Conservative or Christian?

The contest is now engaged to see who will be the Republican nominee for president in the next election. There is nothing else in the news. Every pundit yammers like an old air compressor pounding the few bits of actual knowledge available into compressed sound bites and repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, gaseous commentary that escapes from radio receivers like an air hose with an unfixable leak. As I turn it on and off and on I have noticed lately the liberal use of the word conservative by every talker: conservative values, conservatives believe, conservative voters, conservative writer, Mr. __etc. They have no firm definition as to exactly what a conservative might be. Oh, each talker has some internal bottle from which he (she) picks his ideas. One of the problems, however, is that every talker has a different bottle and a differing monocle through which to view the contents. No one can define precisely what exactly is a conservative. So, even with the definition lacking we are supposed to be vociferous in our assurance that we need one in the White House.

 The fact that conservatism has no fixed meaning alerts us to the reality that it is not a word synonymous with Christian. This is because Christian thought, and I mean thought that is rightly rooted in Scripture, does sprout from fixed principles that are given by an unchanging God. If God does not change then neither do His principles for social life on our planet. Our morals and actions are not optional under God’s law. We may argue over some applications of God’s law in specific circumstances: this is due to our sin and unrighteous confusion, not God’s will being malleable. Our universe does have a fixed center and that Center is the Eternal Person who created it, the Lord Jesus Christ.

 It was Christian ideas that built western civilization not conservative ones. America’s founders did not arrive here with heads full of conservative notions. They fled here rather to build a society based on Biblical principle and the reality of freedom under Christ.  Conservatism is at best an obverse of the Christian coin, but that may be giving it more credence than it deserves. It seems that this amorphous word conservative is a deliberate step away from Christian language and ideals. It is an attempt to rationalize the world without acknowledging its Creator. The conservative world view is not necessarily the Christian one. For those embarrassed by the name of Christ the word conservative gives cover for their rejection of higher principles. It can be respectable (at least in Bohemian circles) to be conservative, but outside the church our Jesus talk is the object of pointy-nosed sniffing. Identifying first as a conservative provides a platform to speak against the liberals without having the negative approbation of the Christian moniker. Humanist liberals and humanist conservatives believe they can figure out how to run things between themselves, and both wish to marginalize those who identify first as Christians. We are not them. We are something different, and they do not like it.

 The more recent entrance of the neo-cons into politics is simply the next logical step away from Biblical principle. The neo-cons, meaning new conservatives, are new in two ways. Their main point of departure lies in their rejection of moral absolutes in almost every sphere. Homosexuality, abortion, torture, and imperial warfare are all acceptable under the neo-con banner. They have no fixed morality to which they adhere so they do as men without God have always done. At the end of the time of the Judges scripture tells us that “every man did what was right in his own eyes”. This is where every form of rebellion against God leads and the neo-con philosophy is the transmutation of the conservative mind as it plummets from the Christian pinnacle. Their fixation on eternal warfare as the cure for earthly ills reduces them to a society of savages not dissimilar from our ancestors that the missionaries converted. They are savages with machines. Do not mistake them for Christians.   

 The word conservative indicates there is something to conserve. Yet, these very people can never agree on what that something is. They understand that lofty principles are required to raise our human condition, and their language is designed to appear as concrete for societal footings. However, there is no real soil and the entire enterprise tumbles in mid-air. Conservatives have forgotten what they were trying to conserve and why they were attempting to do so. Like ships without rudders they collide and founder. We can read the lettering CONSERVATIVE as their hulls tip upwards and begin their final descent. Nothing will save them, for in the end, they have rejected the only Savior who could raise them above their sinking conditions. Conservatism is a societal construct with no moral force.

 Some may inform us their absolutes are found in the party platform or in the Constitution. This is just Billy Goat Bluff puffing, puffing in hope that no one challenges their ludicrous stance. These documents change and morph into reflections of who we are as a society. We do not tell them what they are. They tell us who we are. Perhaps if we printed our laws on mirrors instead of paper we might be reminded of that fact. Our law often (not always thankfully) is the written record of our traverse from wiser minded thinking to the disorder of lawless people. The Constitution will not save us. If we do not return to our God we will not save the Constitution.

 For Christians the only option is to return to Biblical first principles. Conservative humanists have framed the acceptable conversation to contain it and direct it away from the name of Christ. The idea of a comprehensive Biblical politic is anathema to them. If we want to see a real turn-around we will have to start self identifying as a Christian people with an unabashed Biblical philosophy. We have to begin transforming the public square with the conversation of the redeemed. It is not our duty to baptize the language nor the philosophical pillars of conservative humanists. These are idols for destruction to be dismantled, and forgotten. 

 Conservatism and neo-conservatism have no historical stamina. The kingdom of Christ will eventually reduce them to powder that wiffs away in the wind of history. Today is our time to build the kingdom without shame. Our Savior conquers all kingdoms and His victory is sure. Take courage and soldier on the winning side.

 For Christian Culture  

 Don Schanzenbach    1-14-12