation's critical philosophical underpinnings. For him, winning is good, and losing is bad - period.
Blind to the existential issues of right vs. wrong, truth vs. lies, light vs. darkness, liberty vs. tyranny, good vs. evil that are swirling around us and will, for good or ill, drive our future as a people and nation, Bill is oblivious to the existential, God-based, libertarian philosophical/moral construct that has defined America from her beginnings and made her "a shining city on a hill" for the whole world - an intellectual, moral and spiritual imperative of goodness the founding generation understood well and frequently spoke and wrote about. Two oft-referenced citations convey the gist of how those great men understood the new nation they had created:
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." - George Washington, First President of the United States
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams, Second President of the United States
Amazingly, without any reference to the substance of Mike Lee's voting record - what was actually in the bills he has voted for - a voting record that gives him an excellent conservative score among those who do care about such substance - Bill, in his winning-is-everything mentality, condemns the man because many or most of those bills Lee voted for did not have the necessary support to be passed.
In other words, because the majority power is in the hands of those hostile to conservative principles and values expressed in the bills Lee voted for - people who will not pass conservative bills - it's somehow Mike Lee's fault. He is a personal failure because conservative bills don't pass. For Bill, again, as always, with no reference to any intellectual, moral or spiritual standard, if you win, you're good, if you lose, you're bad.
By Bill’s measure, notwithstanding his having stood for everything good, Jesus, who by any worldly standard lost big and ended up nailed to a cross, was a loser.
What nonsense! And, as I have noted more than once in the past, this profound lack of understanding in friend Bill is particularly surprising considering his exposure to and association with the theology of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - an inspired catalog of revelation that makes it crystal clear that God had a critical hand in the founding of America and has set a high moral and spiritual Christian standard that the people must meet if they are to remain a free and prosperous nation.
Those revelations declare God’s covenant with America along the very same lines as the bicameral Mosaic Covenant he made with the ancient Israelites - on the one hand we have promises overflowing with good things - enduring safety, peace and prosperity based on obedience to God's commands, and, on the other, assurances of the most dire consequences should we, like the ancient Israelites, turn like dogs to our vomit, abandon the God of our fathers, and descend into depravity.
Who can deny that we have chosen the latter course?
The understanding that should emerge from all this, it seems to me, is that if America is intellectually, morally and spiritually sound, she will survive and prosper. If not, she will suffer and fall.
Politics, then, is not simply about winning, not just a contest for power, but should be understood as societal machinery that expresses the collective intellectual, moral and spiritual substance of the people. It is a collective means for the people to fight for what is morally right and good. Any politician who thinks, as Bill does, that politics can and should be purged of intellectual, moral and spiritual content - that it is only about winning, only about power - is guilty, in my view, of a monumental failure to understand what America is, what threatens her, what has to be fought for in her defense, and how the battle should be waged.
In other words, Bill’s mentality is part of America's problem, not the solution. Evil is the problem, and righteousness is the solution.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose - nothing new under the sun:
"For as their laws and their governments were established by the voice of the people, and they who chose evil were more numerous than they who chose good, therefore they were ripening for destruction, for the laws had become corrupted. Yea, and this was not all; they were a stiffnecked people, insomuch that they could not be governed by the law nor justice, save it were to their destruction."
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Book of Mormon, Helaman 5:2-3, Circumstances among the Nephite people around 30 B.C.
Sound familiar?
These are the times that try men's souls...
Torquemada