Bumper Sticker Tales, Part One

I saw a bumper sticker on a car at LC last Spring semester that nearly got me to the point of writing a note and leaving it on the car’s windshield. The gist of what the sticker said was, “Jesus said love your neighbor. Pretty sure he meant not to kill them.” That’s a good point. But neither I nor any other Christians I know go around killing people. I know it was an argument against war, probably specifically the war in Iraq, but I think it’s a bad argument, just like it is every other time liberals try to twist Christianity to defend their views.

The thing is that Christianity is not just Old Testament God and it’s not just New Testament Christ. It’s both. And it is really not easy sometimes, as a Christian, to decide where you draw the line between upholding moral standards versus showing acceptance and love to everyone. Using the view that you are supposed to love and accept everyone, help everyone in need, turn the other cheek, etc., is fantastic on an individual basis. If you are a Christian, it is what you are called to do.

However, if you are in charge of a country, or really any sized group of people, you are going to be an irresponsible leader if you do some of these things. And that includes turning the other cheek. Any president who just rolls over and lets other countries do whatever they want to our cities and our citizens should not be president at all. This country wouldn’t be around long at all if that is what we had in our leader.

Bush is a Christian man, and I believe he is also genuinely a good man. I don’t believe that he took any decision regarding our military’s presence in the Middle East lightly. I don’t believe it was an easy decision for him to send our troops over there, knowing not only that some of them would be injured or killed, but also that they would be forced to injure and kill.

Anyone who believes that Bush was glad to be sending our troops over there is either a moron, blinded by ideology, or both. There are few people on this planet evil enough to enjoy making that decision, and I am positive that Bush is not one of them.

I think this same dichotomy applies to other aspects of running the government. For instance, it would be the Christlike thing to do to supply every person in the country who is in need with food, money, and more, but once again, a leader doing this would be exceedingly irresponsible. All details and logistics of a decision like that aside, the country would make itself broke doing this, and this would be unfair to ALL its citizens.

We’re still called as Christians to love everyone regardless of their sins, but a country can’t just decide not to punish criminals, or excuse criminal acts because the person committing the crime thought they had a good reason. You do this, and every person who feels justified in committing a crime (and I imagine this is the case a majority of the time) will do so because they know they can get away with it. Again, unfair to the victims of the crimes and the citizenry at large.

So that is a short summary of why I think you can be both a Christian and a Republican, be a Christian and support the war in Iraq. I try to live my life making more Christlike choices –choices more associated with liberalism -- in how I treat others, but believe that the role of government is to be more like the Old Testament God.

Stay tuned for Bumper Sticker Tales, Part Two.