Religion and Politics

Lyrics:  Look for the silver lining/ when e’er a cloud appears in the blue/ Remember somewhere the sun is shining/ And so the right thing to do/ is make it shine for you.

We’ve all been told not to talk about religion and politics in social settings.  The subject matter is particularly volatile at this pre-election time.  And how do religion and politics fit into an essay on aging you ask?  Because a fundamental aspect and need of the elder population is spiritual, maybe it would help if we consider the current political situation from a spiritual perspective.

Jack Nicholson utters a memorable line in the film, As Good as it Gets.  His co-star, Helen Hunt, is at first annoyed by the obsessive-compulsive attentions of Nicholson’s character and finally asks him why he is so interested in her.  He answers, “Because you bring out the best in me.”  Think of your friends and family who bring out the best in you and leave you feeling good about yourself.  We all have a shadow side, a dark side, which we hide away from others or try to hide.  When our dark side surfaces we usually don’t feel good about ourselves although it has a lot to teach us.

In his book, A Different Drum, M. Scott Peck, M.D., looks at the works of James Fowler, a widely read scholar and writer on the subject of The Stages of Faith.  Peck, a Psychiatrist, gives each stage a name.  Stage 1: Chaotic, Antisocial.  the stage includes people who pretend to be loving and pious but are essentially manipulative, self-serving, and unprincipled.  It is essentially a stage of undeveloped spirituality.  Stage 2: Formal, Institutional, Fundamental.  These believers are uncomfortable with the “big mystery,” the unknown, and find security in religious dogma.  Stage 3: Skeptic, Individual.  This is the stage where people develop spiritually and where churches often lose out because rarely do they encourage doubting.  Stage 4: Mystic, Communal.  These people are not afraid of the mystery and even desire to enter into the mystery of uncertainty.

Donald Trump belongs in Stage 1.  “Being unprincipled there is nothing that govern them except their own will.  And since the will from moment to moment can go this way or that, there is a lack of integrity to their being.  They often end up, therefore, in jails or find themselves in another form of social difficulty.  Some, however, may be quite disciplined in the services of expediency and their own ambition and so may rise in positions of considerable prestige and power, even to become presidents or influential preachers.”

Does Donald Trump bring our the best in you?  Does he bring out the best in our culture or is that dark shadow growing larger and larger?

Is there a silver lining here?

Lyrics: A heart full of joy and gladness/ Will always banish sadness and strife/ So always look for the silver ling/ And try to find the sunny side of life.  Lyrics by B. G. DeSylva, music by Jerome Kern, 1920.