Empty (Theological and Ideological) Calories

The term empty calories refers to food that offers little or no nutritional value. The description of the term under the link from the Harvard Medical School website on the search engine results page added the following: “[Empty calories] can contribute to weight gain, chronic inflammation, and other health problems.”

Pretty much every health website you go to will give you tips on how to avoid empty calories. Most common among the suggestions is to avoid sugary drinks and pastries. Usually they also try to provide some “do’s” as well — eat your vegetables is a common refrain. The consensus is pretty clear — empty calories are not good for you.

We should apply the same reasoning to empty rhetorical calories too — empty theological, ideological and partisan rhetorical calories.

I think there are plenty of empty calories in our theological, ideological and partisan political rhetoric. Most of this rhetoric offers little or no theological or political value. Often the empty theological and ideological and partisan calories contribute to fear, chronic mistrust and dehumanization, and other societal health problems and really bad and destructive policies.

Just like empty food calories don’t fill us, the same can be said of empty theological, ideological and partisan calories. Sure, the rhetoric might look tasty from a cursory glance, but the rhetoric is simply not satisfying and certainly doesn’t last. We have to keep pumping ourselves with more empty rhetorical…