Never Walked In High Heels

In my opinion the term ‘conservative Christian’ is little but an oxymoron. This statement might come as a surprise to most of my readers as, this is a new thought in my own head and one which I’ve never attempted to express on paper. So bear with me.
I have, or so I thought until very recently, been raised in a so called conservative Christian home. This is how my parents would identify themselves to pollsters who would call during the dinner hour. This is how our church labeled itself during election season. I spent hours listening to talk radio rather than music. Our best friends were church folks. We where wary of anything too worldly, anything without clear boundaries and rules, anything where there might be a grey area.
And yet, the man who would end up being the closest thing I had to a godfather was gay. My parents and I wrestled enormously with the notion that someone’s actions meant they were toxic to be around. A careless attitude to the poor never sat easily with me. And, perhaps most unsettling of all, while we all talked about values and the importance of a stable home, I could see the cracks in the facade of my own family as well as everyone else’s.
Recently and seemingly without warning, I’ve been rejumbled with some people who wish to identify themselves as that odd little alliterate group on Washington’s right. It has admittedly stirred up some very aggressive and visceral reactions from me. As one of my best friend’s put it yesterday, “any part of your life would be enough to send most of the Christians we know screaming to their nearest bible study.” Fortunately for me, she is a Christian who always tethers my faith when everything else seems to be whirling about in madness.
This isn’t an essay about politics. As you know, I decided to wash my hands of the stuff over two years ago and focus, rather, on what was directly in front of me. Let us rather discuss labels, and how a certain label creates a massive contradiction in terms. Kierkegaard once wrote “once you label me, you negate me.” In much the same way, if we stupidly label ourselves, as a sort of short hand to form clans and enemies, we run the remarkable risk of negating ourselves.
Say what you like about how we manage to screw up the beautiful ideal that Christ laid out for us, it is all, distressingly, very true. The one element which I wish people could see when they look at Christianity is grace. The idea that we are loved and treasured not because we’ve earned such approval, but because someone decided to give it to us anyway, is what makes Christianity different from all other faiths. This notion is scandalous in a world which teaches that good things are to be earned, that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and become self made men, that religion is something one does.
Grace, the foundation of the Christian faith, is never conservative. Real grace, not appeasement or the avoidance of conflict, is costly to the one who grants it shocking to the one who receives it undeservedly. Their is no political party who takes this practice as a platform. Indeed, a proposal of operating by grace is a horrible way to run a campaign. But all of us, regardless of who we are or what we believe, are to be fully formed and loving human beings first, long before we should be identifying with any sort of squabbling sub group. To associate any of this with the ‘conservative’ or traditional way things are is absurd. Grace is unnatural for any human being because in this economy of our self centered minds, grace never adds up.
Ultimately any sort of affiliation which can be summed up in a single word is nothing but shorthand. The most mainstream conservative will be found to be radically liberal on at least one issue and the most liberal will find something that he is conservative about. So too are religious labels. Such terms are almost both intellectual and social laziness. We hope we can know the person and their beliefs by hearing a few key terms. After that, we think we have him all figured out.
But as in logic, a thing that contradicts itself cannot exist. And while ALL humans magnificently display self contradictions, when an entire group chooses to found their basis on an openly contradictory term such as ‘conservative Christians’ I can’t help but wonder, is it that these people do not practice conservatism, or is it that they don’t practice grace? The two cannot co-exist.