Amidst the ongoing
impasse between American conservatives and liberals with regard to politics, I
cannot recall hearing much in way of any conversation about responsibility. Whatever happened, I have to wonder, to that
word? Responsibility.
As an aging boomer, I carry
this old memory in mind of how freedom is roughly equivalent to responsibility. That was what I was raised to believe. As a teenager, my parents took great pains
to teach me both their correlation and causation. I got the message. But where is this same message today?
As I look about and among my
fellow Americans today, I see two groups of responsible people fighting off their
differently perceived threats to our freedom as a nation. I see conservatives arguing for personal
responsibility as if defending our rights to freedom as individuals. I see liberals arguing for social
responsibility as if defending our rights to a free society. I see a lot of arguing, but I don’t see a
lot of listening, or understanding, or giving credit where credit is due.
It seems as though we
have reached an impasse in some misguided quest for a zero sum victory in all
of this. One where victory is situated
in either personal or social responsibility but never both. Which then begs the question: why not both?
Having dedicated my own
tandem careers of mental health counseling and Christian ministry to the aiding
of individuals through introspection and communities through intervention, I
have a critical example that more Americans, especially those of the Christian
faith, might well consider. It goes
like this.
The Christian scriptures
bear witness to the ancient Hebrew people in their own quest for a free
society. Threats to their freedom
were numerous, but always their defense was to act responsibility, both
personally and socially. Or at least
that was the plan or the plot as laid out by the Jewish Torah with reinforcement
by their own prophets.
The story of Christian
scripture largely centers around what goes wrong whenever that plot is lost and
people abide by only half a loaf, personal but not social responsibility or
else social but not personal responsibility.
The Christian New
Testament bears witness to the man, Jesus, who enters the scene as a Jewish
rabbi intent upon fulfilling the Jewish Torah and restoring the plan or plot he
named the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven. He took nothing away from the conservative
Pharisees of his day, practitioners of personal but not social
responsibility. He did nothing to
abolish their own side of the law. But
he did rile up those conservatives by insisting that if they wanted any kind of
free society or entry into God’s Kingdom of heaven on earth, they would have to
add social responsibility to their repertoire. In other words, Jesus proclaimed the Gospel
of the both/and, not the old zero sum game of either/or.
I wonder if that’s not
what is missing from our own contemporary land of feuding liberals and
conservatives. (Not to mention our own churches.) I wonder if we Americans
have not lost our own plan or plot.
Have we gotten ourselves boxed in to thinking either we are personally
responsible on the conservative side or else socially responsible like the
liberals?
Have we lost the message
of freedom that comes from both sides of the responsibility equation? Have we lost our balance and fallen for some
all-or-nothing politics of personality or society, win or lose? If so, we will all lose and perhaps
deservedly so.
It seems to me this is
the time for restoring our lost plot as a nation. (And as Christians alike.) Time for another conversation. One that reinforces the strengths of both
our conservatives and our liberals, emphasizes both personal and social
responsibility, and holds to account those who would fight against the other
instead of for our positive sum and common good. We still have time for a win/win if we’re
only willing to have both this old and this new conversation.
About responsible freedom.
