All Christians know about what is called the Golden Rule, "Do to others as you would have them do to you", but how liberal and conservative Christians end up reading it so differently, and how that translates both theologically and politically is quite significant in meaning.
Both believe in the general principal of treating others the way you want to be treated. That much isn't missed by either. The difference is how each seem to interpret the context of the rule's application.
Conservatives, I believe, see the rule is largely practical. Following it will generally result in others treating you better than if you didn't follow it. It's what some would call a win-win. If you treat others well they will tend to return the favor, not always, but often enough for it to just make good sense as a regular practice.
Liberals on the other hand believe the rule is largely moral. You treat others the way you want yourself to be treated because it's the right thing to do. There's no guarantee or even likelihood the favor will be returned, but good people just do it.
How these two different perspectives of the Golden Rule plays out is then perhaps counter-intuitive, but very much logical.
The Counter-intuitive Outcome
The Conservative follows the Golden Rule reflexively without thinking, while the Liberal follows it with greater hesitation. Since the conservative believes there's a personal benefit to following it there is seldom if ever a question about following it, but since the Liberal believes it's pretty much a moral decision they think about it as a test of their character and so it's conceivable they may not follow it in a certain instance, but when they do they tend to pat themselves on the back or say, "I was good".
Now before my fellow conservatives jump to the conclusion our perspective is superior since we will be "good" almost without hesitation, consider what the liberal perspective on this difference is. Liberals could claim their heart is more sincere and selfless in this since they have no expectation of reward for being "good". They also will insist they're the more rational and realistic.
How This Tends To Translate Into Politics
Liberal Christians distrust human nature more than conservative Christians so much that they're inclined to favor government control over individual liberty, while Conservatives are so confident that people left to their own devices will tend to do good because it benefits them, that they have a hard time accepting government controls as justified.
Liberals tend to see the decision to do good as the result of high personal character and enlightenment, and conservatives tend to see it as a rational response to an environment where people being good to each other tend to prosper. These different ways of seeing "good" and its consequences leads to very different politics.
If you believe good behavior derives from enlightenment then you're open to government enforced good behavior. After all, the average person cannot be expected to have the kind of superior moral character and/or spiritual enlightenment necessary to make these decisions on their own. And further, if someone compelled to do good becomes so enlightened they should have no problem with having been forced, since it would have been their decision anyway if they knew then what they know now.
If on the other hand you believe most people tend to act rationally and rational people will see enough personal benefit to good behavior that they will tend to do what is good, then you will also tend to see government enforced good behavior as generally unnecessary, demeaning, oppressive, and arrogant. And further, seeing it as unnecessary, you will see the potential harm of government possibly getting things wrong as outweighing the likely possible good.
Conclusion
I summarize this thought exercise as follows -- the reader should keep in mind I am a conservative --. The modern American conservative sees all things in life as connected and that means to be rational one must have the humility to not look down on anybody, and perhaps more importantly one must see doing good as having a practical reward.
Humility and balanced rationality are what separates conservatives from liberals.
The left tend to see those who disagree with them as inferior in some way, most commonly in the area of enlightenment. The modern American liberal sees a disconnect between the way things ought to be and the way they would naturally trend without the the intervention of the enlightened. They see no need for balance in their reasoning since they see themselves as fixing a broken world.
A Call To Action For Christians (The Church Universal)
Now it's not that conservative Christians fail to see the world as fallen, it's that they have the humility to accept that it is Christ and not them who will fix it.
The liberal Christian may argue that we are Christ in this world and we should thus share in His purpose to redeem it, and the conservative view is little more than an excuse not to act. The liberal argument however reveals its own shortsightedness. It does this in three areas primarily.
1. Christ calls us to do many things in His name, but hubris isn't one of them. If human effort, even that aided by Christ's inspirational enlightenment, was capable of redeeming this world He would not have had to die on the cross.
Justifying the use of governmental power to force people to act in "good" ways by saying it's what Christ would want us to do, well perhaps that's just nonsense, but I'd say it's more like a hubris born of poorly balanced reasoning. This shows in the very use of the phrase, "we are Christ in the world". No, Christ is Christ in the world. We should be His humble followers, not His replacements. If He needs us to be Him, our religion has a problem much bigger than a lack of active members.
2. The liberal argument is very unkind in its assumption that conservatives believe in sitting around and waiting for Christ to fix everything. While there are lazy Christians who can't seem to do much more than attend Church and accept the label, their problem isn't theology or philosophy. They may use a false humility of the sort that says, "who am I that I can make any difference?", but that's not because they're really humble, certainly not because they're theology is conservative.
There are many lazy ones who also use liberal sounding theological reasons for their laziness as well, like, "the church is full of hypocrites".
There are even what I call pseudo atheists who are really just people who's core beliefs are Christian but are too lazy to wrestle with the meanings and would rather not face their unfinished intellectual work on a regular basis, so they declare themselves to be atheist.
There seems to be no theological position of any popularity that isn't used by someone somewhere to justify laziness.
My point being that we don't need to become little Christ's looking down on the world to serve the real Christ in it, and suggesting that anyone who doesn't must be amongst the lazy is unjustly insulting, and thus not a Christian argument. We can and should serve Him with humility and respect for other individuals.
3. The logical ends of this "we are Christ in the world" theology is that we stop acting as persuaders and become more like dictators, authoritarians, patronizing. This is clearly evident in the results, yes even the very results our liberal Christian brothers and sisters are more than happy to point at and claim.
Government grows and grows to add to and sustain programs designed to be everyone's salvation from misery, and it tells us more and more what we must and must not do for our own sakes and that of others. Even as we all see how impersonal and dehumanizing many of these programs, laws, and regulations become, even as we see how they undermine individuals seeking even the slightest sort of self-actualization, they see all of this as just acceptable collateral damage.
The Christian Church as a whole keeps losing more and more ground in a nation, yes in a world, filled more and more with people who want to be treated and seen as individuals, and we lose ground because we have become trapped in the misconception that when Christ told us to take our message to the nations he some how meant we were supposed to convert their governments and their government policies and essentially just skip over the actual individuals who live there, or that they would just come along.
In a world where more and more people are losing their faith in their rulers, liberal Christians seem to think it good policy to work out the Gospel from the top of government down to the people. It is little wonder that fewer and fewer people associate themselves with the Christian message.
So am I saying liberal Christian teachings are to blame for our current failure to connect with people? Not in the sense that they are to blame alone.
Who amongst us is earnestly reaching out to the individual? There should be more. The lonely unreached poor of John Wesley's time are now embodied by the lonely people who sit alone and use web-based media for most of their socialization.
Who are today's Methodists who are reaching out to these people? If Paul were walking the Earth today instead of when he did, his dream in Troas would not have been of a Greek, but a geek.
In today's world, more and more people are waiting for the next Paul the Apostle or John Wesley to bring the gospel to them, and not just in word but in deeds, and to do this the message must be one aimed at individuals, not collectives. You know what I'm talking about, like Christ's message was and is?
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