Disclaimer: Some people get offended easily by political discussions. I am not intending to offend anyone with this post. I had no specific person / group in mind when I wrote it. Purely my own ideas about the election, politics, et al. I am not that old and I live in China most of the time so my perspective on U.S. politics is likely full of many errors and short-comings. Hope this discussion is thought-provoking anyway.
I've heard this statement a lot lately: if you don't vote, don't complain. I understand the thinking, but from my experience the people who do vote complain as much as (if not more than) the people who don't. Is complaining one of those "inalienable rights" we talk about so often in the U.S.?
As if marking "x" on a ballot for party A or party B is a license to criticize anything and everything the (All-Powerful…ha!) government does or doesn't do to meet our specific wants (notice I didn't say needs). What's funny about it is that the complaining mostly hovers around the fact that party A got in this time while party B was shut out for at least four more years. (How can we continue to live in this country with President Bauer in power? they ask.) As a person who puts little hope in politics saving/redeeming the world and all its problems, I find the endless cycle of whining (without more substantial personal activism) a bit annoying and useless.
The complaining is a minor issue to me though. The bigger issue is expecting the government to be the vehicle to make the radical changes in society that we, as individual citizens, are unwilling to take responsibility for and make happen. I look around the web, TV, Facebook, and blogs and for many in this country EVERYTHING is riding on who gets elected in 2008. Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin. The fate of the world seemingly lies in this decision. People are completely polarized on the issue and have elevated its importance to ridiculous (in my opinion) universal significance. But part of the reason for that is because, for many of us, voting is the ONLY thing we do. We have representatives who take care of these big important issues for us, so that we don't have to. Very consumeristic which should surprise no one. We make sure we vote because that's our privilege as Americans, hey, people have died for that "right", but as soon as we pull the curtain on the ballot box with it go all the issues, the systemic problems, the platforms, the moral, environmental, and economic debates–all are whisked conveniently away. We wash our hands of these political things because we feel we've done our part in the democratic process.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I don't think people in the U.S. should vote. I'm saying vote with your lifestyle, your choices, your beliefs, your money. Not just on election day, but all the time. Don't expect the government to save you or to create a more comfortable utopia for you. Instead find ways to imagine an alternative to the simplistic (and broken) two-party system by living a different life from the one you've learned in this American Empire. As a follower of Christ I believe there is a much better way to live, but we have to pull away from our beloved Rome (and the U.S. is the new Roman Empire–look around) and have eyes to see the "mustard seed" style revolution.
I think I've felt this way for a long time, but I'm only now able to formulate it into coherent thinking. I don't think bombing countries (or even occupying them) will end the "war on terror" and it definitely IS NOT the method for dealing with enemies that Christ lived out in the New Testament. Loving our global neighbor and stewarding the earth are moral issues just as much as the abortion issue is. From a Christ-following perspective we should be concerned about all these things and we should live lives consistent with our beliefs. Now that's really gettin' political.
Anyway, I'm grateful to Shane Claibourne for helping me (through his books) get my head around my own political views. If this post has perked your interest in alternative ways of looking at politics from a Christian perspective, check out his book Jesus for President. Here's an awesome excerpt from the book that prompted me to share this post:
It's easy to have political views–that's what politicians do. But it's much harder to embody a political alternative–that's what saints do. The greater challenge is right living, not merely right thinking. In Jesus we meet not a presentation of ideas or a new political platform but an invitation to join up, to become part of a movement, of a people that embodies good news.
Political embodiment means that we become the change that we want in the world, not just lobby politicians to change things for us. It means that we must take responsibility that our political views demand of us. Not many of us have seen people, much less a political party, who are ready to enact the change they want in the world.
Those who would like to see abortion grow rarer and become nonexistent had also better be ready to take in some teen moms and adopt some unwanted babies. To be pro-life in our neighborhood means we have to figure out how to come alongside a fourteen-year-old pregnant girl. This is why we loved Mother Teresa so much. Mother Teresa embodied her politics. She didn't just wear a T-shirt that said, "Abortion is homicide." She loved moms and unborns so much, she could say with integrity, "If you don't want to have the baby, you can give it to me." Which is why everyone called her Mother.
Nor have we seen a political platform with a consistent ethic of life–and by that we mean not simply being pro-birth but being pro-life, and recognizing that life doesn't begin at conception and end at birth.
Just because our gospel gets political doesn't mean it gets political on the empire's terms. The question isn't whether we are pro-life but how do we consistently honor life? One of the most important questions for the church today isn't whether Christianity is political but how is Christianity political? And hopefully Jesus and the biblical narrative have given us some good tools for political mischief.
yeti speak... 
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