Winston Churchill, Jesus, and Redeeming Democracy

Winston Churchill, the great 20^th century politician and protector of democratic values, once quipped that,

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those others that have been tried.

It’s Election Day here in the United States and my Facebook feed is full of pictures of my friends proudly voting. Other images of women from the early 1900 fighting for the right to vote appear on the feed, imploring women to vote in honor of the women who fought for the right. There’s even a static image at the top of my news feed that says, “It’s Election Day. Share that you are voting in the US Election and find out where to vote.” Other friends post comments insisting that this the stakes are high. This election matters. We must defeat them otherwise our national identity will be destroyed.

Amidst the frenzy of Election Day hope, I couldn’t help but feel dirty as I cast my ballot.  Churchill’s quote rings true to me. At its best, democracy is based on equality. Over time, the United States has included more and more people into that equality. Equality is a good thing, of course. It’s based on the biblical principle that all people are equally created in the very image of God.

But there is a danger to equality that is often missed. Democracy actually highlights this danger. Let me be clear, everyone has equal dignity and is equally loved in the eyes of God. Everyone should be treated with that kind of love and equality. But in the eyes of our human beings, there is a rivalry among equals. At its worst, democracy is based on that rivalry. We may be on the same plane of equality, but that plane is fraught with rivalry. There is a first among equals. And if there is a first, there is also a second and a third and a fourth. Our political system is a destructive set up for this rivalry among equals. It’s a game of winners and losers where we blame the other side for the problems we face. Who’s to blame for Ebola and ISIS? They are!

And so, we will stay up late tonight watching the results of the political blame game in hopes that our team will be in power tomorrow morning. The winners will rejoice; the losers will stew in resentment. But the losers don’t have to stew long! The cycle of political rivalry never really ends. No matter who wins tonight, we will soon move on as we speculate about the drama of the next election – How long until someone asks, “Is Hillary going to run?”

Is there an answer to this pattern of rivalry?

The power struggle of democracy reminds me of an event in Jesus’ life. As Jesus and his disciples were walking toward Jerusalem, two of his disciples, James and John, requested that Jesus allow them to have an important place in his kingdom. In a first century campaign ad, they said to Jesus “Grant us to sit, one at your right and one at your left, in your glory.” Essentially, they were requesting to be Jesus’ Chief of Staff and Vice President.

When the other disciples heard about the request, they were enraged. Why? Because James and John went behind their backs to enact a political power play. It created a rivalry for power among the disciples.  You can imagine the other disciples huddling together and expressing their frustration as they declare, “Who do James and John think they are?!?” the disciples must have thought. “They don’t deserve to be Jesus’ Chief of Staff and Vice President!  We do!”

As magnificent as democracy is, it runs on the same pattern of rivalry that the disciples had. It’s striking that Jesus’ 12 closest friends, who walked and talked with him for years, fell into a pattern rivalry with each other. It strikes me that 2,000 years later, we are still run by the same pattern of rivalry.

So, what’s the answer to political rivalry? Jesus summed it up to his disciples. When the other ten heard what James and John said to Jesus, “Jesus called them over and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

A ransom was paid to release someone being held captive. The dominant Atonement theory assumes that Jesus paid a ransom to a wrathful god to release his followers from captivity to that god’s anger. But that Atonement theory is wrong. Jesus’ disciples weren’t held captive to a wrathful god. Rather, they were held captive to their own pattern of desire and rivalry for political power.

The ransom Jesus paid was not to a god’s wrath; it was to human wrath. And Jesus paid that ransom by giving his life to human wrath so that he could create a different kind of politics. As opposed to a political way of life based on a rivalry for power, Jesus’ “kingdom of heaven” is based on service, love, and compassion that reaches out to all people, even those we call our enemies.

If democracy pits political opponents against one another for power, can democracy be redeemed? Yes! Political redemption happens from within, from the grassroots. It happens when people like you and me refuse to define ourselves over and against our political opponents. It happens when we move away from a pattern of rivalry and blame against our opponents and move toward a pattern of serving them. It happens when we acknowledge that we are equally created in the image of God. It happens when we follow Jesus into his kingdom where everyone has daily bread, where debts are forgiven, and where we are led away from the evil of rivalry so that we might love our neighbor as we love ourselves.