McCain said he was resented because, "I don't pander to them, because I don't ascribe to their failed philosophy that money is our message."
What a remarkable statement - McCain attacking the self-appointed pharisees of the time and saying that money isn't the answer to our problems; John McCain sounding like Jesus in the temple chasing out the money changers. Then McCain did something even more amazing. He talked about his own faith - something he rarely does.
Many years ago, a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture robes by his tormenters and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night. Later in the evening, a guard he had never spoken to entered the room and silently loosened the ropes to relieve his suffering. Just before morning, that same guard came back and re-tightened the ropes before his less humanitarian comrades returned.That is a faith that should buckle our knees.
He never said a word to the grateful prisoner, but some months later on a Christmas morning as the prisoner stood alone in the prison courtyard, the same Good Samaritan walked up to him and stood next to him for a few moments. Then with his sandal, the guard drew a cross in the dirt. Both prisoner and guard stood wordlessly there for a minute or two venerating the cross until the guard rubbed it out and walked away.
This is my faith, the faith that unites and never divides, the faith that bridges unbridgeable gaps in humanity. That is my religious faith and it is the faith I want my party to serve, and the faith I hold in my country. It is the faith that we are all equal and endowed by our creator with unalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
This weekend in Orlando at the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) annual conference, however, John McCain will be appearing as Jerry Falwell's guest. He will be pandering. I wonder what that Vietnamese guard would think?
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I enjoy reading the reflections on your blog. I also liked your recent book, but not for the reasons I expected. I intended to add it to my collection of books that criticize evangelicals and the Religious Right. I had generally viewed them as a band of evil, selfish people bent on creating laws that would relegate the rest of us to second-class citizenship. But your book presented a picture of religious conservatives that I found largely sympathetic. I even found myself agreeing with some of their ideals despite disagreeing with the methods and tactics they employ. What I had interpreted as evil and selfishness was more likely naivete mixed with a bit of myopia. My own crassness and hard-core realism stood in sharp contrast to their well intentioned idealism. I relized that I had grown to have too much love for the ambiguity and gamesmanship of politics. I idolized nihilistic powerbrokers, and had turned aside from the path trod by the humble Christ. Anyway, your book led me to repent of my wanderings and enjoined me to return to the open arms of a loving Father who has sealed me for the day of Christ's appearing. I'm a third-year law student. Next year, I'll be working as a litigation associate handling trade and patent disputes for tech companies. My main interests are in international trade, economic development, and global health issues. I look forard to devoting my energies to these challenges as a Christian. I still basically find the Dobson and World Magazine crowd to be pretty annoying. They have allowed politics to consume them to the degree that their message no longer reflects Christ. Rather, we need eyes of faith to see beyond politics, knowing that we belong to Christ and that this world is His. The victory of His kingdom is sure. Let us go forward into the fray of this life armed with love and humility to serve Him in hope.
David, MCCain's vacillating posture can only be understood by the fact that most people are locked into an image or act, as i've said before. McCain, like so many, let their spiritual energy lay dormant in the deep recesses of the mind. They deny their own emotional reality, thus their spiritual "candor" sporadically manifests within a specific political sphere. McCain is not only locked into his own denial of emotional reality, he lives in the image that society gives him (or the media and his peers have given him), which serves as a familiar and safe harbor in his otherwise difficult and "complex" reality. In other words, he's probably a rather happy soul thinking that this image he plays to is moving him towards an understanding of his own reality. Former President Reagan "understood" this dynamic all too well.
Self appointed pharisees? Falwell, like Doson and Robertson, are the good and decent people. UNLIKE the secular godless leftists that are self-induced deluded, that call themselves Christians but rape the New Testament, that pander to drugged out and decadent hedonists they continue to create and kill off. McCain should embrace the people that embrace goodness. That would of course shift his politics away from the Left.
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