Sheriffs, fences and booze

A few days ago, a Christian friend of mine stopped me and in whispered tones informed me that she had seen me going into a liquor store.

"Okay," I replied. "And?"

"Well, you know that we're not supposed to drink," she said. "It's against the Bible. I'm concerned about your faith, if you're drinking, and God says we should rebuke our fellow Christians in love."

I looked at her oddly for a moment. She and I clearly had very different positions on this matter, and I didn't want a fight with someone who genuinely thought she was doing me a favor. "I'll pray about it," I finally said, and that was the end of it.

Well, in subsequent days, I've thought a bit about this one. The leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention years ago adopted an official stance of total abstinence from alcohol. Part of the contract that students at Southern Baptist Seminaries sign forbids them to drink, and if they're caught with alcohol in their proximity, they can be expelled from the Seminary. Likewise, state Convention staff are forbidden to drink on pain of potentially losing their jobs. Many states in the Bible belt have created blue laws to prevent people from buying alcohol at all on Saturday nights or Sundays, so that the good Christians will not be tempted.

The interesting thing about this hullabaloo is that the Bible never forbids drinking. It says not to drink in excess, but 'in excess' is a far cry from 'not at all'. We know that Jesus and the disciples drank wine with every meal. Everyone did at the time, because often the water was unsafe. So alcohol itself can't be inherently sinful. Why the huge emphasis on abstinence, then?

The answer, strangely enough, can be found in the traditions of the Jewish faith. Judaism, unlike Christianity, tends to take the laws of the Old Testament very seriously indeed, particularly the commandment to keep God's commandments. In order to help Jews do this, the councils that interpret Torah law have, over the centuries, established other laws. These supplementary laws (a good example is 'don't complete a circuit on the Sabbath') are designed to be a 'fence' around the original Torah laws. They are in fact more strict than the Torah laws, because Torah scholars figured that they were a good way to keep people from inadvertently breaking one of God's precious commandments.

Christians, on the other hand, tend to play fast and loose with God's laws. We try and stick to the Ten Commandments, but we ignore large chunks of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers wholesale. Protestantism in particular has never developed an official 'fence' position, but that's what we see happening when Christians believe that all alcohol is forbidden. It's an unofficial 'fence' around a set of teachings that for some reason someone found important. The Convention's draconian policies place Convention leadership in the position of sheriff, riding the fences and looking for lawbreakers.

The problem with fences is twofold: a) how do we know that we're fencing off the right doctrines, and b) how do we deal with the matter of sheriffs? The first prong of this line of thinking leads to some funny conclusions. We have total abstinence from alcohol to fence the doctrine of 'drink in moderation', forbidden use of birth control to fence the doctrine 'be fruitful and multiply', and in many churches, a discouraging attitude towards dancing to fence the doctrine of mental purity. Why are these important doctrines, though? When asked what was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied,

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commands." [Matt22:37-40]

The truth is, we Protestants don't really have fences for the two greatest commandments. We often spout them about, but rarely think enough about what they mean in practice to establish effective fences to make sure that we're loving properly. Christians often talk about the power of love unbound, but in this case I think that we need to bind it, to build our fences around God's commands and make sure that we're loving always. Christ places these two commands over all the Law and Prophets, which means above little issues like alcohol or birth control. It's long past time the Christian church had a serious conversation about love, and about the practical ways that we can make sure we're always loving as we have been commanded.

The second prong of my thoughts about fences concerns enforcement: should we be sheriffs for the fences that we build? Often, I think that's not our responsibility. The Bible tells us to support each other in faith, but I'm not yet convinced that that necessarily means policing the sort of fences that the Southern Baptist Convention has built. Rather, I think that supporting someone in faith means encouraging them to put effort into their attempt to walk with God. It means engaging them more deeply in theology, asking the difficult questions about God and faith, then sitting and listening while they work out their answers. It means loving, unconditionally. Things like playing sheriff for minor fences pale in comparison to those duties, and Christians, myself certainly included, don't pay nearly enough attention to the big duties that God gives us as it is.

