14: Why all the Anger?

As Americans begin voting for their next President, observers note unprecedented levels of anger. A Florida man tried to run over Republican politician Katherine Harris, while another threatened to kill his girlfriend for voting for Kerry. This is not politics as usual. In this pre–election week, one poll found that Republican anger at Sen. John Kerry was rising, but still lagged behind animosity directed at President Bush.

The Los Angeles Times has noticed that as the race nears the finish line, America is divided 50/50, not so much over economics or class warfare as over cultural and ethical values. This helps explain the anger. No matter which side they are on, people feel deeply about such issues as abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, the homosexual agenda in the schools, and the role of faith in public life. Such issues have taken on enormous political proportions.

In the meantime, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist has been diagnosed with throat cancer and the values agenda suddenly comes into focus in the composition of the Supreme Court. A change of judges will immediately swing future rulings to the Left or to the Right. A new justice and a new Chief Justice will seriously affect the law of the land. A liberal president will steer the Court to the Left; a conservative to the Right. Not surprisingly, the contentious gridlock in the Senate for three years has been over one major subject–the naming of judges. And the anger level rises.

Two huge tectonic plates are grinding their way to shock point, and we will not escape the cultural earthquake–”the big one.” No issue stirs up conflict as much as that of the “morality” of homosexuality. In the public school system, the subject of sexual morals is up for grabs. For example, on May 13, 2004 Thomas Payzant, superintendent of Boston schools, instructed all staff that since “two persons of the same gender may apply for a marriage license” in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, there would be “zero tolerance policy” toward “inappropriate or hateful speech.” The penalty for staff is termination, while students are to be expelled. Cases like this will doubtless end up at the door of the Supreme Court.

In the church, the same phenomenon divides the faithful. The worldwide Anglican communion is torn apart over the ordination of gay bishops. Similar gridlock paralyzes other mainline churches like the Presbyterians and the United Methodists. With all the goodwill in the world, irenic compromise is impossible because, in matters like this, as the apostle Paul says: “there is no partnership between righteousness and lawlessness,… no fellowship with light and darkness” (2 Corinthians 6:14). There are only happy winners and angry losers.

A generation ago, politicians argued passionately over social security, workers’ compensation, illegal monopolies, fair taxation, and foreign policy. Issues of life and death, marriage and sexuality, however, remained outside the cut and thrust of political debate because politics was enacted against the background of a general moral consensus.

Things have changed since then. In the Sixties, many cast off a Christian worldview to seek spirituality and religion in Eastern religions and mystical practices, and the “yogification” of America began. Culture wars have disturbed the peace of the Union ever since. The God of the Bible was declared “dead,” and His morals rejected as out–dated and dysfunctional. The new/old pantheistic gods came out of the closet with an alternate morality.

A non–Christian religious view of the world has become a passionate faith that seeks political power, and holds a public discourse of “moral indignation” and “righteous anger.”

Present public anger is “righteous,” for it believes itself to be justified from a deep sense of religious obligation. The problem is, we now have two sets of religious principles, two choices of morals, two definitions of God. The culture wars have morphed into moral and spiritual wars–and between the two there is no “fellowship.” But public life cannot function without some common moral standard. Here is the true nature of national grid–lock.

On the morning of November 3, 2004, you can be sure that there will be happy winners and angry losers. Should you vote? Most certainly! Righteousness exalts a nation (Proverbs 14:34). Will your man, if elected, be able to bring national unity? At the stage where we are, with morals so thoroughly contested and politicized, that lofty goal can only come from a spiritual revival of the nation’s soul.

In the meantime, whatever happens, Christians, whose citizenship is in heaven, cannot be too happy or too angry, because their victory is won not by politics but by suffering and the cross. The real victory is not political. The winner is the triumphant Lord, Jesus Christ, who has written history and will also write its final glorious future.