Procrastinet

Food for Thought in the Darndest Places

filed under: Hey, What's The Big Idea

I recently discovered that P'net had been linked to by someone who disagrees with me politically but liked my tagline, having seen it on the "Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem" of blog rankings. Inspired, I went poking around looking for interestingly-titled blogs to read. I followed a link to a site called "Bald Man Blogging."

The Bald Man in question is a devout Christian and most of his blogging is based on that. The first couple posts I skimmed seemed thoughtful, searching, and utterly devoid of the excesses that make us Coastal Lib'ruls twitchy about zealous religiosity.

I believe in listening to people of good will, whether you agree with them or not. This is not an easy belief to put into practice. We gravitate naturally towards people and influences who reinforce our priorities, prejudices and predilections.

But there's another community to be found, based on another kind of commonality: those who are interested in talking respectfully and listening without prejudgment, interested in the exchange of ideas. Members of this community exist all over the ideological spectrum.

The Bald Man's most recent post deals with whether or not he has a Christian duty to vote, asking for input from his readers. One comment struck me particularly as a useful meditation on this election, despite being couched in language which I usually find off-putting:

Would God vote if he were a flesh and blood citizen in the form of Jesus on November 2, 2004? It seems a little silly to ask, since He’s known the winner of every election in our past, present, and future since the beginning of time, not to mention the fact that He’s quite capable of influencing candidates and outcomes supernaturally, if he so desires. Even so, I don’t think this means that all is deterministic, and that we have no room or responsibility to exercise our freedom by voting—quite the contrary. There’s room for both God and us to act in our political system, and in every other system in our universe. This is why I say you should pray, and you should vote.

If God—or any other part of the Trinity—did vote, I’m sure that He would also choose the candidates or measures that best expressed His values and His priorities. Since those values and priorities are so imperfectly expressed in the candidates and measures, God might have a difficult time making such an imperfect choice. But, then again, nothing is difficult for God. Maybe the whole point is not for Him to decide—or for us to have a clear choice—but for us to spend some time thinking about God’s values, as well as His prioritization of those values, and then acting on our beliefs by voting. [Emphasis added]

My values are not based explicitly on my understanding of God, but on my understanding of a more generalized human morality that should guide our interactions in the tricky game of living in big groups of other humans. But the point stands: meditate on whatever set of values you hold dear, prioritize them, and vote accordingly.

The most important skill Americans can foster in the coming years will be the ability to find agreement in the midst of discord and build from there. However tomorrow's election turns out, we're going to need it more than ever.

ADDENDUM: Tim Worstall, the gentleman I first reference above, has coincidentally just now posted a perfect example of the kind of intellectual honesty that we should hope for from both sides of any ideological divide: "I stand by my contention that there is something fishy about this study... yet have to admit that I have not found it, leaving me with nothing but personal prejudice upon which to stand my argument."

My hat is off.

Posted by rjt at November 1, 2004 01:03 PM