In short, I think that right now Christianity needs fewer sheriffs, and more scholars. We need to refocus onto what God says is crucial, and trust that the other things will fall in line when the big priorities are right. We need to be less concerned over the appearances of someone's faith, and more concerned over their understanding. I was walking into the liquor store to buy wine for a recipe of coq au vin, but my neighbor was more concerned with the appearance of violating a non-existent command than with my actual intent for my actions. My neighbor has never asked me about issues of faith, like what I think about whether love obligates us to protect someone. The need for change goes both ways, though. I judged her as shallow for her concern about my actions, but I, in turn, have never asked her about doctrine, like what she thinks about Paul's writings on women. Maybe it's time for both of us to become less judgmental sheriffs, and better Christians.

Soren and I chat about Bushonomics

A Philosophy of Religion class I once took (yes, my degree is in philosophy, which is why you'll see so much of it on these pages) had us reading Kierkegaard, and the professor remarked in jest that "Reading Kierkegaard is a hazard to your faith, you'll either head off towards the straits of fundamentalism or veer left toward liberalization, but any way you go you'll doubt for a while first. " I certainly didn't need to veer at all to become a liberal, but Kierkegaard nonetheless became one of my favorite thinkers, mostly because he's so often eminently reasonable when discussing the Church, and few philosophers achieve that (fond though I am of Descartes, he was wrong about God).

The following quotes Kierkegaard, translated out of the Danish, of course. I know it's long, but it's worth bearing with the passage, because it's prescient of what we see the Republicans doing in our economic policy today, and I'll talk later about how it speaks to their motivations:

Christ was not making a historical observation when he declared: The gospel is preached to the poor. The accent is on the gospel, that the gospel is for the poor. Here the word “poor” does not simply mean poverty but all who suffer, are unfortunate, wretched, wronged, oppressed, crippled, lame, leprous, demonic. The gospel is preached to them, that is, the gospel is for them. The gospel is good news for them. What good news? Not: money, health, status, and so on — no, this is not Christianity.

No, for the poor the gospel is the good news because to be unfortunate in this world (in such a way that one is abandoned by human sympathy, and the worldly zest for life even cruelly tries to make one’s misfortune into guilt) is a sign of God’s nearness. So it was originally; this is the gospel in the New Testament. It is preached for the poor, and it is preached by the poor who, if they in other respects were not suffering, would eventually suffer by proclaiming the gospel; since suffering is inseparable from following Christ, from telling the truth.

But soon there came a change. When preaching the gospel became a livelihood, even a lush livelihood, then the gospel became good news for the rich and for the mighty. For how else was the preacher to acquire and secure rank and dignity unless Christianity secured the best for all? Christianity thus ceased to be glad tidings for those who suffer, a message of hope that transfigures suffering into joy, but a guarantee for the enjoyment of life intensified and secured by by the hope of eternity.

The gospel no longer benefits the poor essentially. In fact, Christianity has now even become a downright injustice to those who suffer (although we are not always conscious of this, and certainly unwilling to admit to it). Today the gospel is preached to the rich, the powerful, who have discovered it to be advantageous. We are right back again to the very state original Christianity wanted to oppose. The rich and powerful not only get to keep everything, but their success becomes the mark of their piety, the sign of their relationship to God. And this prompts the old atrocity again — namely, the idea that the unfortunate, the poor are to blame for their condition; that it is because they are not pious enough, are not true Christians, that they are poor, whereas the rich have not only pleasure but piety as well. This is supposed to be Christianity. Compare it with the New Testament, and you will see that this is as far from that as possible.

It helps, at this juncture, to observe that in the Hebrew, the word 'poor' does not mean 'making very little money, but nonetheless living a sustainable existence'. It means something more extreme, something akin to our 'destitute'. It means living on the very brink of starvation, in a condition where the person literally has no resources. Every time Jesus says "Blessed are the poor", he doesn't mean the people with small houses who can't afford more than one used car, he means the people under bridges and in sewers.

That said, what is Soren saying to us about our current economic situation? Well, one might flippantly quip that Bush is attempting to help America by getting as many people into that 'blessed' condition as possible, but I think that's disrespect to the text by not considering its points carefully enough. Soren starts out by observing that Christ was making a historical observation, one which is no longer true. For two millenia, the gospel has not been preached by the poor for the poor, but by the rich and educated for everyone else. The Catholic Church, the largest Christian denomination in the world today, is also the wealthiest organization in the world today.

