On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned about Serving the Common Good

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A helpful comprehensive review of life in America and how to bring health and wholeness to individual, community and national life. After reading I am ready to seek and pursue the common good.

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¿Don¿t go right; don¿t go left; go deeper.¿ Wonderful advice, bu

“Don’t go right; don’t go left; go deeper.” Wonderful advice, but the author doesn’t follow it himself. Wallis went left years before most of us were even born, but he continues to wear (awkwardly) the tag “evangelical,” probably the worst case of false advertising in Christendom. He also tries to pass himself off as the Wise One who sees the errors of both liberals and conservatives and (like every charlatan) claims he has found the More Excellent Way, so we can sigh with relief at him guiding us into the non-ideological REAL Christianity, the kind Jesus himself would practice if he walked the earth today. Wallis has been promising gullible readers his More Excellent Way for 50 years, and he never provides it, never. It’s pure liberalism, and nothing in the Wallis platform differs in the slightest from the Democratic party platform (except that he does claim to be pro-life, but generally avoids that ticklish issue). One of the other reviews states that “Wallis is neither liberal nor conservative.” Oh, please. He’s shamelessly liberal and bashes conservatives every time his mouth opens.

We discover that (as in all Wallis’s books) Jesus’ agenda looks suspiciously like Jim Wallis’s agenda (pure coincidence, of course), and that Jesus has a knack for using the latest liberal buzzwords like “inclusivity” and (the core idea of this book) “fairness.” Liberalism is not, of course, a system of thought, it is a collection of slogans, just words or phrases that easily fit on a bumper sticker and can be spoken and shouted ad nauseam, meaning that the liberal pundits could just as easily be a chorus of mynah birds trained to repeat the usual: “Inclusivity!” “Equality!” “Fairness!” Don’t think, don’t explain, just repeat, and the dimwits in the culture will get sucked in.

Who could object to “fairness”? No one. But the BIG question liberals never dream of asking is, fairness as defined by whom? (Well, THEM, of course.) In this book, “fairness” means accepting open borders, admitting illegal immigrants and accepting them, everything but people-movers to aid them in their illegal entry. Is that “fair” to the US citizens in Arizona and New Mexico who have their property trashed and who often live in fear? Or to US taxpayers coast to coast, who all pay for the massive cost of millions of people who should not be here, aided by a president who has made it clear that, for him, there is no border, and by a Congress in which both parties shy from the immigration issue because they are such craven cowards that they are cowed by fears of the media calling them “racist.” Jesus’s view of fairness (or, Wallis’s view, rather) is that US citizens don’t matter, “fair” only applies to people whose presence in the US begins with breaking the law. Ignoring the needs of US citizens and focusing all our compassion on illegals fits Wallis’s definition of the “common good,” one of his bumper-sticker clichés that shows up on every page. Keep saying the cliché, make the reader shut down his brain and just accept the pleasant-sounding phrase. Who would oppose “the common good”? I would – that is, I would define that far differently that Wallis would. As a Christian, I see myself under no divine mandate to encourage illegal immigration or any other crime. Wallis can tear down the walls of his home if he wishes to and put up a sign that signs “Homeless people welcome here.” He has no right to tell an entire country, or all the Christians in it, that they must do the same – and, incidentally, Wallis isn’t going to open up his home because he understands that being “welcoming” and “inclusive” doesn’t mean removing all boundaries. But remember, liberalism isn’t about being generous, it’s about forcing other people to be generous.

Let me save you the trouble of wading through this mucky swamp of liberal clichés: Being “on God’s side” and being guided by Jesus means: be a liberal, support open borders, accept that the immigration situation will remain as it is, or worsen, but God wants you to accept it and abet it. If you want to contribute to the “common good,” check the names on the ballot that have a “D” (as in “Democrat”) next to them. And when you talk, use the right words – “compassion,” “common good,” “inclusive,” “equality,” the usual list. This is the Gospel, according to St. James.

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