God and politics don't mix
By ERIC BAERREN
A group of friends were sitting around a table in a Jackson Wendy's one night shortly after the release of the film "Platoon."
We were all young men, and all right around the age when you can volunteer for the military.
That night, a couple of us were talking up the battle scenes, and another friend broke in and told all of us that we were full of it. War is the product of government, he said, and as an institution of man, government is inherently corrupt.
It was Eric (Fetus, actually, since three of us were named Eric). He was a Jehovah's Witness.
I learned quite a bit about Jehovah's Witnesses from Eric, since he routinely had to defend his faith against just about everyone, especially that door-to-door Jesus salesman schtick (some of us never bought the defense). Something that sticks out was his devout belief in a separation of church and state for religious reasons.
Tie God and government together, he told us, and you bring God down to Man's level, infuse his perfection with human weakness. Even worse, he told us that night in Wendy's, is when God is used to give credibility to horrors unleashed by men on other men. Like, I don't know, war.
In those days, most of us were still dreaming of being Navy pilots or Marines, but Eric said he'd just as soon have nothing to do with the military, or even government in general. Even though he was the proper age, he didn't even plan to vote. Everything he could get, he said he could get through his family, friends or church.
I thought about Eric last week (he died in 1989), when I read that the governor and legislators planned to sit down and discuss how the Supreme Court's twin rulings on public displays of the Ten Commandments would affect Michigan. The very nature of their conversation - trying to figure out what hoops they'd have to jump through to display the Commandments - suggested that they weren't so much interested in serving history but in pandering to a noisy minority.
That noisy minority has effectively appropriated the Christian religion in the political arena, giving the inaccurate appearance that uniformity in the same way that patriotism is associated with flag-waving national chauvinism and lockstep support of the president. Now, there are similarities between the two - worship of state, worship of God.
When the House voted to amend the Constitution to allow the punishment of flag burners, around the time the High Court released its decision, it raised the flag to the level of religious icon. Desecrate it, and you'll pay the price, but instead of an eternity in Hell, you get a fine and possibly jail time. Worse than just attacking the right of free speech, it attacked the principles of personal property - government can tell you what you can't do with something you might have purchased for $11 from the local Meijer.
It follows a frightening push a few years ago to turn the president into a kind of Sun King - utter dissent, and you're accused of the heresy of hating your homeland. Actually, it was only more popular a few years ago. With things going South in Iraq, diehard supporters of the war still participate in that kind of ugly tarring, lashing out at anyone they can to avoid admitting that maybe we made a mistake or seven along the way.
We haven't quite arrived to open worship of the president, but there are lots of people who've forgiven our current president's failings on the basis of his faith. He's a good Christian man, and wouldn't lead us astray. As long as he's got the faith of a true believer, there's no sense questioning whether he's an incompetent boob who's sending the entire country over Niagra Falls in a barrel constructed of balsa wood.
Eric's belief was that turned God into nothing more than an enabler for bad government. Now, today, I see his point.
More than ever.