The interesting thing about Christianity is that in Christ's time, it had no political power, and it could not be foreseen to gain political power. The apostles had no way of knowing that one day their words would guide nations, because they were preaching to an audience that was the least nation-guiding bunch available: the people with no money and no power.

Let's combine this fact with one other: there are very cogent arguments from across the denominational and theological spectrum that Christ was voluntarily limited in his power. There is good evidence in the gospels that Christ gave up the 'omnis' of God (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience) in order to become fully human. A number of theologians have claimed that the validity of Christ's sacrifice rests on this interpretation of Christ's power: he was the son of God, he was one part of a tripartite Deity, but he did not have the full power of God.

Take those two facts together: Christ was preaching to the poorest of the poor, in a time when they could not have been humanly foreseen to gain political power; and Christ was God in a voluntarily limited form and did not have the full omniscience of God. The implication of those two facts combined is that the Gospels were never meant to govern a nation. They were never intended as prescriptions for political power or how to use it. There is a reason that the gospels are so intensely focused on personal faith, and on how God can impact individuals: they were never meant for the kind of bureaucracy and power plays that now permeate organized religion. Bush tries to run a country based on the teachings of a book that was intended as a moral guide to life person by person, not collectively.

What does this change in purpose accomplish? Soren lays it out: the poor get blamed again for their condition, and they gain no aid from the faith that was established in their name. Looks like a description of Bush-economics to me. Tax-breaks that favor the wealthy, cuts to welfare programs, an insistence on private health care (which the poor cannot afford), etc are all evidence of an attitude that if you are poor, it is your fault. You are not saving enough, not working hard enough, not blessed enough by God to deserve the benefits of being American (the 'or of being Christian' is implied but not explicit). When you divorce the purpose of scripture from the teachings of scripture, what you gain is not a wider application of the Word, it's a perversion of everything that was said in the first place.

The Bible on money, as translated by Dubya

There can be little question that Bush's presidency has been one of the most overtly 'Christian' in history. Dubya's first act as President was to cut off funding to any family planning program that didn't teach abstinence. It may be tempting to dismiss the indicators as Rovian meddling, but the evidence is there in deed and rhetoric: Bush himself is a True Believer. But, we ask ourselves, if Bush's politics are based in a theology for which the only commandment more important than 'love others' is 'love God', how can he do the things he has done? Foreign wars aside, even Bush's domestic agenda has been less along the theme of 'give of thyself unto others' and more like 'be given unto'.

The answer is that there are conservative fiscal policies hidden in the Bible! I'm not joking, Jesus says some fairly inexplicable things sometimes. Foremost among them is a certain parable, and it may be the least preached parable in the Bible, that depicts a financial manager defrauding his boss - and getting praised for it. It's like Enron for the B.C. era. Here's the scripture, sourced from Luke 16. It's most often called 'The Parable of the Devious Manager':

1And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods.

2And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward.

3Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed.

4I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.

5So he called every one of his lord's debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord?

6And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty.

7Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore.

8And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.

9What I say to you is this: make friends for yourselves through your use of worldly goods, so that when they fail you, a lasting reception will be yours.

To recap: A man mishandles the company assets, so he's going to be fired. In retribution, he defrauds the company out of large portions of their assets by forgiving debts left and right. Instead of outrage, he gets congratulated! Reading sermons on the passage reveals a startling confusion among pastors as to how to approach this one. Most don't address its fundamental flaw: that it rewards dishonesty. They say things about using money to make spiritual friends, or about how all money is God's anyway. It's one of those scriptures that not many people talk about.

If the point is supposed to be that you cannot serve both God and money, I'm not sure that it's entirely clear. To me, it looks like a defense of corporate malfeasance. It's proof that Ken Lay was a God-fearing man. Bush seems to have taken the point to heart: he has frequently rewarded praise and favors to the... devious. Not just in financial matters: here for instance is justification for unwavering faith in Gonzalez, and for commuting the sentence in the Libby case. Bush is a God-fearing man, all right. Scant comfort.

Killing the Buddha

There is a famous parable in Buddhism that goes something like this:

A monk approached the Buddhist master Lin Chi. The monk was excited, in ecstasy. He tells the master that he has seen Buddha. He was walking down the road when suddenly, he was enlightened! He has seen the whole of enlightenment, known Nirvana, understands the Buddhamind. Finally the monk quiets and waits to see what the master will say of his revelations.

