Tag Archives: Politics

Vote Early, Vote Often

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Praise report: Election season is almost over. I’m sure the next one will pick up steam quickly, but I’m ready for this one to go away.

In the meantime, I have some advice for us:

Vote early, vote often.

Of course, I don’t mean we should commit voter fraud. I’m not for cheating or fudging numbers or anything like that. What I’m advocating is that we live out our votes today, Tuesday, next month, and next year.

When we vote we are communicating what kind of world we want, what kind of world we believe in. Our votes declare what is important to us, but our votes are not restricted to the ballot box.

We vote every time we spend money. We vote when we post something online. We vote with the way we use our time. We vote in our daily conversations.

Our words, our wallets, our free time all tell far more about our worldview than our preferred political platforms.

So please, vote early, vote often.

Whatever issues motivate you to support a candidate or show up at the polls should be important to you beyond a Tuesday in November.

For example, do you vote for pro-life candidates? Live pro-life.

Are we doing anything to support pregnancy centers? Are we working to decrease the number of abortions sought? What are we doing to support single parents, poor parents, foster parents, orphans?

These are things that demonstrate a pro-life ethic and work to see it implemented. More than checking a box we should be volunteering, donating, mentoring, fostering, adopting, educating, and more. There are plenty of attitudes and actions we can participate in beyond November if we are truly pro-life people.

Do you think our country should be more welcoming to refugees?

Get involved with refugees already here. Walk alongside them, help them secure jobs and insurance, partner with resettlement organizations.

Think we should first support our homeless veterans? Get involved with people doing just that. Make it happen.

Do you vote for those who prefer diplomacy over war? Work for peace in your family and neighborhood and on Facebook today.

Do you think the uptick in racially or religiously motivated hate is a problem? You can vote for candidates who agree with you on paper and still not do much to help the problem.

Make friends across religious lines. Read and share stories of people not like you. Resist the urge to polarize and dehumanize. Have dinner with a political opposite.

For me it is easy to sit behind my computer or phone and list my opinions on the internet. This may be helpful in some (very rare) instances, but this isn’t the solution.

It is also fairly easy for most of us to show up at the local voting booth and check a box. This may be helpful in some cases, but, again, it’s not the solution to the problems we face.

Outlawing abortion tomorrow will not solve the issues surrounding unwanted pregnancies.

Welcoming every refugee in the world will not solve the problem of war, poverty, and complications that come with relocating to a new country.

Raising or lowering taxes, shifting spending, negotiating trade are all things worth having an opinion on but how are we spending our days?

I’m not saying we shouldn’t vote toward these ends. I’m saying we should do a lot more than vote on Tuesday. Voting is great but only scratches the surface of what is necessary.

What matters to you? Not what do you say matters – how do you actually live? How do you talk? Spend? Give? What do I do that shows where my values lie?

The life we live will be far more indicative of what matters most than all the ballots we ever cast. And I believe will have far greater impact.

The world changes more when we live and give and share and laugh than when we fill in a bubble for congresspeople and presidents.

So please, vote well. Vote early. Vote often.

Vote in word and deed, online and in person. Vote with your attitudes and by being a good neighbor. Put your money and heart where your vote is. And whether your candidates win or lose, we’ll change the world for better.

On Bad Eggs and Good Fruit.

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Julie Dawn Cole as Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, 1971

In Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory he has fancy geese that lay golden eggs. He also has an “educated eggdicator” that can differentiate between good and bad eggs. Good eggs get shipped out. Bad eggs go down the chute.

Spoiled little Veruca Salt is found to be a bad egg and ends up down the chute as well. I’m afraid there are a whole lot of us like Veruca who would fail the eggdicator’s inspection.

We are a mess. We struggle with simple things like truth and kindness. We continually lower the bar on what is acceptable behavior and language for a civilized society. We are less and less reasonable while more and more bombastic and hostile.

We see it on the news, in the White House, on the streets, around our tables.

We not only disagree, we degrade and bite and devour each other. We’ve lost mutual respect and we’ve stopped searching for common ground or decency.

Bad eggs.

While this troubles me a great deal, what is most alarming is that the church has jumped headfirst into this mess.

We claim that every person is made in the image of God and in the next breath curse them for disagreeing with us.

We gather on Sunday hoping our neighbors will come to Jesus, then spend the week calling them names on the internet.

We teach our children that words matter and then unflinchingly applaud people who have no control over their tongue.

We are quick to excuse and condone ugly behavior as long as the person doing it agrees with our politics or worldview. “We aren’t electing a pastor,” we say. “No one is perfect.”

“They just say like it is,” we repeat, appreciating their bluntness. We laugh when they insult or cut someone down. We pretend this is leadership. We think this is just.

But the eggdicator doesn’t lie. Bad eggs. This is not who we are intended to be.

We are the ones who are the light of the world, the salt of the earth. We are those who claim to follow Jesus and his “love God and love people” message. We are people who proclaim grace and mercy and forgiveness.

Yet it feels like we are disregarding all this at a time when the world desperately needs us to embody these very things. I’m convinced the world is starving for something better. Something more than a continuous supply of bad eggs.

And the solution to bad eggs is, of course, good fruit.

Kindness and gentleness are dismissed by many as political correctness. Silly things that slow us down and show our weakness. But kindness and gentleness are neither silly nor weak, they are Fruit of the Spirit.

They are the result of the Spirit of God at work in us. They show up when we’ve allowed God to show up and have authority in our lives.

