Voting Christmas Values

That is one of my favorite lines from "O Holy Night", which also happens to be one of my favorite Christmas carols. This year I had the pleasure of hearing it peal forth from the ivory voice of a dear friend who is known in our church as "The Songbird", so graceful and rich is her gift. She cannot sing but she brings tears to our eyes and reminds us all of our commitments and convictions.

During the holiday season, donations to charities rise, food banks fill up, people pay more offerings to the poor in their churches. Employers give bonuses to their employees and time off to spend with their families. We give things to our beloved friends and family to symbolize how much we cherish and appreciate them. We take the time out of our busy schedules to write notes in Christmas cards and let people know that we are thinking about them. And, even though we are rushed, we all manage to be a little kinder to each other during the Christmas season. This is so much so, that many people feel a kind of post Christmas depression.

"Why can't it be like this all the time?"

I have, since childhood, considered myself a Christian, and yet have almost always found myself at odds with most of what of what is said by the majority of people in the maelstrom of the media claiming that same affiliation. Frankly, I think Christ would be horrified at much of what has been done and is being done in his name. Likewise, I feel that liberals who abandon their spiritual roots because it has been overrun by the greedy, the manipulative, and the cold of heart, are throwing away the birthright of traditions that could support them in their work.

Jesus was the first Christian. I think, were we to follow in his footsteps every day of our lives, there would be no hungry children, their would be no crumbling schools, mothers wouldn't have to leave their children alone to join the workforce at minimum wage. If we were living as Christians, there would be no racism, no hatreds between ethnicities, no sexism, no hate crime. There would be no health insurance problems, no withholding of medicines from impoverished countries. The sick would be cared for and the homeless would be sheltered. Christians would not hunger for war, but would seek out methods for lifting others up and achieving peace. In other words - In his name all oppression would cease.

In short, what a revolution we would see if tomorrow all the people in the world who claim to be Christians started to follow the life and teachings of Christ.

People of faith have a history putting themselves at the forefront of justice movements. Quakers, Methodists and many others were at the forefront of the abolitionist movement. The man who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace was a reformed slave trader who came to see how evil his work was when he found a place for the awe of grace. People of all religious factions were deeply committed to the American civil rights movement. Anglicans began to ordain women. Reformed Jews ordained women as rabbis.

It is just that in the last 25 years of so, we Americans have let the right wing take hold of their own moral high ground and have not replied with moral arguments of our own. It is as though we could not claim to dedicate ourselves to the cause of justice in this world and still have that sense of abiding spiritual support for those causes. And it is my fear that, without that sense of peace that comes from knowing you are doing the right thing because it is the right thing – not out of anger, or reaction – but as Gandhi said – out of non-compliance with evil – we will weary and exhaust ourselves into cynicism and despair.

Yet a couple of things that happened this last year surprised me and give me hope for the future.

Early in 2003, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, proposed a $1.2 billion tax package that raised taxes on the wealthiest residents and businesses and cut taxes on poor families. Riley argued that he had a moral obligation to do so. He felt it was his Christian duty. David Azbell, the governor's press secretary, said "Gov. Riley has said many times that there are three things he has found in reading the New Testament," Azbell said. "We are to love God, love our neighbor and take care of the poorest of the poor."

Azbell said that the tax plan helped make "an immoral tax system moral." He notes that in Alabama, a family of four that makes as little as $4,600 a year still has to pay income taxes. In neighboring Mississippi, that figure is $19,000. "I just don't think you can find a justification in the New Testament for taxing a family that makes $4,600 a year," he said. Too long has Alabama been first in its poverty rates, first in its infant mortality rates, last in its school test scores. Too long had Alabama citizens labored without clinics for health care and money for health programs in schools. He had looked at the state of his state and found that he was ashamed. So he decided to do something about it.

It was a progressive tax, hitting those who could afford it most the greatest, the middle class moderately, and the poor not at all. However, a great deal of money was spent by the wealthy in and outside of Alabama who didn't want to see this kind of tax revolt. The initiative scared the majority of voters who were already living hand to mouth. They voted it down.

I am always suspicious of people telling us we need less government in our lives. Who is the government? We are. What does the government do? Protect the interests of the individual and the community against the powerful and the many. Why then is too much government a bad thing? A bad thing for whom?

Secondly, in 2002, Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan promised to review his state's death row cases. He had declared a moratorium on the use of the death penalty when a commission on the subject revealed that the state had put 13 innocent people to death. This Republican governor then proceeded to commute the sentences of all the men and women on death row to life in prison. His reasoning was that it had been proven that the state had put innocent people to death. Hence, the due process for arriving at a death penalty verdict was not reliable. Therefore the state had no right to risk the innocent by putting anybody to death. He did this against party platform, as a matter of conscience.

I'll take a politician of almost any stripe who has integrity over one who purports to have the same values I do, but trades those values away in the name of power brokering.

I heard someone at church say that Jesus will walk among us again when we have become the kind of people he would feel comfortable having as brothers and sisters.

It would be fine with me if we started working on that, oh, any time now.

Sort of like having the spirit of Christmas, all year long.