God and the President: A Theology of Criticism

God And The President: A Theology of Criticism

The United States has known some great Presidents that attained near universal respect and trust. In his time George Washington was recognized as a man of honor without peer. Even those who disagreed with his policies trusted his integrity. Abraham Lincoln was elevated to high office with minimal national reputation, but soon won the friendship of his political competitors, and became recognized as a model of some of humanity’s highest instincts. Others have achieved great acclaim, but in the pantheon of Presidents, these two emit almost divine radiance. To criticize Washington was thought to be akin to blasphemy, and Lincoln, when assassinated, was acclaimed as the “savior” of our country.

Yet all this notwithstanding, Thomas Jefferson resigned from Washington’s Cabinet and became a leader of the opposition voices and as a result was smeared as an atheist, an epithet which, if it were today, would be equivalent to calling him a Communist. When Jefferson ran for President in 1800 against the Federalist incumbent, John Adams, he was vilified for extolling the French, who were then transitioning from the “reign of terror” to the dictatorship of Napoleon. In fact, France was our “enemy,” and we came very close to going to war with them under Adams. When Jefferson won the election, the Federalists thought he was going to ruin the country. Today he is rated in most polls as one of the top three Presidents of all time.

Abraham Lincoln, though known as an easily liked personality, almost did not get nominated by his own party for a second term. The emancipation proclamation, the elevation of a winning general (Ulysses Grant), and Gettysburg deflected disaffection with the Administration and enabled Lincoln to begin a second term and live long enough to be credited with the adulation he undoubtedly deserved. But don’t forget that in l864 he first had to defeat a candidate who had obtained the nomination of the other major party on a platform to exit the war short of military victory.

The moral of my historical prompt is: questioning Presidents is part of what America means. It is not unpatriotic; in fact, it is part of our heritage. To not exercise responsible criticism on a regular basis would, in my opinion, be to trade away an important ballast that keeps democracy afloat.

Now for some further commentary on the morality of criticism. In recent days I have heard the following comments from two different individuals.

“We should trust President Bush because he is the President.”
“Bush is right on Iraq because he is President.”

This is cousin to the idea that God should be acknowledged because God is God. We are small and God is big. Our salvation lies in this sufficiency. It is enough that God is God. To look for more--to seek the knowledge of good and evil--is considered the original sin. By analogy--the President is President; trust him and don’t question him, for he knows what we can’t, or shouldn‘t, know. There is a patina of truth here.

But I see two problems with this outlook. First, it depends on the idea that Adam and Eve “fell” because they failed to stay in their subservient place. I don’t believe God (with the rule against eating of the “Tree”) was trying to teach rules of order and hierarchy. The original sin was a violation of procedure, stepping out alone. It was not the sin of rule-breaking. The purpose for the rule was not to shut down knowledge quests; it was to guide us in the “way” to know.

I arrive at this by scripture. Jesus pointed that he was the “way, the truth and the life“; we come to the Father through his model. And he continually implored his disciples to know God as he did. The truth shall make us free, the clear implication being that we should seek and know the truth (investigate and find).

Note also that in the Garden of Eden, God was not upset at Adam and Eve’s curiosity. God’s reaction was disappointment at the lost communion. The shock (to both humans and God) was the loss of intimacy in their walks together in the cool of the day. If God had wanted blind obedience (follow the President because he is the President) God would have been satisfied with angels and not messed with freewill. God, however, created humans for mutual fellowship. God wants to commingle with us, to elevate us, to share his power with us (Jesus said his disciples, as his followers, would do greater things than he.). God wants us to “know” him, not follow blindly. God is a team player par excellence. God’s only requirement (by his Tree rule) is that we don’t go off on our own in the pursuit.

By analogy, I think it is appropriate to question the President’s proclivity to secrecy. George Bush does not want communion with either me or my congressperson. In contrast, God wants to be known and to unveil the divine mysteries. God is not afraid to be discovered. God is transparent for those who have eyes to see. If the President, like God, wants me to follow him, he will honor my intelligence and welcome my curiosity, for he would want me to know what he knows. Just as I may fellowship regularly with God, the President should regularly fellowship with me. In this shared communication, we will agree if any sensitive information should be withheld because we have the same agenda. The President, like God, is big, but, as with God, I would be welcomed into his chambers. To me the awesomeness of God is God’s availability. The awesomeness of the Presidency is that citizens have umbilical connection to it.

The second problem with the God is God--recognize your smallness before him--approach, is that I am not small to God. Without God I am nothing, but this is not smallness. Au contraire, I am everything to God. God’s grace is not patronization. God is zealous but not arrogant. God wants to let me in, not keep me out, and I mean all the way in. The President and the people occupy the same chambers. Presidents occupy the Oval Office on lease from the people. Presidential power is well delineated in the Constitution, and the details are in the hands of Congress. Through Congress, I am in the Oval Office; and if the President follows God’s model, he won’t mind if I walk in on him.

If God is not standoffish (and he isn’t if you ask the Jews), then neither is it immoral (or unpatriotic) to question the President directly and expect honest dialogue. After all isn’t this exactly what the Old Testament Prophets were well known to have practiced personally. Or does America follow a different heritage?

The Christian Right is not hesitant to remind us that America is a Christian nation. And if we betray the principles on which we stand our great country will crumble into immorality and impotence. There are two intermixed strands that make up the American heritage cord, one of which the Radical Right distrusts, even pilloryizes. The approach that “God is God” and, by extrapolation, the President is President, so accept it, is relatable to one of these components, but ironically not in the way the Radical Right thinks. It might surprise some to discover they have hold of the wrong strand, and are misappropriating it.

The two elements braided together in our history are Enlightenment and Christianity. Despite the evangelical overtones of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America,” and the evangelical touchstone of a born-again President guiding Republican strategies, and the warnings of those who would hijack democracy, the God-is-big-and-we-are-small philosophy that tells us to stay out of the arena where important things are decided traces back to Greek rationalism.

The ancient Greek thinkers had their own way of mixing religion and politics, and some political scientists today mine from them their ideas of democracy. But the greatest of the Greek philosophers was Plato, who felt that only those who had the advantage of superior education, which at the end of the day were aristocrats, should run the government. The rest of the population should accept lower places and defer to those special individuals at the top.

Plato’s ideal Republic was not democratic, and the Radical Right is not either. Despite the claims of many neoconservatives, they do not follow the Judeo/Jesus notion of God. They misunderstand the sources of American tradition and, in my opinion misread God to boot.

If America is to get through our current crises of constitutional, moral, environmental, and terrorist threats, sound theology and accurate historical knowledge will be the reason. If one wants to posit that Christianity is the true source of America’s heritage, one should not couch it in undemocratic terms while dressing Christian theology in pagan clothes, unless the resultant confusion serves other purposes.