In Matthew 22, the Lord Jesus lambasted the liberals of His day, the  Sadducees.  One chapter later, he let the conservatives–the Pharisees–have it good (Matthew 23).  In between, He wedged in a teaching to make the point that “Jesus is Lord” (22:41-45).

Neither the liberals nor the conservatives impressed Him much.

When I was a kid–Harry Truman was president–“liberal” was an honorable term, and Truman and others gladly owned it. These days, at least in my neighborhood, it’s a putdown, something you’d not want to be caught dead being.

Likewise, almost everyone I know–that is, in my circle–claims to hold membership in that most august of clubs, The Conservatives.  Never mind that most never define it and I suspect some have no clue what they mean.  But it’s the term held in high esteem among Southern Baptists (my group).

A little sane thinking about these words is in order, if I may be permitted.

Our family has a story which illustrates an important point about the two groups….

When I was maybe 9 years old, Mom was critically ill in the Beckley, West Virginia, hospital, and Dad was looking after the 6 of us children who ranged in ages from 14 down to 5.  How he managed that I don’t recall, but he was working full shifts in the coal mine and all of us except Charlie were in school each day.

One Saturday morning, Dad walked off the hill to the company store and bought groceries for the week. Then, he and our second-oldest brother Glenn went to the hospital to see Mom. This involved walking a mile to the highway, waiting for the bus, riding the six miles into town, staying an hour or two, and then returning.

I did what little boys did on Saturday mornings in those, I imagine, and played cowboy-and-Indians with my friends. When Dad returned, the report on Mom was good but he was upset about something.

During his absence, someone had taken the dozen bananas he had purchased at the store that morning. They were nowhere to be found, and he was as angry as I’d ever seen him.

To this day, I have no excuse for what he did next.

Dad lined up the five of us: Ron, 14, Patricia, 11, Joe, 9, Carolyn, 7, and Charlie, 5.  “Someone ate those bananas and I want to know who!”

For most of us–four to be exact–that was the first we’d heard of there even being bananas in the house.

We each protested our innocence.

Dad said, “If someone does not confess to it, I’m whipping all of you.”

At that, the little ones began crying. Dad’s whippings, employing as a deadly weapon his miner’s belt–three inches wide and a half-inch thick–were experiences of horror never to be forgotten.

No one owned up to the misdeed, and he whipped us all.  I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say he would have been arrested in later years.

As I say, I do not understand it.  More about that later.

We were twenty years or more finding out who took the bananas.

The point: My dad, Carl J. McKeever, was a liberal when it came to meting out punishment, but he employed a conservative philosophy. That is to say, a conservative would rather punish several innocent people than let one guilty person go free.  A liberal, on the other hand, would prefer allowing several guilty to go free than to punish one innocent person.

In this matter at least, I side with the liberals.

“Liberal” and “conservative” are terms we throw around in this culture so profusely and  indiscriminately, one would think everyone knows what they mean. They do not. Or to be precise, they mean different things by them.

News anchor Diane Sawyer was speaking at a Chamber of Commerce banquet I attended. She described a sure-fire way of telling a conservative from a liberal.

“A man is drowning a hundred yards offshore.  A conservative throws him 50 yards of rope because it’s good for him to provide part of the effort for his own rescue.  A liberal, on the other hand, throws him a hundred yards of rope, then turns loose of his end to call a news conference and say ‘look what I did.'”

In Baptist life, we speak of fundamentalists, conservatives, moderates, liberals, and the occasional radical, but without defining them.  I expect every speaker has his own understanding of what they mean, but whether the audiences do or not is another matter.

What bothers me is preachers who throw the terms around wildly and irresponsibly.

Anyone who does not accept their interpretation of a Scripture passage is a liberal and thus an unbeliever, and we all know what happens to them.

Shame on them for doing this to their people.

I once heard Conservative Baptist evangelist Bailey Smith say, “There’s not a moderate bone in my body.” And yet, the man was slim and seemed healthy, which made me think he surely ate moderately and must have exercised moderately.

Isn’t there a scripture that says, “Let all things be done in moderation”?  (Would that be Philippians 4:5? Modern translations make it “graciousness” and “forbearing spirit.”)

Seminary professor Ray Frank Robbins used to remind his classes that “words do not have meanings; words have usages.”  And those usages are always in a state of flux, changing even as we speak.

If you and I use the same word but in different ways, we fail to communicate.

Most Southern Baptists want to be called Conservative.  And compared to the population at large, perhaps we are. It occurs to me that this label is similar to the way the United States of America is mostly Western (starting with Ohio of all places being referred to as “mid-west”).  It’s a convenient handle, but not very helpful.

When asked if we are liberal or conservative, the proper answer should be, “Compared to what?”  That question is like saying, “Are you right or left?”

Left or right of what?

Consider this a call for responsible use of these labels, whether claimed for ourselves or pinned on others.  Consider this a call for integrity in speech and writings.  Consider it a call for Christlikeness and care in our speech.

“Let the words of my mouth…be acceptable to Thee, O Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

Postscript:

In later years, our oldest brother Ronnie admitted to taking the bananas. He and a friend had come into the house, discovered the fruit on the fridge, and taken one each. The bananas were not large, so they ate another. Before long, all 12 were gone.  The boys buried the peelings. Ron’s plan originally had been to confess, but once he saw how angry Pop was, he changed his mind. Better to spread the punishment out over five than take it all on himself, he decided.  (Ron became a Baptist preacher, if that tells you anything. Smiley face goes here.)  Oh, and Ron is a die-hard Conservative.