Donkeys Like Us

Is Barack Obama arrogant? Yeah, probably.

Look. He rose from nothing; became the first African-American editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review; became a law professor at the highly-acclaimed University of Chicago School of Law; made millions from a best-selling memoir; became a U.S. Senator as a young man; and, against the odds, beat the Clinton machine and the Clinton money for the Democratic nomination for President. Then he took the most powerful office in the world.

Would a guy like that have a high opinion of himself?

Might.

1. The donkey.
 
But here’s the thing: arrogance isn’t the only thing about him. He’s also a loving family man; he’s a thoughtful policy wonk; he’s a serious Christian; he cares about the welfare of the humble; he reaches out to his adversaries (too much, say his critics on the left). He takes risks (Osama bin Laden).

Some people won’t acknowledge the bad in him. Some won’t acknowledge the good. Some believe good things about him that aren’t true. Some believe bad things that are lies.

But our political leaders, including Obama, aren’t cartoon villains, and they aren’t storybook heroes.

They’re complicated. Like you and like me.

As Martin Luther (I believe) said, A man is a donkey, sometimes ridden by God and sometimes by the devil.

2. The Word.

  Why don’t we get that?

We’re a nation dominated by Judeo-Christian traditions, a nation of people of The Book.

So we should.

The Bible is unlike other ancient texts of history and origins. It doesn’t photoshop our historical forbears; it doesn’t edit out all evidence of their sin and fault. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son, the son of his old age, in obedience to God, such was his faith; but he also sent away his servant girl with his other son, by her, into the desert, where, but for God, they would have died.

Ten of the twelve patriarchs plotted to kill their brother, Joseph, but instead sold him into slavery to a passing caravan of foreigners.

David loved God with his whole heart; but in the book of Kings, he had sex with another man’s wife. And then, when she got pregnant, he killed the husband to hide his own fault.

By tradition, the apostle Peter asked to be crucified upside down, because he felt unworthy to die as his Lord had died; but while Jesus was in custody before his own crucifixion, Peter denied him three times. When Jesus was arrested, all of his remaining disciples fled.

So the bedrock book of our culture is clear: people are complicated. They are capable of greatness and great love; the same people can be cruel or cowardly or foolish. This truth embraces the great men of our tradition.

3. A sports metaphor.

Why can't we see our leaders that way?

Sometimes we seem to think and speak about our leaders with the restraint and thoughtfulness of a sports fan chauvinistically shouting up his favorite team or putting down a rival team.

4. Myself, ridden by the devil.

And I have been guilty of this. When George W. Bush was president, I happily read Maureen Dowd’s book Bushworld. I gobbled down the delicious disparagements of our president. Ditto when I read Shrub by Molly Ivans.

And in these days, I've had the habit to spend thirty minutes four days a week watching John Stewart on The Daily Show as he hilariously explodes the hypocrisy of Republican leaders and conservative media.

5. Ridden by God.

But I’ve stopped.

I don’t watch The Daily Show anymore. I choose not to watch a man, however clever, put other people down.

I’ve tried to be disciplined about Republican leaders. I’ve written essays on the virtues of Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Perry, none of whom I could imagine voting for.

6. The Why of it.
 
If the Bible is believed, to see someone as complex is to see them as God sees them. Why shouldn’t we have the habit of seeing as God sees?

And to see someone as evil and only evil, to cherish our hatred of him or her, is sin. Is Jesus’s call to love our enemies a nice idea from a dreamer of dreams? Then, too, 1 John 4:20:

Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

7.  Practice.

I’m a man of faults and virtues. My friends and family likewise are men and women of faults and virtues. However hard, I try to know that about my adversaries and my enemies, too, when I take wisdom.

And I pray for those I oppose. Sometimes, I pray for opposing counsel in cases I have, even if I lean toward having a low opinion of them.

I think that the Minority Leader of the Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, would harm the country for the sake of his ideology. I tend not to think highly of John Boehner, the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, but it’s easier for me to see him as complex than McConnell. But I pray for them by name every day, sometimes twice.

It’s easier to think of someone as reachable by God if they are complex, as opposed to evil. It’s easier to pray for someone whom you think is reachable by God.

And praying for persons in high positions, after all, is the will of God. (1 Timothy 2:1-2.)

Or we can do otherwise. It’s our choice. After all, we are complex creatures, sometimes ridden by God, sometimes by the devil.

I, Libertard.

I remember reading about a Union soldier and a Confederate soldier found dead after a Civil War battle. Each gripped the other, and each had thrust his knife into the other’s side. They lay together in death.

