Politics and religion tend to be the great dividers in our culture and country these days. Our e pluribus unum seems to be out of wack, and “under God” has more meanings than one can imagine. Part of the issue is semantics. Take the phrase “politically correct”. Of course, the term itself seems like an oxymoron in an era in which the political machinery is driven by negative motives that pollute the air with cynicism. The term is inaccurate for the purpose that it engenders. Let me explain.
To be politically correct in one’s parlance, you must be sensitive to all the differences within the society. All those isms: racism, ageism, sexism, and all the others that delineate groups within the culture who are seeking reform through language sensitivity. In the introduction to his best seller, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, James Finn Garner illustrates what I mean in this apologetic sentence: “If, through omission or commission, I have inadvertently displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconomicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriarchalist, or any other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize…”
The irony is that reform itself is never politically correct. It’s the opposite. Examples run the calendar of human achievements. Galileo was politically incorrect for suggesting that the earth may not be the center of the universe. Martin Luther was politically off the mark when he suggested that each human being could read and interpret the scriptures for himself or herself. Uppity women rather than the mild-mannered ones finally got the right for women to vote. Martin Luther King was morally right for suggesting that we ought to have a country where people are judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. Unfortunately, in most political circles, the racial difference mattered greatly. And still does.
Jesus himself was finally crucified for being politically incorrect. Throughout his life, he was always doing things that went against the grain of conventional wisdom within his own religion. He spoke to a Samaritan woman at the well. He ate with prostitutes, tax collectors and other scoundrels. He cleaned house at the local temple of the money changers. Neither Judaism nor Rome could handle his political ineptness. So they conspired to rid the scene of such a trouble maker. Even in today’s political arena, Jesus would have a hard time selling his idea of the great judgment in Matthew 25, when he declares that the nations will be held accountable for their caring for the hungry, the stranger, the sick and the prisoner. Dream on. It would take an act of Congress for that to happen!
We are billion year old carbon