All Posts Tagged With: "identity"

It is said that President Calvin Coolidge’s wife wasn’t feeling well one Sunday and stayed home from church. When Silent Cal returned, she asked him what the minister had preached about.

“Sin.”

“What did he have to say about it?”

“He’s against it.”

A good position for a preacher, but some never get beyond it. A fellow student of mine in seminary was assigned a church before receiving any training in preaching, so on his first Sunday he took the “Old Mother Hubbard” approach (”First we have the word old, which reminds us of what is experienced and venerable. Next we come to mother. How we all love our sainted mothers. And she was named Hubbard, causing us to remember how important it is to have a name, an identity in life.” And so forth word by word through a text.) When he had finished greeting the congregation, the chairman of the pulpit committee informed the young man that the committee wanted a word with him. He thought, “Well, this is it. A one-Sunday pastorate.”

But the committee told him, “Preacher, for thirty years we’ve been told we’re sinners and that God is angry with us. Today you informed us that God did something about it and told us how we should respond. We want you to know that means a lot to us.”

The pastor of the church where I was a member in Santa Barbara used to warn us against the dangers of “identity by opposition.” Anyone can name people and social groups who are guilty of it, notably the Nazis, who united Germany as a people opposed to the Jewish race. Joseph Stalin’s character seemed to be founded on his paranoid obsession with ridding the Soviet Union of his personal enemies, and secondarily of the enemies of his country. One problem was that he had anyone with any power killed, and very nearly left himself without an officer corps. Thank goodness he failed to have General Zhukov executed.

Then there were those radio preachers a few decades back who felt they were empowered by God to oppose communism and say little else, and today some conservatives appear to be just as obsessed with putting an end to liberalism in all its manifestations. On the other hand there are those liberals whose identity seems to be based on eliminating traditional values from this country.

Not that it isn’t often necessary to unite a nation in opposition to some destructive force. Winston Churchill was highly successful in forming his people into a hardened defensive establishment against a Nazi takeover. But he achieved that on the basis of the belief that England possessed an identity that was well worth saving. There was a positive value fueling his opposition. The kingdom never founded its very identity on its opposition to anything.

I have also seen those one-issue voters for whom all other considerations are irrelevant. I have known some anti-abortionists who I fear would have voted for Saddam Hussein for president if he had opposed abortion, and against a resurrected Abraham Lincoln if he had been for it. A worthy cause, yes, but not one to form one’s entire identity around. Another group I have been fascinated to watch are the radical environmentalists, people who are willing to kill to keep any development from taking place in a given area, even when the developers propose to improve the place. Remember when California firefighters were prevented from having their planes scoop water from a lake because some tiny creatures in it were endangered, with the result that two men were burned to death? Do I detect the stench of hypocrisy in there somewhere?

A few decades ago Robert Ardrey, in The Social Contract, stated his belief that the most important achievement for a person is an identity, that this is more fundamental than even security and stimulation. The problem enters when a person has no positive belief or proposed course of action to take precedence over his or her opposition to something.