Lin Chi reaches out and smacks him. "You meet the Buddha on the road," he says, "Kill him".

It's happened to all of us, or to people that we know. We're marching along, going to work, doing the laundry, living our lives, when suddenly, it all seems to make sense. You were just doing your thing, not really seeking for religion, not really thinking about social justice, but then something impresses you so clearly and forcefully that there's nothing for it but to admit that God is great. Or evolution is wrong. Or Allah is wonderful.

Lin Chi says, fabulous. You've found it, and now you can kill it. The Buddha you stumble over like a rock in your path isn't the true Buddha, but an expression of your longing. If this Buddha is not killed, he will stand in your way.

When Lin Chi contributed the idea of deicide to his godless religion over a thousand years ago, he wasn't talking about killing a long-dead teacher who had come to be known as the Buddha, but instead about the ideologies of his day: the One True Path, One True Story, One True Anything. He was talking about the preachers and the gurus, the Family Research Counsel, and the mass media. Faced with an obscenity-screaming abortion protester or a convert who thumps Kabballah aphorisms as hard as any Bible, Lin Chi would say the same thing: Don't be a chump. A single story never explained anything.

What does a Buddhist master have to do with modern society? Well, in the case of Christian theology, all too often Christians today sell their faith in small chunks. A recent Christian publication informed me that all I needed to do to be saved was to 'accept that Jesus Christ died for my sins'. "It's that easy!", the magazine trumpeted. No mention of God, no mention of theology, no doctrine and no morality involved. It's Powerpoint Christianity, God for the fast-food generation.

The same phenomenon happens in political debates. Complex questions of science are reduced to three word memes so that reporters don't have to think too hard when producing headlines. It took me three years of biology education and an entire semester of a focused seminar at a university, conversing with the best minds in the world, to understand enough about cellular function to make judgements about whether stem cells might be helpful in medicine, but pundits pass judgement in thirty-second clips for the news. And it's pundits that define the debate.

The problem with the loss of doctrinal richness is that the more God or an issue of public debate gets boiled into soundbytes, the more people lose sight of what they're actually talking about. When people make judgements based on pundit clips, fields of science get closed down that might have saved lives, but there is no moral responsibility felt by those who pass the laws. And when people lose sight of what God really is, in all His complexity, people start to make and defend wrong choices using statements that sound religious, but aren't. Soundbyte theology is how Bush and company led many to think that Bush represented a Christian outlook on government, when his policies were anything but. Soundbyte science is what allows the debates about abortion or evolution to continue in public, when the people who've devoted their lives to studying the issue aren't debating any longer, because they've reached a conclusion. It's hard to parse the inaccuracies of someone's claims about religion or social issues when you don't know the details of what you yourself think.

In the church, it's not just a problem of pastors preaching repetitive and doctrinally-shallow sermons. It's a problem of conversion methods as well. The large evangelistic religions often rely on a major religious experience for a great deal of their converts. Youth groups on retreat weekends, adults attending special revival services: these emotionally-drenched conversion conventions produce a huge number of new Christians every year. The problem is that all of these people are meeting Buddha on the road. They will be energized by their new faith, but if you asked them what exactly they had faith in, they couldn't give a detailed answer. But instead of urging these followers to kill that Buddha and instead grow slowly towards deeper knowledge, the church rewards these people. If they continue to attend church at all (many don't), they'll hear soundbyte sermons designed to make God understandable in less than an hour a week. You couldn't understand the behavior of the stock market in that length of time, much less a deity.

The truth is that God should be complex, and that faith shouldn't be easily digestible. Science can't be reduced to easy conclusions, and graphs are also the easiest way to misrepresent data. Refusal to confront the difficult theological questions doesn't make for less conflict in a church, it makes for shallower Christians. Debate by soundbyte doesn't make for a better-informed public, it makes for a bunch of ill-informed ideologues. Modern society doesn't care about the details of what we believe in, though. You can't fit ideas that big onto a Powerpoint slide.

