God is Love
A necessary reminder that politics is wretched
Dear Substack Reader,
As always, I trust and pray you’re doing well. I’m not sure about you, but I can say about myself that I often let the weight of the world get the best of me. My Hillsdale College students are so excellent and so engaged that I can’t but help feel optimistic about the future during the fall and spring semesters of the academic year.
When I’m out of the classroom, though, I let the world depress me.
Recently, I’ve been deeply worried about the future of our American republic. Having spent a considerable amount of my adult life studying the subject, I can safely say that the Founding generation wanted to restrict the political realm more than leaven it. The entirety of the founding—from our duty to overthrow governments in the Declaration to our praise of associationalism in the Northwest Ordinance, Article II—was meant to give us a free society, a society free from the interference of the political realm.
Since the Progressive period, though, we have seen the rise of the administrative state—in particular through the power of the presidency. Progressive President Theodore Roosevelt was quite blatant about this wishes—all power, especially the sovereignty of the people, should reside in the executive branch. This, of course, was diametrically opposed to Madison who said that, by necessity, all power in a republic should reside in a legislature. Let’s just say that I take Madison’s, not Roosevelt’s side, on this. Yet, our Congress is almost utterly impotent.
It would be folly not to recognize that Demos, Mars, and Leviathan have become the new gods in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries.
Most recently, I was utterly dismayed by the Graham Platner debacle. To me—and I don’t think I’m wrong about this—the whole thing, nominating an openly declared Nazi, for the Seante—strikes me as the most cynical move, a realization that politics is nothing more than the vulgar grab for power. No ethics, no morality, no goodness—just pure and raw power, the fist in the glove, the boot upon our throat.
I already hated politics and the political realm before this summer, but I hate it even more now.
This leads me to Saint Augustine. Augustine, you’ll remember, tells us that while we are citizens of the City of God, itself in the heavenly realm, we are still called to do good in the City of Man, to call out those who would be fellow pilgrims. As such, I don’t feel I can abandon this world, however much the Benedicines might inspire me, too. We are called to leaven, even this passing world.
Still, rather than politics, I remember that my real faith is in Christ as Lord and King of the Universe. And, I’m so drawn to the words of St. John (1 John 4):
7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.8Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
13By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19We love because he first loved us. 20If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannota love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
So, I’m not ready to reject the world, but I would say this: do not make a god of politics or a religion of the political sphere. Rather, love your neighbor as your self. Trust not government, but friends, family, children, spouses, churches, small businesses, neighborhoods, and schools.
Yours, faithfully, Brad
"It would be folly not to recognize that Demos, Mars, and Leviathan have become the new gods in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries."
And Narcissus is its sole mascot.
Poor Bacchus, too often we blamed him for our troubles.
I seem to remember the head of your College say that politics is "justice talking". Should we give up on justice? The hope of what you're describing, I believe, is small-government and its flip side, self-determination. But these ideals have been in retreat and the shadow of a national and perhaps international monstrosity grows over us. And that is certainly depressing.