Being Honest Without Being Mean

Last week I finished Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott. Tonight, I heard a prospective political candidate talk.

 

Religion and politics can be divisive: the things we believe can be bricks in walls that separate us from other people. D vs. R, red vs. blue, free will vs. predestination, theism vs. atheism. Some of these labels, and the thoughts they represent, can be very helpful. They are often used to create mean-spirited division.

 

I'm a conservative; economically, I'm almost a libertarian. (I thoroughly enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged.) But espousing these ideas can often be really mean. Republicans are rightly accused of sounding uncaring towards the poor, elderly, and otherwise unfortunate. The candidate I met tonight sounded like this stereotype: rich, white, selfish, angry. While tonight's room agreed with him, but he wouldn't win a majority of the voting public--which is, after all, the goal of campaigning.

 

I'm a Christian and I'm theologically orthodox. Talking about my faith can be an exercise in line drawing: I'm not Catholic, not baptist, not Pentecostal, etc. I can talk about my beliefs in a way that pushes away everyone that doesn't agree with me. But that's not the purpose of faith.

 

Enter Anne Lamott. She writes about faith attractively. Instead of detailing how her tenets differ from everyone else's (though, doubtless, they do), she writes about how her faith enables her to live.

 

This kind of honesty would benefit the aspiring politician. Instead of telling me how your politics are different from everyone else's, tell me how do your ideals enable our lives. It is possible to explain your qualifications without outlining everyone else's failures.