Gaming America: the philosophy and math behind choices we make

It's been said before, and it'll be said again, but the USA is a remarkably paternalistic nation. We have this idea, right now, that instead of doing what the Iraqis want us to do (leave), we must instead do the thing which is best for them, even in circumstances where no one knows what that thing may be. I started thinking about this yesterday while reading a philosophy paper on game theory, and it occurred to me that what America is facing right now is an optimization problem. Optimization problems in game and decision theory literature are most often solved with equations that weigh participants' beliefs against foreseen possible outcomes. This is an elegant way of addressing such problems, and it has produced a number of fascinating insights into human behavior in game situations, but it has an acknowledged fault: one cannot calculate the potential utility of an outcome that is vague or indeterminate. And that is the dilemma that America presently faces. We are trying to weigh the incalculable utility of a vague outcome (what might happen if we withdraw troops from Iraq) against the calculable utility of a known outcome (what happens if we leave troops in Iraq).

Why would I call the outcome of withdrawal vague? Well, it might help first to talk about what an un-vague, or defined, utility value would be. A defined utility is a utility that can be assigned numerical value, or assigned to a range of numerical values. An example is in order. Suppose I have an envelope in one hand that contains $10, and an identical envelope in the other that contains no money. If I ask my friend Jane to assign a value to the envelope in my right hand, according to decision theory the unopened envelope is worth $5, because Jane knows there is a 1/2 certainty that it contains $10. Once the envelope is opened, it will either be worth $10 or no money, and there is no outcome on which it will be worth $5, but while it remains unopened, its expected value is $5. Another way of looking at the question is to ask Jane how much she would pay for the unopened envelope in my right hand. Her expected answer would be $5, which is the value that balances her negative risk (the amount she loses if the envelope is empty) with her potential gain (the amount she wins if the envelope contains money). Jane's preferences can be converted to percentages easily: there is a 50% chance that she should prefer the envelope in the right hand. In this highly simplified situation, Jane can assign a defined value to the expected utility of the envelopes. A 'vague' or 'indeterminate' utility is one which cannot be evaluated in that manner. For example, the Jane situation would become vague if I informed Jane that there was no money in one envelope and some money in the other envelope, then asked her how mush she would pay. She cannot make an educated guess about how much to pay, because she doesn't know the expected value of the second envelope.

Much in the same way, no one knows what will happen if we withdraw troops. It seems likely that Iraq would fracture, but along what fault lines no one is certain. The resulting power struggles might leave Iran in power across large parts of the Iraqi oilfield, or it might not. The end result might be favorable for the US, or it might not. If zero represents the status quo and one represents the best possible outcome of withdrawal, it's impossible to assign a number or range of numbers that encompasses the 'most likely' outcome of withdrawal, because there is no 'most likely set of outcomes'. Since there is no 'most likely outcome', the value of withdrawal is indeterminate, and the choice between the status quo and withdrawal weighs a known option against an unknown option. The choice is "vague," as the philosophical jargon goes. At this point in time, most Democrats in Congress believe that the expected value of some sort of withdrawal plan is higher than that of the status quo, while most Republicans believe the opposite. Because of the vagueness involved, however, there is no truely 'rational' decision to be made, and this is the root of the dilemma in which the nation currently finds itself.

What in the world does this have to do with Christianity, one might well ask. Well, the answer is that it explains other political-religious divides in our nation. If one is a fundamentalist Christian, the expected utility of heaven is infinitely high. There is no decision on which the 'do this and go to heaven' outcome is not better that any other situation. This is the root of all moral absolutism. If there is a set of rules and one believes that they are inflexible (ie, if one believes that the word of God is infallible), then there is no higher expected utility to be found than in following those rules exactly and getting the expected outcome from them: heaven. This is why the religious right campaigns so hard on issues like abortion. The amount of utility that can be expected from the ease gained in a prospective mother's life by aborting a child (even if that is a large amount of utility, since the mother won't have financial troubles in the future, can get an education, won't be forced into a marriage to the child's father, etc) is trumped by the expected utility of going to heaven. An envelope containing the benefits of the abortion will never be more utile than an envelope containing heaven, so our hypothetical Christian will assert for the person's own good that getting the abortion is categorically wrong.

