Left Right Left! : Politically Marching Full Circle Via Reading Karl Barth

Left Right Left! : Politically Marching Full Circle Via Reading Karl Barth

In the previous post I wrote about why we need to give each other slack about our opposing political beliefs (if indeed, they are theologically informed). To illustrate this further and perhaps shed some light on how left wing Christians can woo their right wing friends and relatives, I wanted to share my own journey of moving right to left (after already moving left to right!).

When I became a Christian, I  essentially was the stereotype of a progressive Christian, meaning that I already had pre-existing left wing political views and spread these over with a spiritual icing of, to quote The Big Lebowski, “The Jesus.” It was a natural fit, but I never put it to the test biblically. As I became more Christian in my thinking, I also became more of an American evangelical. “The Bye-ble” was my new lens. And the people I stumbled upon who took the Bible seriously were Reformed theologically. So, all sorts of doctrines and assumptions were dropped, and a whole set of new ones were picked up. It wasn’t until grad school that I met seriously committed and thoughtful Christians that didn’t think the way I did, and I discovered that being Reformed and being Christian weren’t necessarily synonymous. It was one way among others the Church had systematically unraveled what being a Christian was. But for me, it was the most biblically honest way of making sense of most doctrines.

And this theology eventually had a profound effect on my politics and ethics. Within 10 years or so, I went from as far Left as one could be to as far Right as one could be. And all because I was trying to be as faithful to “true Christianity” as I could be. The Trump effect also let my ragey white male self out of its cage and it felt liberating. I was like a walking Talking Heads song (“ and you may find yourself..being a total nazi asshole..and you may find yourself...”).

And then came a little beam of light into my world that obliterated most everything I had built over the years - his name is Karl Barth. I had heard of Karl Barth before. His name is chucked around in conservative circles as yet another delusional liberal hellbent on destroying “THE faith.” So, needless to say, I avoided him. But in my studying on my doctrine of hell, I slowly moved from the Traditional view to the conditional immortality view, and was doing some work trying to wrap my head around the universalist view. Could it be true? The more I researched and read, I became more convinced. And in my reading, Karl Barth’s name kept popping up. So much that I found it annoying and had to research him for myself. 

In approaching Barth I was confronted with how Christocentric his theology was, and unfortunately how NOT Christocentric my own was. His arguments were powerful (as were Greg Boyd’s, who I was also reading). In a nutshell, Jesus is the Revelation of God, not the Bible, or whatever else we build our theologies on. Jesus is how God wants us to see him. And I remembered that Jesus from way back when I first became a Christian. And when your doctrine of God changes from a micromanaging authoritarian to a loving self sacrificing God, major dominos start to fall. 

I’m still in the progress of adjusting. Once again, I’m recalibration my politics in light of several doctrinal shifts within my Christianity. And I’m finding myself aligned with much of what the Left adheres to. Now, I can just hear several Prog Christians say, “Duh! I could of told you that!” And you did. Many many times! But my doctrinal glasses I was wearing literally made you look like a clown. It was only through doing the intellectual work myself that I was able to come to the same conclusions.

All this said, I think the best vehicle for bringing intellectually rigorous conservative Christians around to progressive politics (or at least considering them!) in light of the Christian tradition is challenging their doctrine of God. Who does God say that He is? How does God say what “He” is? If Barth, Boyd, and other Christocentric theologians are correct, then the politics that flows from these doctrines will also look like Jesus. I am still processing what that means, and am deeply, deeply in love.