The vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival

I have been completely heartbroken by the horrifically negative turn the presidential campaign has taken this past week.

From political rallies that result in supporters shouting threats of violence against the opposition candidate.

• The irony is that these stump speeches seek to link Obama to domestic terrorists while prompting some in the crowds of Republican supporters to advocate domestic terrorism. Remember when terrorist in Iraq were big into beheadings? Now we have Republican rallies where such behavior is suggested by some people in the crowd.

To newspaper articles suggesting that Barak Obama is the anti-Christ.

• Ah ... remember when the anti-christ was ceasar, the Pope, the czar, Friedrich Nietzsche, and/or just a Jewish man? If all of these anti-christ predictions were wrong, what makes us so sure that some are correct in now identifying Obama as the anti-christ?
• If you dislike Obama, then come out and say exactly why you dislike Obama: his tax policy, his foreign policy, his gun policy, his human rights policy, his race, his ethnicity.
• Just be honest, but do not use my religion to vilify a person with whom you disagree. That has been done for the past 2000 years, and it has not gotten us anywhere good.

To local billboards spewing forth gutless (read: anonymous) racial stereotypes of Obama.

• If you are going to attack someone, at least have the courage to attach your name to it -- especially if you are going to use racial caricatures. If you can't own your message, then it makes your message suspect -- as if you know it is wrong and unsupportable.
• If your point isn't strong enough to stand on its own without racial stereotypes, then your point doesn't need to be made.

But as I was doing my daily Scripture reading this morning, I realized what really bothers me about the negative tone of the campaign: it goes directly against my understanding of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Galatians 5:13-23 (The Message)

"13-15It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don't use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that's how freedom grows. For everything we know about God's Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That's an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?

19-21It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: ... cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. "

Granted, the Apostle Paul is writing about freedom in Christ and he is trying to address divisions in the church in Galatia, but he is also outlining a way of life.

This life is to be marked by love of other and service of others in the name of God. In my understanding love and service does not include tearing other people down.

The warning here is that attacks lead to mutual destruction. Lives of selfishness lead to division and "the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival." Thus seems to be the state of our politics today. We can be for love and service or we can be for tearing ourselves down by seeking to destroy others.

As a Christian I find personal attacks unsupportable.

Every time I hear a candidate (a surrogate or anyone else for that matter) attack someone else, it diminishes the attacker in my eyes. Instead of being about the policies and politics of self-dimunization, can we not be about the policies and politics of love and service?