Editorial: Danger—and possibility—in the middle of the road

Life is dangerous in the middle of the road.

Just ask New York Times columnist/PBS commentator David Brooks, a moderate Republican, who has spoken out against presidential candidate Ted Cruz, also a Republican, but from the Tea Party wing.

Editor Marv KnoxBrooks recently wrote a piece titled “The Brutalism of Ted Cruz.” He focused on how Cruz, when he was Texas’ solicitor general, fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to force an incorrectly punished prison inmate to serve a 16-year sentence, rather than the maximum two years, as required by law.

Brooks contrasted Cruz’s strong appeal to evangelical Christian voters, even though, he said, “Cruz is a stranger to most of what would generally be considered the Christian virtues: humility, mercy, compassion and grace.”

Fire from both sides

Not surprisingly, Brooks caught fire—from both directions.  

Conservatives criticized Brooks for being to harsh on Cruz. Liberals chastised him for claiming Cruz’s behavior defies evangelical ethics and for failing to paint all evangelicals with the Cruz brush. 

If you, like Brooks, happen to take a moderate approach and claim friends from both the far right and the far left, then you probably know what he feels like right now. The only thing those polar adversaries agree on is that you, like Brooks, are wrong. 

The current political climate ups the ante. We live in an era where people rarely agree to disagree. “If you don’t agree with me, then you’re absolutely wrong.” But it’s worse. If you disagree, then you must be angry about it. “You’re not only wrong, but you’re an anti-American anti-patriot, and you represent everything that’s wrong with this country, and you should rot you-know-where.”

Illogical and dangerous

Of course, if you manage to maintain friendships with people on both ends of the political spectrum—or the end of the spectrum opposite yours—you know those positions are both illogical and dangerous.

They’re illogical, because if we allowed passions to cool, we could think of many points we hold in common. We want the economy to be strong. We want the rising generation to be well-educated. We want our nation to be safe. We want our allies to be secure. We want potholes to be fixed. We want the Internet to work. We may disagree about how to achieve those goals, but if we could recognize we hold some goals in common, we could find enough ground to begin working on them.

They’re dangerous, precisely because they do not provide ground to work on common solutions. We live in a season when politicians reap rewards for preying on fear and playing to narrow self-interest. If that mindset and approach prevails, an unbridgeable chasm will cleave our nation.

Part of the solution

We should be talking about this because it’s vital for our future, and Christians should be part of the solution, not part of the problem. If we can model how conservatives, moderates and liberals—if not always coexisting in the same congregation, then attending churches down the street from each other—can strive together for the common good, maybe we can provide a template for society at large.

We can begin by recognizing many Christians are conservative and many other Christians are liberal because of their faith. Conservatives tend to emphasize personal responsibility, as well as adherence to the Ten Commandments and guidelines that point toward moral rectitude. Liberals tend to focus on community and grace, as well as Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that admonish compassion for the poor, disadvantaged and otherwise marginalized.

We can begin by gathering around Jesus. The earliest baptismal confession, “Jesus Christ is Lord,” provides a sturdy platform on which we can stand together.

Then we can acknowledge the other group finds support in the Bible. Our Scripture provides teaching on myriad topics for every aspect of life. We’re all flawed, so none of us balances all of it or follows all of it perfectly. Because we gravitate toward the sections that appeal to us most deeply, we become passionate about them. And because we’re practicing faith in a tense and fractious context, we’re tempted to focus so intently on our passions and our issues that we lose sight of the source of others’ passions and issues.

Not the “enemy”

But we can remember Christians of the other party—even those from the edges of the party—are not the “enemy.” We may feel strong and emotional responses to their positions. We may feel they misread the Bible. But we, sinners who ourselves are saved by grace, can offer grace to them. 

We can speak charitably to one another. We can ask how we can understand each other better. We can clarify our positions and seek to understand theirs, and point out common places of agreement. And perhaps we can provide a model for how our larger society can conduct itself in community.

That’s dangerous, of course. The person in the middle of the road catches fire from both sides. Just ask David Brooks.