The flaw in this reasoning is the assumption that the rules are absolute. This game only plays out correctly if one assumes that changing social times don't affect what is morally right. If changing social times do somehow affect what is morally correct, then the expected value of getting the abortion increases dramatically, because there is a chance that the abortion envelope will outweigh the heaven one (benefits of abortion+heaven > just heaven). There is no certainty about the will of God, however, in this situation, so the game becomes much like the one that America is currently playing over Iraq. Maybe morality in this particular social climate will be conducive to abortions, and maybe it won't, but if the rules are uncertain there's no sure way to know the value of that envelope. Maybe withdrawal from Iraq will end favorably for America, and maybe it won't, but since the future is uncertin there's no sure way to know the value of that envelope either.

In situations of vague or indeterminate values, like the Iraq war or the question of morality if one believes that the scripture is not completely inerrant, there is no 'right' answer in decision theory. All that the math prescribes is that we all consult our moral intuitions and do as we personally see fit, with the understanding that we may well be making the wrong choice. The real problem arises when, as now with Iraq, people refuse to make the choice at all. As we refuse to make the choice, the expected utility for both options decreases. Sometimes it's better to commit to an indeterminate future than to not commit at all.


Note: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy will explain game theory more rigorously than I did here, if you're interested. It's a field that intersects economics, mathematics, and philosophy, and it's very worth learning about.

Bush's heresy: the theology that guides Manifest Democracy

It's a soundbyte that comes up fairly frequently in connection with the Iraq: the idea of crusades, of holy wars. Bush has repeatedly given comments to the effect that he believes it's his God-given mission to evangelize the rest of the world with democracy. The sensible thing for the White House to do would be deny, and placate the millions for whom the words 'holy war' can't possibly have good connotations. But that's sort of hard to do when Bush throws off comments like this one:

The other debate is whether or not it is a hopeless venture to encourage the spread of liberty. Most of you all around this table are much better historians than I am. And people have said, you know, this is Wilsonian, it's hopelessly idealistic. One, it is idealistic, to this extent: It's idealistic to believe people long to be free. And nothing will change my belief. I come at it many different ways. Really not primarily from a political science perspective, frankly; it's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom.

God wants us to spread democracy, because it's his gift to everyone. Bloggers from across the spectrum get nervous when he says things like this. But is it actually true? The theology behind freedom is complicated in the Bible, but it's worth a second look, because this is the heresy that's currently guiding American foreign policy.

Before we dive into heavy scripture, a few caveots are in order. Bush is discussing political freedom here, but what sort of political freedom specifically? If the statement is read as charitably as possible (an uncharitable reading would attribute 'American-style democracy' as his reading for political freedom), he is discussing a sort of general freedom from tyrany. The best reading that I can come up with is that he believes God thinks all people should be free from oppression from their government. This does not necessarily require a democracy, as reasonably enlightened monarchs have in the past produced governments that refrain from oppressing their citizens. Nonetheless, the sort of freedom Bush discusses is notably distinct from a second sort of freedom that often comes up in these discussions (and in the scripture): freedom of will. Freedom of will is the ability of a person to make choices that reflect his own agency, rather than the agency of God.

That said, what does the Bible think about freedom, and whether we should be spreading it? Perhaps the earliest mention of some sort of freedom comes from the creation story in Genesis 5:

1 This is the written account of Adam's line. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.

Although it could be referring to physical likeness, a number of theologians believes that this little statement refers to the fact that God created man and gave man his own agency (free will), just as God himself had agency. The Old Testament frequently mentions that God explicitly gives man free will in the matter of worshipping the Hebrew God or other gods (Deuteronomy 30:19; Deuteronomy 30:20; Joshua 24:15; Joshua 24:18; 1 Kings 18:21). Even if a government enforces worship of a particular god (as the government of Israel at the time did), these scriptures seem to reflect the idea that compliance with that requirement is an effort of a person's free choice. The result is the conclusion that even religiously oppressive governments (Islamic governments who forbid Christianity) should not be invaded for the sake of preserving believers' free will: even if the government designates Islam as the religion of choice, following the decree is an individual's choice. Wars to preserve or spread freedom cannot be justified by claiming that a government (no matter how oppressive) is interfering with a person's God-given free will.

