Faith & labels

He responded with surprise when I blogged supporting the right of Pam Tebow and her son, Tim, to make a pro-family, pro-life ad for the Super Bowl.

You remember the ruckus. Focus on the Family paid for a brief ad featuring the Tebows. It indirectly referenced the story of Tim’s birth: Pam came down with a serious illness in the Philippines when she was pregnant with Tim, and doctors recommended an abortion. She refused. He grew up healthy enough to lead the Florida football Gators to two national championships and to win the Heisman Trophy as college football’s best player.

Pre-broadcast news about the ad drew out the opposition—mostly the National Organization for Women and other pro-abortion groups. Normally, I take the middle ground in language about abortion, using the labels “pro-life” and “pro-choice,” which each group seems to prefer for itself. But the groups that raged against the Tebow ad (even before they saw it) proved themselves to be pro-abortion, not pro-choice. Pam Tebow exercised choice. She chose to carry her baby son to term. And they vilified her for it.

Not abortion, but labels

But this blog isn’t about abortion. It’s about labels. After I posted the Tebow blog, a reader who frequently comments on baptiststandard.com expressed surprise and remarked that I was “sounding like a Conservative! LOOK OUT!!”

I responded that my blog reflected my consistent, longstanding feelings about the topic.

He then proceeded to attempt to document my liberaldom. According to this reader—and others, I suppose—I’m a liberal because I don’t agree with all their interpretations of religion that, quite frankly, confuse me. People who embrace this system of belief call themselves “conservative Christians.” But when I try to exegete their faith, it presents itself as a mix of rigid-right politics, American exceptionalism and a kind of cultural Christianity that’s at least as much about middle-class suburban U.S. culture as it is about Christ.

Searching Scripture, following Christ

Here’s the deal: Since I was a child, I’ve been a serious follower of Jesus the Christ. (Of course, I’m a broken follower. I falter and fail and often repent and plead for forgiveness.) To that end, I’ve committed much of my life to a serious study of the Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, because I believe they are the divinely inspired guide for following Jesus and patterning our lives according to the ethical implications of his life and teachings. (Of course, I know I “see through a glass darkly” and do not understand everything clearly. But I’ve studied the Scripture’s languages and committed myself to the serious principles of study that attempt to direct us to the clearest interpretations of what Jesus said and did and the context in which he said and did them.)

In the Baptist culture, “conservative” generally has been the desired label, if you must be labeled. The pejorative terms have been “fundamentalist” for the folks on the far right, and “liberal” for everyone the fundamentalists disagree with. Just kidding. Lighten up. “Liberal” generally has been the term for the left.

The person who commented on my Tebow blog thinks I’m a liberal because I don’t agree with him, as if his positions are the bona fide, handed-down-directly–from-Jesus truth.

Maybe Jesus was a liberal

Actually, many of the reasons he thinks I’m a liberal are based upon my serious, informed attempt to follow Jesus.

In today’s secular political climate, which has been adopted as the religious norm by many church-going folks, advocacy on behalf of the poor and minorities and the outsiders is a sure sign of liberalism. Yet Jesus focused a huge portion of his ministry—both teaching and miracle-working—on alleviating the needs of the poor and bringing justice to the downtrodden.

If care for the poor and concern for the disenfranchised is “liberalism,” then I guess I’m a liberal. But I think that particular use of the label has its roots in politics, not the Gospels. According to the true definition of “conservative”—meaning to stay true to and preserve the original—then care for the poor, advocacy for the stranger and justice for the weak is about as conservative as you can get. Or else Jesus was just a bleeding-heart liberal. Read Matthew 25 and Luke 4, and you tell me what Jesus was.

I could go on with all kinds of illustrations, but they’d all be versions of the Jesus-and-“the least of these” theme.

If Jesus was a liberal, I’m happy to be one. But if you use “liberal” as a dirty word to hurt another Christian believer, think again. It’s quite likely the person you easily label comes at those positions out of fervent faith, serious Bible study and a passion to do exactly what Jesus would do.