Conservative Views Shaped By Fear

           Nicholas Kristof

In an Op-ed piece published February 13, 2010 in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof delves into research that indicates conservatives are more fearful than liberals, that spankers are more fearful than parents that choose time-out, and hence those that support the National Rifle Association are more skittish than those in favor of control.  How wonderful.

Conservative Christians who like to paint God as judgmental may do so because they fear God more easily than those who see God as love. Fear makes conservative Christians think that God is after them.  If God is after them who are trying so hard to follow his rules, how much more must God be after those who interpret God's rules less dogmatically.

Conservative Christians see interpreting the Bible in anyway, but literally (dictated by God) as a chink in their wall of belief.  Conservatives are hard-wired to be afraid that their whole system of belief could collapse at any moment.  More liberal Christians are hard wired to be more laid-back. Liberals understand that the Bible was written by fallible human beings and must be viewed through the lens of history. No wonder there is conflict.

Liberals need to deal with conservatives as fearful children.  Conservatives must be convinced that those with other views can keep them safe.  The logic of an argument does not matter.  The argument must instead convince the conservatives that its goal is safety.

Photo by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Edward M. Kennedy

I was in high school Spanish class waiting for school to be dismissed early so students could go downtown and see President John F. Kennedy when the world changed. President Kennedy never came to Austin. The school principal announced that he had been shot in Dallas and sent us home. I reached my house in time to see Walter Cronkite announce that President Kennedy was dead.

I don't think I even knew he had a brother Ted then. As I went on to college, I became more aware of the Kennedy clan. I mourned Robert Kennedy even though I thought him wrong to oppose Lyndon Johnson. And I remember Chappaquiddick. At the time, I thought Ted Kennedy got off lightly, but now I know he payed a great price - the Presidency of the United States. I believe that was a just punishment.

The atonement demanded by his great failure made him a great Senator. Over the years, I slowly became an admirer of the Senator. (The New York Times has provided a time line of his life.) He became the champion of what he was not: the working class, the disabled, and the poor. He wanted the nation he loved to provide a good education, a decent working wage and adequate health care for all. He fought tirelessly for those goals.

Senator Kennedy was a man of deep flaws but of great achievement. I think that his greatness was achieved because of those flaws. A more perfect man would have had nothing to prove, nothing to atone for. Sin can be defined as falling short of the target. Senator Kennedy fell short, but in seeking forgiveness, he reached a higher goal, service to others ('I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'), and gave us all hope that in our failures we can find future success.

Changing Faiths

The New York Times had an article today on people changing faiths. Click on the title to go to that article. The article's focus seemed to be on people leaving their faith and the increase of people that are unattached to a faith group.

This made me think about my pilgrimage through faith. I was baptized at eleven in a very traditional Baptist church. By the time I reached my teens, I no longer felt that I belonged. I asked questions that did not get answered or I was told were not appropriate. All the questions were about theology. I planned to be a scientist. I could not reconcile my faith and science. With no answers from my faith, I withdrew. I was no longer sure of the veracity of Christianity. I did not lose my belief in God, but he settled comfortably into the guise of the clockmaker.

I had a Ph.D. in Chemistry at twenty-five. My supervising professor had been a Presbyterian who tried in vain to get me not to do research on Sundays. I accepted a postdoctoral fellowship under a Jewish professor. I covered his classes on Jewish holy days. We never discussed faith, but I knew that except for his mother and father, all his family perished in the Holocaust. He did ask me to hold office hours for some of his Arab students who had told him they were uncomfortable with him and requested my help. I did hold office hours for him that whole semester and always had students requesting help.

Eventually, I went to work for the State of Texas in air pollution control. My paternal grandmother died after a battle with cancer. I began to search for a source of faith. I examined Buddhism, Hinduism and some of the Chinese faiths. I touched on Wiccan, then picked up a book by C.S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters. For the first time, I was intellectually engaged with Christianity. I went on to read more books and eventually joined a liberal Southern Baptist church. I made a new commitment to Christ that continues to this day. While I still belong to a church affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, I do not consider myself a Southern Baptist. I am Baptist, part of the priesthood of the believer.

If I had been polled in those years between my teens and my return to Christ, I would have been classified as agnostic or perhaps unbelieving. I doubt that I would have considered myself a Deist, just undecided. I suspect that as many of the people in this study age, they will find their faith anew.