That epitomized the hatred in that conflict, a hatred still un-healed.

So. I was researching on the internet the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (known to its detractors as "ObamaCare"). People have written things like, "This explanation is so simple that even a Republican can understand it." Or, "Send this to your libertard friends and watch their heads explode"– or something like that.

On Facebook, liberals and conservatives often hate on each other.

1. A house divided against itself.

Abraham Lincoln said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." And he was quoting a higher authority. What Lincoln said was true then: hundreds of thousands died in a war to uphold a nation divided against itself.

An what he said is true now. In our hatred, we risk burning our abode. Some people hate the other party, or a particular person, such as Barack Obama, more than they love their country. They'd burn down their own house to kill their "enemy" in it.

For a scientific point of view, study Harvard professor Martin A. Nowak's article in the July 2012 Scientific American, called "Why We Help". Cooperation helps organisms survive.

2. Harming ourselves.

When we call someone a "libertard" or a "tyrant" or a "Republiscam" or a "fool" we muffle our own intelligence.

We could have a chicken-and-egg argument about whether movies and television dramas and popular fiction make us shallow, or whether producers make shallow entertainments because we are shallow. The fact is that it’s the rare movie or television drama that has a villain with any complexity.

Shows with complex characters become iconic. The Sopranos is an example. Tony Soprano was a thug. But he was a complex thug. He loved his family, and he was capable of kindness, for all his wrongful ways.

And that’s why Shakespeare endures. Nobody could read everything that has been written about Shakespeare and his plays, even if he spent a lifetime trying. When I lived in China, I knew a Chinese scholar who studied Shakespeare – not to teach, but to learn.

Shakespeare’s characters were complex, even the villains. Richard III is a rogue, but an interesting one. Macbeth murdered his king, but he is a human character with pathos.

The point is that when we summarize a person into a pejorative, like fool, we overlook richness and complexity in the personality of another human being. We make ourselves shallow when we regard others with small eyes.

And to those who care what God thinks, he is clear: hard judgments are a conduit to condemnation.

But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. [Matthew 5:22 (NIV).]

3. The first step.

The first step to un-divide our house is not from those who do wrong; it’s from the wronged. It’s forgiveness.

I try. When I first saw it, I was burned by the term libertard. Hated it. I'm fine with it now.

Didn’t Jesus say that his kingdom was made for the simple, not the smart? Didn’t he say that who he was was for the simple to know? "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children." (Matthew 11 (NIV).) Maybe if I'm a libertard, I'm simple enough to see God. So I forgive libertard.

The importance of fogiveness is a core christian  belief. "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." (Mark 11.) This is a big idea that appears many places in the New Testament.

But to ground this piece in science, I'll refer again to Why We Help. That article discusses five distinct patterns of cooperation that favor an individual or group in evolution. One is called "direct reciprocity". On its basic level, it's tit-for-tat. One monkey grooms another so that the other monkey will groom him.

The author described the use of complex computer simulations to show how this kind of cooperation could evolve. Describing these computer-simulation results, he said:

What made our early computer simulations even more interesting was the revelation that there are different kinds of direct reciprocity. Within 20 generations the initial tit-for-tat strategy had given way to a more generous strategy in which players might still cooperate even if their rival defected. We had in essence, witnesses the evolution of forgiveness -- a direct-reciprocity strategy that allowed players to overlook the occasional mistake.

The last form of cooperation that the author described, which applies to "all manner of organisms, from amoebas to zebras", is the performance of "selfless acts for the greater good, as opposed to abetting a single peer."  No doubt forgiveness can be such an form of cooperation. It enhances group cohesion.

A happy confluence of science and religion exhaults forgiveness.

4. The second step.

The second step is to forebear from harsh words against people we disagree with. It divides the house against itself.

I say this fully aware of my own blog posts, such as "When Christians are Assholes." http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-christians-are-assholes.html I also remember blog posts that take down certain republican candidates. E.g.: http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/mitt-romney-up-tree.html And I have been happy to share on Facebook non-partisan fact-checker analysis that calls persons out for pants-on-fire political statements.

So you can call me hypocrite. I prefer complex.

Please remember that I have also called for prayers for Mitt Romney. http://www.justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/05/prayers-for-mitt-romney.html  And I wrote a post call Ten Things I Admire about Conservatives. Among others. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/ten-things-i-admire-about-conservatives.html

5. The third step.

The third step is to pray for each other. Pray for blessings on people we oppose. Who knows? Maybe we will find it harder to find fault after that. Maybe that will be because God will change them. Or maybe God will change us.