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.
U.S. Christians have been seduced by political candidates who overturned Roe v. Wade in exchange for their support of the Republican MAGA ticket. Branding MAGA as Christian and non-MAGA as secular blinds Christians to the inherent weakness of a politicized faith system — they have traded other key faith elements to secure one favored faith element. As Satan tempted Jesus, “All this I will give you, if you will kneel and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). The emergence of “Dominion Theology” has radicalized Christians to embrace political power and might to secure the Christian ticket in this world. The problem is that this is counter to Christ’s own teaching that if “one wants to become Great, he must be the servant of all” (Mark 10:43-45).
“I believe in the Right to Life!,” boasts the man who voted a straight “Pro-Life” ticket. “But I can’t get on board this “free childcare and healthcare for single mothers. That’s Socialism! Our Right to Life gives the mother two weeks of disposable diapers and baby food, which is the Christian thing to do. It’s not our job to find the mother housing or childcare while she works. She made her choice and has to live with it.” A quantum Right to Life ticket would be kept in equilibrium by the Right to Childhood, the Right to Housing, the Right Over My Own Body, the Right to Education, and the Right to Healthcare.
Q: “Pastor Jim, why that is silly and impossible. How could you have a system that provides all these things?”
A: “These things are impossible with us but all things are possible with God. Consider the disastrous extremes of Right to Life, with women dying slowing in hospital parking lots in an attempt to secure a medical abortion for a dead fetus. Or, the teenager trapped in perpetual cycle of poverty, with no access to contraception, healthcare, or daycare. We need the balanced interplay of the other parties to temper the extremes of our own party and its inherent prejudices.”
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. Dietrich Bonhoeffer captured the quantum nature of the church in his quote borrowed below:
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 “Quantum Cardinal” Kurt Koch
Catholic Cardinal Kurt Koch rejected the extreme position of both the traditionalists and the progressives in favor the the tension of the balanced. See this press release:
Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, President of the Dicastery Promoting Christian Unity.
I asked Gemini AI to create a quantum image for the two sayings of Jesus, “You are the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13) and “My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36)-
The Superposition of Faith and Works, Of Progressive and Traditional
The image captures that believers are both in the world but not of it, in divine tension. The AI’s own misses reflect the noisy process as our work continues, misses the ideal, and starts again. The Christian is both “salt of the earth” and “not of this world,” at the same time, held in balance by God’s quantum grace.
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.
The Paradox Ring of Power
Imagine two politicians walking opposite directions, each on a far side of the planet. Both walk faster than the speed of light on a sidewalk suspended like Saturn’s ring. Around and around the politicians whirl, each blaming and accusing the of walking and leading the other the wrong direction. Some proposed offering a reward if the “wrong-way” politician was captured. Each used telephoto X-ray cameras to capture proof that the other was wrong and should be shunned at all costs. One day a child pointed out that, “You blamed the other for moving the wrong direction, but you are walking on the same path and direction, but on opposite sides. Without that direction you couldn’t go your direction.” Without the perspective of the other, the circle would never be completed. Traveling faster than light, both politicians would be perceived in a state of occupying the same space at the same time. So it is with quantum politics; we have met the extremists and the extremists is us. The opposing party is with us on the same path of humanity and a future U.S.
The Path Forward: More Variety, Less Variation
W. Edwards Deming, the man who taught the Japanese about quality improvement, warned about variation while encouraging variety as the path to improvement. ( See https://demingalliance.org/resources/articles/understanding-variation-the-springboard-for-process-improvement). Variation are those forces that destabilize a business or a nation so you don’t know what will happen if you show up at work, if you have a job. Fear and chaos waft through the air at a system of variation like the odors of an outhouse. In contrast, variety is the “spice of life,” meaning something new and wonderful is brewing in the kitchen. An enlightened “Republicrat,” who sees the value of variety between different parties and the danger of extreme variation may blaze the path forward for the political system of the U.S.
Pastor Jim
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