A few years ago, my political heroes disappeared.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t countless heroic people still engaged in politics, trying to draw good from a cruel and ugly world. There are. But politics is the game that shapes the society in which everyone else must live, including those who do not play it, cannot play it or refuse to play it.
When campaign season floods us with propaganda, all I can see are flawed human beings locked in endless conflict with other flawed human beings over who will be allowed to exercise power. And unfortunately, campaign season now seems to run continuously, with no end in sight.
Maybe partisan politics has always been this way at some level. Maybe it took me a lifetime of personal experience and reflection to recognize it as a carnal game of competing illusions.
That does not mean the illusions have no basis in truth. They often do. But an intensely partisan mindset distorts whatever truth it begins with and magnifies the fears it produces. Those fears are then used by headstrong people with oversized egos, people who convince themselves and others that they are heroes in shining armor, sent to protect us from the villains on the other side.
Meanwhile, the other side is doing the same thing in the opposite direction.
Many of history’s worst villains, and many of their most devoted followers, genuinely believed they were heroes.
Hero worship is always dangerous ground, whether your greatest hero is the person you see in the mirror or someone you have entrusted to face real or imagined villains in the political arena on your behalf.
In politics, the line between admiration and idolatry is easily blurred, and most people do not notice when they cross it. The deeper you drift into the political world of pretenders, the harder it is to return. You become surrounded by others who have already passed the point of no return, and they want you to stay with them.
In politics, there is always strength in numbers.
Since I have come to see politics as a mentally exhausting exercise in futility, one question keeps returning to me: Why must we keep playing?
I believe the answer can be found in our dualistic human nature and in the way human societies are organized around both adversarial and cooperative relationships. But that is another conversation for another time.
For now, suffice it to say that politics is often an ugly game, one in which manipulation and intimidation are the tools most often used by the few players who control many of the others.
But that is not the only way to play. And it is certainly not the best way to build a society that promotes liberty and justice for all.
I believe there is another way.
But it is not for the faint of heart.
It requires a foundation of counterintuitive faith. Its true heroes are usually the ones who receive the least recognition: those who offer themselves as living sacrifices to something greater than ego, tribe or victory.
Something that loves harmony.
Something that calms chaos.
Something that binds together rather than tears apart.
Something that compels us to resist our prideful tendency to justify ourselves by blaming, shaming and stigmatizing others.
That is the essence of my faith. And I know I am not alone, even though during the latter years of my political career, it often felt that way.
I had many reasons for leaving the political arena. But the chief reason was a growing desire to share what I had learned from the inside with those who have not crossed the line yet.
And of course, those who have crossed the line can come back anytime, once they recognize that true heroes in politics are few and far between, and that they usually do not look heroic at all.
They do not get many headlines.
They do not waste their time blaming the other team while ignoring the failures of their own.
They do not set fires.
They extinguish them.
Those who believe in this better way are the salt of the earth, sprinkled throughout our communities, doing what they can to change the taste of politics a little at a time.
But they are hard to find, especially if you are looking for a hero to come riding in on a white horse to satisfy your desire to destroy whatever bogeyman you fear most.
Those grandstanding pseudo-heroes do not care about serving anyone but themselves.
We do not need hero-leaders.
We need servant-leaders, modeled after the one who demonstrated true leadership by washing dirty feet.
Unfortunately, many people who profess the Christian faith seem to accept that standard of leadership in theory, but not in practice.
And the political climate reflects it.
