Our daughter
Evangeline was with us again this weekend following our wonderful summer
vacation together. She and her husband
Alex, Mary and I traveled to Isle Royale
National Park in Lake
Superior where we hiked about twenty miles. We had already put in six miles at a state
park in Wisconsin
on the way. We drove to Munising, Michigan
and boarded a boat to see the Pictured Rocks National Seashore. Then we drove on to Mackinac Island for a day,
then back to the Detroit
area, where Evangeline will begin teaching second and third graders after Labor
Day.
Our trip began
during the Olympics, with late-night TV viewing of events together. We voted just before leaving town and checked
the results from afar on wi-fi. We all
were glad to exit from the local negative campaign ads. Our trip ended with the announcement that
Paul Ryan will be Governor Romney’s vice presidential running mate. The national unity of winning the Olympic
medal count gave way again to partisan rhetoric, as both parties refocused the
negativity.
I understand that
negative campaigning works. I understand
why the end result of winning an election might justify campaign negativity,
when a candidate and party, and now their PAC funded supporters, believe so
strongly that this candidate, and this party’s ideology and policies, are what
the nation needs. But I still don’t like
it. I don’t like the negativity. I don’t want to believe it is necessary. I want to hold to an ethic of love instead of
a teleological ethic in which ‘the ends justify the means.’ I want to hold to an ethic of love, instead
of a deontological ethic based on rules and legal imposition. An ethic of love puts respect, honoring and
reconciliation first.
Evangeline said
she was driving and noticed a yard in which signs were posted for both
presidential candidates. She imagined a
husband and wife in the household, one a Democrat and the other a Republican,
loving each other and respecting each others’ differences. Mary told her about James Carville, President
Clinton’s campaign strategist, and Mary Matelin, an advisor to the first
President Bush, coming to love each other from opposite sides of a heated
presidential campaign, marrying, making a life together, with neither
compromising his or her political and ideological commitments. Evangeline said, “That’s amazing! Why can’t more people be like that? I admire
couples who can disgree and still love each other.” Of course, we all can find something upon
which we disagree! The test, then, is
whether we can trust and share, or have to keep our mouths shut to get
along. Silence is tragic. Discussion is empowering. Disagreement might even transform!
As this campaign
season continues to heat up I encourage you to dialogue. Listen to statements, and check to make sure
they are fact. In this post-modern age
truth-telling is not a high cultural virtue.
We Christians can make it so again.
Listen to others with open ears, hearts, and minds. Read your Bible. Pray.
Test ideas against scripture, reason, Christian tradition and your own
faith experience. Christian dialogue
does not judge. That’s God’s job. Christian dialogue respects differences. Christians are courageous enough to decide
and act. This is America. Christians can act by voting. Christians also forgive and reconcile.
Rev. Mark Harvey