What of explicitly political freedom, however? Much of the Bible was written in a time period where democracy was unheard of. The Old Testament is a time of kings, emperors, and dictators. Even Israel's God-given sytem of government involved a king, and the inherit risk of a bad king (Israel famously had several runs of repeatedly bad kings). Moreover, there is a lot of Old Testament law to show that Israel in that era would be considered just as oppressive today as most of the Islamic republics. Women were required to dress in specific ways and were not allowed the same freedoms as men. Women were considered property and were bought and sold in deals between families or towns. Slavery was not only allowed, slavery of non-Jews was encouraged. Punishments for petty crimes included removal of body parts, or even loss of life in some cases. Punishments for murder and other major crimes were always capital. Furthermore, justice was often decided not by an unconcerned outsider, but by town elders, even when the families of the elders themselves were parties to the dispute. Throughout the Old Testament, God shows himself less concerned with the existance of tyrants or oppression, and more concerned with individuals and their choice to follow the laws or not as concerned religion.

If the coming of Christ represented a revolution of theology, however, perhaps the New Testament would be friendlier to Bush's brand of evangelistic democracy. Jesus himself seemed unconcerned with tyranical governments, and in fact seems to advocate a distinction between the concerns of the soul and the concerns of the government:

19Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, 20and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"

21"Caesar's," they replied.

Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."

Caesar's was certainly what one might call an oppressive government, but Christ shows no interest in undermining that government. Later, Paul and other early evangelists emphasize compliance with state laws, even if those laws were oppressive to Christians. When imprisoned for his faith and freed in an earthquake, Paul refuses to leave the prison, and convinces the other inmates to stay as well out of respect for the laws of the (oppressive) state. Once more, early Christians seem unconcerned about oppressive governments. Nowhere in the Bible does a mandate for freedom from oppression appear.

The Biblical attitude towards governments in general (particularly in the New Testament) might best be described as apathetic. God doesn't care what the earthly government is like, he cares about the decisions of individuals. Paul goes out of his way to show that even in an oppressive regime, the oppressive laws are unimportant. The focus is on following God whatever the circumstances. The message of the New Testament is repeatedly 'love all, injure none, worship only one God'.

In my opinion, the appeal of the idea of God is that He doesn't care about politics. The draw for Christianity historically has been that earthly circumstances are irrelevant to faith, and that faith is what will matter in the grand reckoning of things. That message is what's made Christianity such a religion of hope for poor, oppressed people for centuries. It's too bad that Bush seems set on undermining it. The concept that issues of government pale before issues of faith is central to doctrine, though in complex enough ways that someone who isn't thinking very hard might miss it. Bush's idea of evangelistic democracy undermines that concept, by trying to sell freedom from governmental oppression as an issue of faith (which it's not) instead of an issue of political philosophy (which it is). Issues of political philosophy should be secondary to issues of faith for a Christian like Bush, but his evangelistic democracy puts the cart before the horse by elevating a question of government to equal status with questions of God. Bush clearly hasn't thought much on the matter, which tells me that he's less concerned with what the Almighty actually says about freedom, and more concerned with spewing talking points to convince his fundamentalist Christian base. It speaks ill of him that he cares so little for his faith, but speaks worse of the fundamentalist Christians who buy the idea, and should know better.

What part of 'planned' do they not understand?

Lawmakers are to be congratulated for defeating an amendment that would have blocked Federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Blame Indiana Republican Mike Pence for the amendment, which specifically targeted Planned Parenthood by name, and tried to forbid the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services from giving them funds. Luckily, the Democratic majority shut the amendment down easily.

Sometimes I think some fundamentalist Christians have a translation device in their brains. Someone may say "family planning", but they hear "abortion". The two words get magically conflated. Just to clarify: the two are not the same. Family planning includes information about birth control, sexual health, and (believe it or not) pregnancy care as well as abortions. Planned Parenthood does worlds of good for teens and poor couples that can't afford birth control otherwise. They help with the sexual safety education that the government has been remiss in providing of late. They provide cheap pregnancy monitoring and advice about how to have a healthy pregnancy. When I was in college, I volunteered in a counseling agency for teens, and we regularly referred teens in need to Planned Parenthood. Often parents in denial are reluctant to buy birth control for a teen, or teens are afraid to confess that they may have an STD to an adult. Planned Parenthood is a resource for both of these problems, and teens are often almost ridiculously grateful for a place where they're sure that they won't be condemned for their sexual choices. Planned Parenthood prevents and treats more STDs than any other group I know of. I'd hate to see the country's sexual health situation without it. From my acquaintance with the group, abortion advising is only a minuscule part of the good work that they do.