Pensees: The Postmoderns’ Election

The Postmoderns’ Election

This election may be the only election in American history to be decided by postmoderns. If Os Guinness and other social critics are right, postmodernism will be dead before the next election four years from now. It is a thing of the past in Europe already.

I was talking with a friend the other day about the upcoming election. He and I share misgivings about the Iraq War and are both highly critical of the neo-conservative stranglehold on the Republican Party. I am not anti-war generally, but I am not so pro-Republican that I do not have misgivings about the morality of many of their decisions. I am also one that has for several years now questioned at least the wisdom, if not the morality, of the Iraq battlefield. My friend, however, told me that he would be voting for Barak Obama because Barak had promised to remove the troops out of Iraq. My friend’s reasoning was simple: as a veteran of the Iraq War he wanted his comrades-in-arms withdrawn immediately. He told me that he had very strong feelings about this. It was as if he had no other option. My friend at this point is a one-issue voter and the issue that moves him is an emotion about the war.

In his memoirs of the horrific fighting and death during WWII at Guadalcanal, S.E. Morison remarked that for the men who suffered through that hell on earth “Guadalcanal is not a name but an emotion.” For some men today, Iraq is not a name but an emotion. Certainly a soldier who has fought and bled, watched buddies suffer and die, and still bears in his body and soul the scars of a war that he questions has the right to a unique and powerful emotion about the conflict that none of the rest of us can begin to understand. But does he have the right to make his emotion the single determinative factor in his vote in which he is helping make a national decision? Not a personal decision, a national decision. Are there not other emotions? Other issues? Other responsibilities?

In the same way issues like pro-life, feminism, environmentalism, racism, capitalism, taxes, etc., are not names but emotions for the majority of voters today. It is the thing that moves them emotionally that will direct their decision. Thus, Sarah Palin on the McCain side might just draw to his side an otherwise ambivalent liberal that happens to have very strong emotions about hunting. And so forth.

I raised the question of abortion with my believing friend. It became apparent to me while we talked that abortion, the mass elimination of countless lives, did not move him like his own personal narrative. It is his personal narrative – and it is, indeed, emotionally intense and horrifyingly dramatic – that is shaping his political decision and affecting his moral compass. But the disciple of Jesus Christ is called to die to himself. The disciple of Jesus Christ must not make a decision – any decision – on the basis of his personal narrative. In fact, he must die to his personal narrative, his most powerful emotion.

Though my friend acknowledged that abortion was evil and homosexual marriage an abomination, he felt he had no choice but to support the ticket that he believed would be most anti-war. He reasoned that those who felt strongly about these issues should vote for the candidate that would best represent those feelings. All sins are equal, he reasoned, so basically it is up to us to vote against those which grieve us most.

Moral detachment or indifference to moral issues such as social injustice, environmental waste, abortion, unjust war, homosexual marriage, etc., is reflected in the dismissal of any issue that does not particularly move us emotionally. The Leftist Douglas V. Porpora brilliantly stated that “most Americans continue to believe in God. Many just do not find God someone to whom they are particularly attached. Thus,” he opined, “like my students, many find debates about God’s existence of little consequence.”

Popora then went on to give a lucid analysis of American postmodernism: “What has withered is not principally belief in cosmic meaning but concern with cosmic meaning. The withdrawal from the sacred is not principally a matter of belief but emotion. Our skepticism about any answer to life’s ultimate questions is often just a way for us to dismiss the questions. Our emotional withdrawal from cosmic meaning comes first. Our skepticism is secondary” (emphasis mine).

If we apply this analysis to the hot social and political issues of the day we can easily see how this election could be decided by postmoderns, including Christian postmoderns. Christian people who are emotionally attached to anti-war sentiments, for example, because of their personal narrative find it very difficult to believe that any other issue that does not affect them as much emotionally could be equally (or more) important.

Anger with the current administration, strong views about the war, and earnest feelings for “change” may or may not be legitimate, but one must not dismiss all the issues on the table as irrelevant purely on the basis of one’s feelings.

The same is true for pro-lifers. Many pro-life Americans find the abortion to be the single issue that moves them. But is this wise?

The issue in American politics is further complicated by the fact that the two dominating parties both represent issues that ought to concern the thoughtful Christian. The Christian should be pro-life and an environmentalist. The Christian should be anti-gay marriage and, sometimes, anti-war. The Christian should notice the whiteness of the Republican Convention and feel concern and he should sympathize with concerns of those who fear unrestrained capitalism. The Christian should do his utmost to protect the freedom and rights of all people, but he should also remember that he has biblical justification to suspect the rich as a class no matter what Rush Limbaugh says.

So how does one vote? Is all sin equal? Are all social ills equally abominable? Are we to suppose as most Americans believe that the process of democracy will reveal which of all these social ills should be the first to be addressed? In other words, all the people who feel anti-war emotions vote per their emotions and all those who feel anti-abortion emotions vote per their emotions and then we’ll see which ought to be the focus of our national government. Do we nationally submit our soul to the gamble of feelings? May the best emotions win?

This makes sense to some of my friends because they do not think that a thinking Christian can rationally classify and rank these issues in order to confidently select which presidential nominee they will vote for. Therefore, they will follow the emotion that compels them most.

Many of my friends on the conservative side are making a similar mistake. They have so elevated the issue of abortion to the top of all their concerns that some will not vote for John McCain this year because they do not feel that he is pro-life enough. This is foolish. There are other issues on the table. The thoughtful Christian should consider all of the issues; not just those issues which press his hot buttons.

For example, I believe that the pro-life cause can be rationally classified as one of the top concerns, if not the top concern, for the Christian disciple who is going to the polling booth this year. However, I also believe that those who have so elevated the pro-life question to a position of exclusive importance that they will not even vote this election because John McCain is not pro-life enough are unwisely pretending that other social issues are of unimportance to God. In other words, if all the people running for office were staunch abortionist, this pro-life advocate would still vote on November 4th.

I think that Christ redeems our emotions. With new and progressively sanctified feelings we begin to discern things that should matter to all Christian people. But God has also redeemed our minds. With our minds we ought to do the hard work of classifying and ordering all of the social matters that concern both parties today and makes decisions to the best of our ability that are not grounded in our emotions but in the authority of God’s Holy Word.

Not all sins are equal. Not all social ills are equally serious.

Think.