A Chistian and A Democrat

Can someone legitimately call themselves a Christian and vote or campaign for Barak Obama? This question was mentioned yesterday in Sunday School, and, though no answer was given, it was asked in a sort of rhetorical manner that showed the underlying assumptions of the person asking the question.

I apologize if you read the title of this post and thought I was going to write some new joke about an unusual group of men walking into a bar or something.

By the way, don't assume anything just yet about my own opinions, just because I started this post of with a mention about Sunday School. These days, there are few other places where people openly discuss deep ideas of spirituality, culture, and (yes, even) political thought in a similar fashion. Perhaps many Sunday School classes are not very open (or deep), but this one happened to be both.

If we seriously ponder the question, and the man, shouldn't it seem strange to us that professing Christians would openly imply that other professing Christians can't conscientiously vote for Obama, himself a professing Christian?

I've also similar derogatory references to the Democratic Party as a whole. "I've never really known anyone," I once heard a friend say, "who was a Christian, and also considered themselves a Democrat."

The people who made those statements would both see themselves as conscientious political thinkers, I am sure. However, from the perspectives of many other listeners, it might be hard to see anything other than a couple of sheltered, upper-middle class, white American males voicing sheltered opinions that only really make sense in their little upper-middle class world.

What is it that makes the Republican Party so Christian, and the Democratic Party so apparently unchristian?

Since the central figure of the Christian faith is Jesus Christ, maybe we would do best to ask what he would do, or say, or in this case, support. A few verses to consider:

Matthew 25:35-36, 40
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

Mark 12:28-31
he asked him, "Of all the commandments, which is the most important?"

29 "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: '...Love the Lord your God with all your heart...' 31The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these."

These two passages were just the first that came to mind; I'm sure I could find more to go along with what I'm about to say.

The least of these. The least of these is generally taken to mean children, or the poor, or someone with some sort of disadvantage in society. It's one of those distinctions that, taken in different ways, could be applied to almost anyone, based on the circumstances. In Matthew 25, Jesus is saying that works of eternal value are those that lift up "the least of these".

Loving your neighbor. The common question that follows is, "Who is my neighbor?" In a similar Bible passage, Jesus replied by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, a story of one man who acted as a neighbor to one unfortunate individual, who happened to also be a member of a rival ethnic group. The "Good Samaritan" man looked out for and supported his unfortunate friend, whom he had found on the side of the road, beaten badly and in need of care. The answer to the question, then, was that the follower of Christ ought to consider everyone as their neighbor, especially when thinking about how to love their neighbors.

Drawing on these principles then, how would we structure society so that these undeniably Christian principles are best upheld? If we would like to see a society that is more favorable toward Christian principles, or in some ways holds Christian principles high, then which policies should we stand for?

Which party line should we tow? Is there a party line that matches these principles?

How about this: Can someone be a Democrat and a Christian, based on these principles? Can someone vote for Barak? You tell me.

Why I Don't Post Here

I know. It's been almost a year. At last, I've made the decision to break the silence, after realizing just how fulfilling my tech blog was, and yet how it did not fulfill my desires to write about non-tech related subjects. I wondered for some time about how to meld the two ventures, and finally I've come to just placing a simple index page at www.jonathantrousdale.com that can lead the user to both.

So, in case you want a more general explanation, I'll give you one. It's fairly technical, so be warned. Simply put, writing for this blog takes too long. There are elements of blogging that make this reason significant. They are:

1. Short posts are good. I'm talking about 200-400 words. This has a little to do with the attention span of the average Internet user, but it has much more to do with something called visibility.
   
   To know what visibility is, think of a TV series. The series is visible if it runs for many years and there are a lot of episodes. The series visible if it is carried on several TV stations, or in several markets. It is more visible if commercials are run for it. It is visible if people like it, and talk about it or write about it.
   
   Now think of a blog. Blogs are more visible if they have many posts. If all posts must be long, the writers are deterred from writing multiple posts. Blogs are more visible if they have lots of links pointing to them from other sites. Blogs are more visible if they have several people commenting and leaving feedback.
   
   And who are blogs more visible to? Most of us want our blogs to be visible to Search Engines. Why? Because this is where average users go to find out about things. Search engines ask several different questions, including:
   
   1. How many pages does a site (or blog) have?
   2. How many links point to a site (or blog)?
   3. What words appears most often on the site's pages?
   4. Do the pages within the site link to each other?
   5. What words to other sites use when linking to this site?
   6. What other sites does this site link to?
   7. How often is new information added to this site?
      
   
   So, basically, it's easier to have more posts if the posts are short. In addition, search engines tend to see pages longer than 500 words as running too long. The main conclusion in all of this is that it's difficult to keep writing with the knowledge that few people are going to read a post.
   
   
2. Blunt Posts Are Good. It's hard to get to the point sometimes, when you also feel the need to define every term and debunk every counter-argument. In writing about philosophy, politics, or culture, ideas are often very big, and may or may not be immediately related to popular life. Here, you run up against the inevitable problem: provided that people do find your material, they will most likely leave within 10 seconds if they don't find something incredibly interesting.
   
   
3. Lots of links are good. It's hard to insert of links to other sites into your writing, especially if you're writing about something that's not particularly relevant to the latest news or technology out there.
   
   

And, now that I'm past my recommended length of 400 words, I will close. Keeping a philosophy blog current is hard work, in my opinion - much harder than keeping up a tech blog. And, admittedly, over the last year I have not been up to it. Here's hoping that the next year will be better.

My Sickness Unto Death

I'm realizing more and more what a good choice Kierkegaard was for this essay, for it seems more and more that I learn something of myself the more I study Kierkegaard. His inner struggle seems to loosely match my own, as I'm sure he had intentioned for all of his readers. I'm also realizing, in judging whether Kierkegaard was successful in rising above the idioms and systems of his day to communicate something significant, that he might not have 'risen above' in his communication. But such was not his intent; therefore, in wallowing in the endless categories, the dialectic and the struggle, he was showing that the paradigm of his time was not worthy of him - or us, for that matter.