The same with self-control. And patience. And goodness. And faithfulness And love. And peace. And joy.

When God leads us, these things sprout up. We move from bad eggs to good fruit.

And they aren’t optional. We don’t get to turn them on or off depending on who we are talking to or about.

Sure, we won’t do this perfectly and every one of us has room for improvement, but lately I’ve been wondering if we even desire these traits anymore. Do we hunger for God to do this work in us? Or do other things have our attention?

Do I want peace or power?

Power corrupts while peace leads to life. Jesus says blessed are the peacemakers, not blessed are the power holders.

Is gentleness needed when we can just say it like it is?

Friends, if “saying it like it is” means being rude and callous in how we talk about other people than Christians are not permitted to say it like it is.

Is goodness going to help us win when the world is so bad and broken?

Church, goodness is the solution to the brokenness. It is the only way to truly win.

Patience? Do we have to?

I’d rather skip it myself but here I am, a recipient of God’s patience. I’ve been given chance after chance and time after time. In my best moments I’m eager to give others the same opportunities.

There is no joy in shaming others. No love either. There is no faithfulness without these other things. This is what we signed up for.

I do believe there are times for causing a scene and getting loud. Particularly in cases where we are being a voice for the voiceless and confronting injustice. But even then our motives must be pure. Are we motivated by the work of God in our lives or are we hungry for things like position and control and acclaim?

Do we have the stench of a bad egg or the sweet aroma of fresh fruit?

“You will know them by their fruit,” Jesus says. The things we bear in our life, from our words to our actions, will demonstrate who we will really are. That should cause us to pause. Who are we known as? When someone disagrees with our positions who do we act most like? When you bump up against us who spills out? Who is leading us? Who is at work in our hearts?

May it be the God who is love. May it be the God who is slow to anger and full of mercy. May it be the God who turns grief into joy and who is faithful from generation to generation. May we be people under the influence of the Prince of Peace. May we desire the gentleness of the Lamb who was slain. And may we be so full of this God’s goodness that it can’t help but show up in all we say and do.

May we bear good fruit in a world full of bad eggs. And may we show that there is something purer and higher and worth pursuing when we are tempted to follow others down the chute and up the ladder. May we have the courage and faithfulness to choose a better way.

Amen.

The Law is the Law

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Getty Images, thehill.com

“The law is the law.”

That is what I keep hearing.

The law is the law and there is nothing we can do about it. If the law is bad, well don’t break it, ’cause the law is the law.

Good or bad doesn’t matter. Just or unjust don’t factor in. Cruel or unusual are not the issue at hand.

Because the law is the law.

Which is why Christians don’t celebrate or study the person of Moses and his family’s blatant law breaking by hiding him from the army as a child.

And why we don’t mention the magi, commonly known as the wisemen, at Christmas time, who explicitly broke the king’s orders so that they could spare the life of the boy Jesus.

Because the law is the law.

It’s why we don’t read or study or preach from the letters of that scoundrel the Apostle Paul, who wrote from prison. The guy just couldn’t follow the rules and, hey, the law is the law.

It’s why we don’t mind Jesus being crucified, his disciples being martyred, or the Roman persecution of the early church.

The law is the law. Our hands are tied.

Which is why you’ll never hear of Christians working to change abortion policy. We have laws in place already. And laws are laws.

It’s why we shrug at slavery and Jim Crow.

It’s why we condemn all who harbored Jewish people against direct orders in Nazi occupied Europe.

Law breaking is law breaking is law breaking.

It’s why we don’t lament when folks are arrested or killed for sharing their Christian faith in countries where such an act is illegal.

The law is the law folks, sorry. Shouldn’t have broken it.

And it’s why we apparently shouldn’t speak out to ask our government to stop separating children from their parents at the border.

Because the law is the law.

Regardless of the hurt and hardship. Regardless of the long term consequences. Regardless of the shattered hearts of real life human people desperately searching for a new life.

The law is the law, apparently.

That’s what many of my friends keep saying in defense of this policy. That’s what my friends say who are unable to criticize anything associated with people they voted into office.

But, there is a better way, a better law.

In Romans 13, the text often used to excuse our passivity and the country’s ugliness, the Apostle Paul (who would later be executed for breaking the law) also says:

“…whatever other commands there may be are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Love does no harm to a neighbor.

Love fulfills the law.

This is the law we should be living by. This is the law we should be defending. Particularly if we say we are Jesus people.

I’m not suggesting we have open borders. I’m not suggesting anarchy or doing away with any and all laws. I’m not suggesting that previous administrations haven’t had a hand in unjust practices.

I’m suggesting that this particular policy (which isn’t actually even a law) be stopped. Simple as that.

It does harm. More harm than good.

It is not restorative. It is not just. It is not loving. It is not necessary.

We already have family detention centers. We have ways to make this right while still ensuring people come to our country legally.

We have ways to impact the laws of the land and, even if we didn’t, there are times and places and reasons to oppose laws on the books.

Spare me “the law is the law” and give me “love is the fulfillment of the law.”

Give me concern for our neighbors. Even the ones from across the border. Even the ones we like to dismiss as illegal. Even the ones we think don’t belong.

Because this is the way of the Lord Jesus Christ. The entire law is summed up in this one word:

Love. Your. Neighbor.

He gave no qualifications. No loopholes. No exceptions.

Just one law to sum up all the others.

And hey, the law is the law.