Emerging Urban Conservative

Part 1 of an occasional series...

This morning I was reminded why I am a conflicted voter.

We got up at 6:45 to get our kids off to school. Now, school is 2 miles away and starts at 8:00, so some of you may be asking why we get up so early to start the process, but for those of you who have kids, you understand.

So every day we have breakfast with our four kids at 7 am. Our kids have never known anything else - it's normal for them.

But for many, many kids in the city (and increasingly in other places) having breakfast with your parents is anything but normal.

This is the source of my conflicted politics. Let me explain, using the Breakfast example.

Many people assert, and I would agree, that school is the place you go for education. Not for parenting, not for essential life skills, not for self-esteem or counseling, and not for breakfast. Back in the day, schools taught kids math and history and science and reading, and many kids brought their own lunches in cool metal lunch boxes with pictures of Speed Racer or some other hero (remember them?). Other kids got hot lunch that their parents paid for - because after all, that is what parents do right? They provide for their kids. So breakfast happened at home, courtesy of mom and dad.

But the reality for lots of kids is parents who do not or cannot provide. There are many reasons for this:

In some cases, both parents have to work in order to stay afloat, and leave home very early. Breakfast is nearly impossible to pull off.

Too many kids grow up with single moms, for a variety of reasons. Breakfast at home becomes a luxury.

Many more kids, like in my wife's old school, have parents who are still kids themselves, or absent, or drug-addicted, or completely broken in some way. The caregivers range from babysitters to Grandma or some other relative to friends of the family to nobody. Really.

Most of this mess is the result of someone's sin. From greedy corporate executives to generations of sinful choices regarding sex, drugs and alcohol, other people's sinful choices cave in on these children and rob them of normality.

Some of the mess is simply a result of difficult circumstances. Either way, it's the kids who pay.

So back to my politics...

My conservative, Republican side says that to saddle the schools with the responsibility to play a parental role is bad for a million reasons. It distracts from the mission of the school to educate, it absolves the irresponsible parent of responsibility, and it turns the government into something of a Big Brother... a Nanny. Those are all valid points, and one of the reasons I'm a Republican (albeit an uncomfortable one).

But the urban side of me recognizes that if the government, by means of the schools, does not feed these kids breakfast, they will not be fed.

We can pontificate all we want about how the church should be doing this and that, but at the moment it is not doing it, and kids need to eat today.

And I believe passionately that the Gospel breaks the chains of sin and irresponsibility and turns losers (like me) into functional people and great parents. I have seen it happen over and over again as people in the 'hood and elsewhere in the city get saved and experience the awesome sanctification of the Holy Spirit, and over time become highly functional people who give back to their communities and raise strong families. This is why I do what I do.

So I wish for a smaller, simpler government but recognize that current reality demands government intrusion in an ostensibly parental responsibility.

I wish for greater individual responsibility for sure, but recognize the reality that there is a corporate responsibility of a society for its needier members. I don't think there is a political party for those realities.

So I am an Emerging Urban Conservative

Conservative because I resonate with the essential tenets of political, social and fiscal conservatism: Small, effecient government with a limited role and great accountability to an educated electorate; taxation that allows essential governmental function without hindering businesses or placing an undue burden on taxpayers; and morality that places value on human life at all its stages and on the responsibility of the individual. I have a real theological problem with people trusting in government for everything. I do not believe it is biblically justifiable, especially for Christians who claim we must trust God.

Urban because the realities of the city cut to the heart of the human condition and cut through the political crap. You see the best and worst here, where the artificial glaze of suburbia is removed. It is in an urban environment that flawed ideology, whether left or right, gets exposed for what it is (even if it still clings to life, as Democratic nonsense does here in Chicago). Despite all my Republican convictions, the reality of the city shows me that life is too complicated for bootstrap ideology. There's a reason there are hardly any Republicans in Chicago!

Emerging because more and more people, especially Christians, are beginning to see that no political system solves all the problems or is substantially in line with biblical thought. There is a political ideology emerging among us that abandons old ideological and political loyalties and instead lives in a messy tension.

You should think about joining me!