A View Inside the Box of Quantum Politics
In the rules of quantum mechanics, a particle can exist in multiple states at the same time … until it is measured. Erwin Schrödinger’s(1935) thought experiment described a cat inside an opaque box, sealed with a radioactive flask of poison and a Geiger counter. Until the box is opened and the cat is observed, the cat is both alive and dead. The act of prying open the box and peering inside marks the collapse of the superimposed state.
Similarly, U.S. political parties represent simultaneous multiple states of justice, mercy, and grace. The parties can also be represented as possessing qualities of male, female and neutral gender platforms. Like quantum computing, the U.S. political process generates “noise” — a lot of noise as political platforms are spun up and down. Like quantum computing, the solution for this political noise is an error checking process that is independent and outside of the political box itself. A survey of St. Paul’s writings demonstrates the best influence of the cat in the political box is to resist the temptation to pry open the box itself and tamper with the outcome, collapsing the quantum state into a lopsided and imbalanced state.
It wouldn’t be a stretch to describe the Republicans as the party of justice, the Democrats as mercy. Or, the Republicans represent the party of Alpha Males, the Democrats as Mother Earthers, and the Independents as neutral, wavering between the parties, like a free radical awaiting capture. For simplicity, we will use Republican and Democrat for our discussion.
A Quantum Balanced System
In quantum politics, the Republicans and Democrats remain each in a simultaneous state of balance, like male complements female. Reasonably, the Republican’s manifest more of a masculine dominance while the Democrats gravitate toward the feminine state. The combined state of the two parties together results in one noisy simultaneous equilibrium of masculine/feminine and justice/mercy/grace. An example of equilibrium- DACA recipient children of undocumented immigrants face calls for deportation by the Republicans for justice while Democrats call for mercy and path to citizenship. Equilibrium results in a “noisy” state in which DACA youth live suspended between deportation and citizenship, allowed to work and remain in the U.S. This waxing and waining process of harmonization is captured in the Chinese philosophy of Yinyang — “Yin in its highest form is freezing while yang in its highest form is boiling.“ Yinyang represents “the dynamic balance of all things.”
The United States became great not because of Christian involvement with politics, rather Christians influencing culture apart from politics. Religious tampering destabilizes the quantum yinyang suspended state and results in a lopsided manifestation of masculine combativeness at the expense of the feminine state of nurture. As the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13), the function of Christians in culture is to prevent decay by truth-affirming and error checking without prying open Schrödinger’s box and corrupting the outcome.
The limiting nature of power and money in political systems forces a political party’s member to adhere to a limited agenda of that party’s platform, at the expense of the valid items slated on the other party’s platform. Christians are tempted to go “all in” on what they perceive as a lesser of two evils and declare one political party as inherently Christian while damning the other party. In contrast, the Apostle Paul reminds us that a Christian’s exclusive allegiance to a party has been preempted by “one body, one faith, and one baptism” (Ephesians 4:5).
The sister system to quantum politics is Adam Smith’s invisible hand in ”quantum economics.” By respecting the balances of a stable economic system, the system will find its own equilibrium. The U.S. stock market, for example, is suspended in the balanced quantum state of both gain and loss. However, by tampering with the “invisible hand” by tax or by tariff, the invisible hand is forced to write a manuscript it did not author, resulting in short sighted gains at the expense of long -term progress.
Like a three legged stool, the biblical system of love, justice and mercy forms the Christian basis of U.S. society. Like a tariff’s “pay to play” model, Christians who “pay to play” to prop up their chosen “Christian Party” will find they have sacrificed one or more legs of the stool for a political platform. The result is justice without mercy or mercy without justice.
St. Paul in I Corinthians 13 said, “When one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not mere human beings? … So then, no more boasting about human leaders! All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”
The Political Path Forward
The Schrödinger temptation is to pry open the box in an attempt to save the cat. Jesus did not call his church to pry open and destabilize government by christening a political party as Christian at the expense of labeling the other party as unChristian. The truth affirming, error checking role of believers as salt and light in the community provides stabilization that prevents a political party from moving from imbalance to fanaticism. Dr. Guy Greenfield, former Professor of Ethics at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, described this process as “the heresy of the extremes and the orthodoxy of the balanced.”
The temptation of Christ was for him to “do something right now”! Throw yourself off the Temple and show everyone that you are a real man … the guy in charge! Throw the Romans out of Jerusalem and become the Alpha Messiah! Instead, Jesus wept and prayed over Jerusalem in Matthew 23, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
– Pastor Jim
As in quantum economics, one can participate in insider trading and order Government to improve conditions that guarantee profit; however, the outcomes deteriorate in correlation with the tampering. So it is with Christians who try to force the manifestation of God’s kingdom on earth.
Q: “Jim, are you asking us to do nothing and sit back as Satan’s dark forces capture the US?”
A: St. Paul reminds us, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). As we said, worldly political parties are limited by money and power regarding what policies they can support on their platform. In order to keep that party from moving into imbalance and even fanaticism, it takes the other parties to harmonize balance.
Q: “So, are you saying no Christian should commit to a political party?”
A: A declaration of party affiliation should be safeguarded with an allegiance only to Jesus Christ and a humility that we need the other parties to bring the noisy harmony needed for a balanced path forward.
Salt: Truth Affirming Error Checking
As the particle spin of quantum computing creates nothing short of an AI hallucination, so does an imbalanced political party create its own climate of disinformation and distrust. The church’s response as salt and light is to form a balanced dialogue with the prevailing political parties. This week I watched a national politician’s show on a Christian television network. The presumption was that this politician and his party were the “Christian party” and that the other parties were of the devil. He hosted a fellow national politician as they castigated a politician and his family, members of the opposing party.
While the politician generates appearance that he is “doing something for God and fighting the devil,” in truth he is destabilizing his own political process down a path of self-deception fueled by money and power rather than the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Pastor Jim
