Divide: And Then What?

Our political debates tend to focus on the state and liberty. The argument runs that America is a country predicated on either negative liberty or progress: take your pick. But does that perhaps miss the point? I believe that such false dichotomies divide us and distract us from the real problems of our day. Take the following quote from Anti-Climacus:

The child who previously has had only his parents as a criterion becomes a self as an adult by getting the state as a criterion, but what an infinite accent falls on the self by having God as the criterion.

Perhaps it is our very emphasis on man and the governments he constructs that is the problem. Perhaps our ideologies get in the way of making God the criterion. Admittedly, this will only hold true for my theistic readers. But as a theist that seems fitting. Besides even the atheist must recognize the importance of the “how” and the “why,” even if Richard Dawkins did once call “why” a silly question.

It’s very possible that this post will upset both those on the Right and on the Left. Maybe it may even make me seem like a theocrat. But I protest that I am no such thing. I believe fully and firmly that political systems matter. The question, however, is not just what matters, but what matters the most.

As a result, it is necessary that we remember that God should always be the criterion. In Lent and in Ordinary Time, in the deepest sorrow and in the greatest joy, and yes in our libertarianism and in our statism, God must be the criterion. And for most of us, this may seem to be the reality of our existence. We are not “ideological;” we simply apply Christ’s teaching to the political sphere. But is that enough? What does the God who is love demand? Who is the God of both Tertullian and St. Francis de Sales?

In that vein and much like last week, I’d like to leave you with Jacques Ellul:

Man himself is exalted, and paradoxical though it may seem to be, this means the crushing of man. Man’s enslavement is the reverse side of the glory, value, and importance that are ascribed to him. The more a society magnifies human greatness, the more one will see men alienated, enslaved, imprisoned, and tortured, in it. Humanism prepares the ground for the anti-human. We do not say that this is an intellectual paradox. All one need do is read history. Men have never been so oppressed as in societies which set man at the pinnacle of values and exalt his greatness or make him the measure of all things. For in such societies freedom is detached from its purpose, which is, we affirm, the glory of God.