Welfare and The Wall: Nehemiah in 2017 America

(Just a short one today. Have been teaching on Nehemiah at our summer camp, and while the content of those lessons was certainly not focused on what I'll talk about here, it struck me as a very appropriate book for 2017 and the raging ideological conflict that tempts me to quit facebook about once a week.)

"Let me signal my disapproval of Nehemiah"

Nehemiah: "Hand me another brick" 
Christian SJW: "No, you racist, build love not walls"

Nehemiah: "Distribute this food to all those hungry poor people" 
Christian Libertarian: "No you commie, they'll just keep hanging around looking for handouts"

Reading of Nehemiah in 2017 is rather fascinating. I can't help but feel it's sad that progressive evangelicals were not around at that time to enlighten Nehemiah and explain how the social justice and state-funded poverty relief that happen in Chapter 5 are great and all, but God's will could never involve building a wall around Jerusalem because the nations were supposed to gather to His holy temple (gates in the walls don't make it okay, they suggest you think you have moral grounds to differentiate between kinds of people trying to come in), and how you can't possibly defend yourself from outside threats and still call yourself a witness to the nations, not that nations actually exist.

They could also explain how the Levites were wrong in Chapter 8 to tell the people to stop mourning and rejoice on Sukkot, because obviously holidays are not about celebrating, but exist as reminders of things that you should feel guilty about. 

(Maybe you just wanted to have a good time partying or relaxing with your family and friends, but modern morality means still having fun along with the cognitive dissonance of a guilty conscience for the wrongs of history, which is the mark of a "good person" in very confused 2017 America.)

Nehemiah built a wall; as a society we're flying toward one at 1000mph

WWJD: He would confuse you and you wouldn't like it, but you'd say "yes, Lord"

Yes all that above was sarcasm, but I learned it from the best (Jesus, Isaiah, etc).

One great thing about scripture in the midst of all these public-thought-wars is how it falls diagonally across our ideological lines of battle. If we let it, it won't prove or disprove our stances, it will change our priorities. As a friend said recently, when your priority becomes loving as God wants us to love, you don't need to be commanded not to murder people anymore. When your priority becomes reaching the nations for Christ, you don't need to be told spending all your money on a comfortable life for yourself isn't the best use of your resources.

But don't imagine that your priorities have already been straightened out by scripture, that you see clearly because your heart feels the pain of God's heart and/or your logic is impenetrable, and other people just care too much about their pet issues to listen to you. Neither the strength of an emotion (your feels don't matter and can be chemically manipulated) or the strength of a theological argument (you only know some of what you don't know, you don't know if there are important factors you don't know at all that would change the entire question) are grounds to say you have escaped bias and other people would understand what God meant by this or that scripture as applied to a particular current situation if they'd stop being stubborn and deluded.

Your spiritual worldview is not and cannot be partitioned off from the rest of your worldview. Whether you are a red-blooded national patriot or consider yourself an enlightened citizen of the world, you are not centered on scripture while other people are getting influenced by Right or Left ideology, you're the same as them, and so am I. Letting scripture influence your worldview filter more and more without first filtering out any dissonance with the worldview you already have is an intense, lifelong process, but you won't make any progress until you realize how deeply your culture/upbringing/education affect your thinking about scripture and theology.

Embrace the Bias, but let the Word transform your Worldview

Don't pretend you don't have a bias, you do. Everything about growing up in our time has been aimed at biasing you in one way or another, and I am continually astonished at the naivety of people who assume if something is presented by a person paid to know about it, it must be true by default. In 2017, there is no such thing as neutral, unbiased territory. Everyone wants a piece of your opinions, and they're all trying to purchase real estate in your worldview; don't give either away for free. And those people who most love to proclaim themselves moderates (whether political or religious or both) also tend to be most influenced by random and irrational things instead of at least having a strong worldview they subscribe to that makes claims about the world and truth. In the philosophical sense, they are not the most, but the least free. Trying to not have strong or settled opinions just means you have a weak view of truth. (How you express them is a different question, naturally)

So embrace your bias, but come often to scripture and hold even your most basic premises loosely, able to be challenged and shifted around by the Truth. That's what the Word of God does when we stop twisting it into strange contortions (sometimes unconsciously, with the ease of old habit) to avoid uncomfortable clashes with the cultural ideals that we grew up with and that surround us persuasively now.