Ruach MeMalelah

Mutually Exclusive

So, I'm not American. I won't be voting in either the Primaries or the elections. Thank God! I'm also not extremely political by nature, nor am I usually extremely interested in politics. But... it all does come up in my work, on the Internet, in conversation. So, well, something bothered me in the recent YouTube debate last Wednesday night. Not that I watched it. No, I just had to watch a whole bunch of commentary on it for my work. So, what bothered me was this: in a country - one of the only countries in the world - where there is ostensibly a separation between Church and State, where that Separation is of ultimate importance, and was of ultimate importance to those who established it, where diversity is the name of the game, how come people were asking the presidential candidates questions about how they view the Bible, or what Jesus would think about this or that? Why is it important if Mitt Romney is a Mormon (though I'm now fairly certain that he won't be the next President, and very likely, he won't ever be President at all)? You know, I thought that of all the candidates, Romney had a good chance of making it to the top (not that I support any specific candidate, not being American after all). Maybe not in this election, but perhaps somewhere down the road. But, now, no way. Now that I know he's a Mormon, I know that the American public will never vote him into office...

But, I digress. And as witty as that comeback was - was it Huckabee who said it - "Jesus was smart enough never to run for public office, that's what Jesus would do!" well, still, who really cares? What political difference does it make what Jesus would say about Capital Punishment? I'm not naive enough to think that people can all be like my University History professor who was so compartmentalized that God was not allowed in his classroom, and yet he was on the ecumenical council of his Church. In fact, I don't think that it's healthy in any way to be like that - emotionally, spiritually, politically. So, yes, religion probably does factor into where on the political spectrum any given candidate stands on any given issue - be it abortion, Capital Punishment, immigration (?), but to word it that way seemed extremely dangerous to me in a liberal country like America. Does it matter if any candidate takes the Bible literally? How would that fact affect anything on his or her platform? Is Jesus running in this election? No. Then who really cares what he would do or say about anything? Nobody knows anyway, and so it's all up to anybody's interpretation. Of course, my history professor would say that anything anyone says about Jesus is up to anybody's interpretation, but that's neither here nor there, and I'm just rambling now.

As I started out by saying, I'm not American, I'm not voting, and this election doesn't affect me too much one way or the other. I live in Israel, and in my opinion, one American President is pretty much the same as the next. Everyone who tries or wants to do anything in my corner of the world probably has some agenda of their own, whether it's Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani or Barack Obama. Perhaps one would have a "better" or "more friendly" agenda than another, but in all, they're all the same. They don't have my interests in mind, and I'm not really interested in what they do have in mind. So, yeah, this election doesn't really affect me much more than any other non-American who doesn't live or want to live in the US, apart from members of my family who do live there. What bothers me is a matter of principle, I suppose. If Church and State are mutually exclusive, well then, don't mention one in the context of the other. Period.

posted by SS @ 11:31 PM