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Politics = Hula Hoop

March 2, 2010 at 10:53 pm (depravity, politics)

Warning: This article is fairly political on the surface. If you feel like you can endure, try and see the Big Picture. Otherwise, feel free to change channels.

There is a game that team building seminars like to force their participants to play. It involves a group of people, lets say 4-10 or so, standing in a circle staring at each other awkwardly. In the middle of their circle is a hula hoop from Wal-Mart that cost about a dollar and some poor kid’s hand in Bangladesh who made it. Every one puts out their hands, pointing index fingers, arms at 90 degrees tucked into the waist. The moderator places the hula hoop on the top of everyone’s index finger in the circle and tells the group to lower the hula hoop without removing their fingers from the bottom of the hula hoop. Instantly the ring seems to levitate as every member of the group over compensates for each other and instead of lowering the hoop, it is raised above the group’s heads.

I am fortunate to have a job that allows me to read a book, write the occasional blog article draft or scan the news while waiting for employees to call and ask HR questions. On a daily basis I read CNN, Fox News, BBC, San Antonio Express News, etc. and I see how partisan this country can be. Being bipartisan is vogue, but nobody really wants to do it because it will sacrifice some benefit, most often reelection to a seat of power. We only claim bipartisanship because we want to seem tolerant and effective. I say we because the average citizen, myself included, is just as guilty of power mongering as the leaders in power. Nobody wants to give up their position, nobody really wants to sacrifice control in order to accomplish the task, unless it is the task they want done.

It’s not abnormal. I’m pretty confident it’s human nature, part of the inherent sin nature humans carry. The same nature that causes greed and pride and hate and wars. Everyone has an agenda to achieve, everybody wants a piece. The Bible calls it sin, some specify it as total depravity. It’s broken and doesn’t fix anything. The hula hoop keeps rising.

After several failed attempts, the group learns it needs to communicate with each other and gradually lower their hands, working together collectively so that no finger leaves the ring, yet the ring is lowered.

Will that ever happen with politics, or more specifically, with our leaders in power? Has it ever been achieved in the whole history of governance? I see war after war, tyrant after tyrant, revolution after revolution, and tyrant after tyrant. Again, it’s just part of human nature, but it hurts a whole lot of people in the process. I think part of the problem is that we have become conditioned to see governments as a functional savior. We expect so much from a bureaucratic process to provide any comfort we demand. People forgot how to work, forgot how to struggle. Now we struggle waiting for hand outs, for the people in charge to fix whatever problem we feel is most important at that time. Instead of collaboration, we have dependence.

I dont look at the problems with this country from a political stand point, not really. I see it as a fundamental issue of who is sovereign. We give sovereignty to whoever will help us; rights for security. Instead we have ignored the Moderator, the Giver, the Breath of Life. We focus on mountains and not on the One who can move the mountains. We dont communicate in community, we dont work with each other to build.

Governments aren’t Jesus and they will fail us. They will never have a perfect record. But Jesus is Jesus, the King of EVERYTHING, even you, whether you believe it or not. He is perfect and lived a perfect life so that we can live past the brokenness and the want. We have a hope that doesn’t disappoint in a future with the greatest and most valuable Being EVER. Our problems may not immediately be fixed, we probably wont ever be healthy and wealthy, but we’ll have the one thing that is supremely valuable.

We used to say In God We Trust but that’s a whole lot of BS. We dont trust in God any more and thats why we cant lower the hula hoop.