Tag Archives: trump

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.

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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.

Don’t be a Lemming (or Lessons From a 1991 Video Game)

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Lemmings came out in 1991 and in 1996 was rated the 8th greatest video game of all time. 

There is a fantastic old video game called Lemmings. In Lemmings a stream of little creatures constantly walk forward with no regard for what they are walking toward.

A wall in the way? Keep it moving. A lake of fire just ahead? Walk on. Imminent death? Move it along.

Your job is to equip some as builders, blockers, or miners to navigate the obstacles and dangers these poor, mindless lemmings encounter. (I just found out you can still play this game online, so I’ll be back to finish this post in an hour or two.)

We’ve probably all heard that real life lemmings will follow other lemmings right over a cliff with no regard for their own welfare. It turns out that this is a misconception originating when Disney drowned a bunch of rodents for a fake documentary. So when I call us lemmings it isn’t all that accurate to nature, but I think the word picture works.

When I call us lemmings I don’t mean you are a lemming and I am not. I mean I do the same things. Even when I don’t want to. I’m not talking down to you, I’m trying to keep myself accountable.

When I call us lemmings what I am saying is that we blindly follow along without much regard to the dangers, pitfalls, and destruction that lies ahead.

We do this in many arenas including sports and religion, but it seems our political ideologies have increasingly become something we thoughtlessly follow without stopping to ask if they are good, beneficial, or even true.

This is not a left or right issue. It impacts both extremes and many in the middle.

My left leaning friends recently circulated a New York Times story about Department of Energy nominee Rick Perry not knowing that his new job included overseeing the nuclear arsenal, even though his acceptance of the nomination included his willingness to oversee our nuclear arsenal.

My right leaning friends are posting about how Trump had the largest in-person inauguration crowd of all time because his press secretary said so, despite the facts making it demonstrably untrue.

We want to be right more than we want the truth.

President Trump said during the primary season that he could walk out onto the street and shoot someone and not lose a single vote. His ability to say that (and I believe he was mostly right) shows how strongly we are devoted to our political preferences. And I think much of the same could be said for the other side.

We are so entrenched in our opinions and worldviews that we cannot allow ourselves free thought. We are so wrapped up in a quest for political power and outcomes that we have lost our intellectual integrity. We have allowed ourselves to become lemmings. Or at least what lemmings are commonly believed to be.

Here are some lemminglike behaviors we are guilty of far too often:

– We applaud everything our side does. It doesn’t matter if we opposed the same behavior two days ago, today we applaud it today because it’s our team/party/candidate of choice.

– We condemn everything the other side does. It doesn’t matter if they have a point or they did some good or if we previously supported such efforts. Now it’s bad because “they” did it.

– We dismiss any information we don’t like as biased or fake. We have reached the point where we only listen to the voices we already agree with. This allows us to never be challenged, never think for ourselves, and able to assume that anyone who disagrees is an idiot.

We’ve got to do better. It doesn’t matter who you voted for, no candidate or party will always do what is good or right or best. No candidate or party will perfectly represent your views. Not if we are willing to think independently and constructively.

We’ve become so partisan that we are afraid to show any agreement across the aisle. We see compromise and working together for the common good as a negative thing instead of a necessary thing. We value people based on their political opinions more than our shared humanity.

And in the process, we just keep walking despite the upcoming cliffs and pitfalls and destruction. We don’t want to hear otherwise, we don’t have time for facts, we don’t need various opinions and voices. We have somewhere to go and we will get there without ever stopping to ask if where we are heading is even worth heading toward.

I’m afraid we are more loyal to the direction we are walking than to common sense, the truth, and, at times, our faith.

If we keep going the way we’ve been going, we will be meet with an unfortunate end. Loss of friends, loss of respect, loss of influence, loss of decency, loss of integrity.

I suggest we take some measures to prevent ourselves from blindly running over a cliff:

1) Disagree with our own people. It’s okay, I promise. What if it was not uncommon to say, “I generally support what they are trying to do, but I cannot get on board with this issue.” The sky wouldn’t fall and we’d push our culture toward a more reasonable future. Or is toeing the party line more important than being true to our values?

2) Agree with people coming from other perspectives. Again, this is okay. Not everything the other side (and I hate even using the term “sides”) does is wicked or corrupt or out to ruin our country. They get one right at least every once in a while. Applaud them for it. Or are we so afraid of recognizing the worth of “those people” that we can’t even admit when something positive has taken place?

3) Educate ourselves. Please. Learn why people believe differently than you. Most people who support stricter gun control do not want to round up all the weapons in the country. And most people who support free market capitalism do not want to see poor people taken advantage of. Most issues we debate are complicated. There are no easy answers or we would have solved all our problems by now. Find out what people think and why.

4) We must want truth more than we want to be right. I might think the Philadelphia Eagles are the best team in the NFL but when I am presented with some recent, observable facts I need to change my mind. We can’t allow our opinion to be more valuable than reality. Sometimes we need to shift what we want to believe based on what is actually happening. Truth is worth embracing, even if it means I have to admit I was previously wr-wr-wrong.

I’m going to try my best to live these things out. I won’t be perfect at it, but I hope you’ll consider joining me. I don’t want to mindlessly walk towards our demise. I want to think and learn and grow and discover. I want truth. I want integrity.

It turns out that the lemmings aren’t as mindless as we once thought. They don’t just blindly follow with no regard for what is good and right and true. Hopefully we can soon say the same thing about ourselves.

If Your Candidate Loses on Tuesday…

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The end is near. Barring an electoral college rarity, on Tuesday there will be a new person elected to the office of President of the United States of America. Some will be elated. Some will be despondent. Some aren’t going to be happy if either front runner wins.

In fact, no matter who comes out ahead there will be a large portion of this country who will be disappointed, scared, or even angry. Up to half of those who vote (and technically even a little over half) will later find out their nominee was rejected by the nation.

Losing is not fun. Not in a foot race, not in Monopoly, and certainly not in something as important as a general election. It stings, it hurts. Some of the issues we are facing are quite contentious. Some of the decisions that will be made by the next president may impact us negatively. Losing carries not just pain, but a lot of potential anxiety as well.

So, what do we do if our candidate loses? I’m glad you asked. I have three suggestions.

We can start with acting like level-headed adults.

Sometimes my children don’t get what they want. Sometimes when they don’t get what they want they cross their arms and push out their bottom lip. They acquire a high-pitched moan in their voice. They pout.

But all the foot stomping and whining doesn’t change the fact that in our house we don’t eat Kit-Kats for breakfast (at least when the children are present). Pouting changes little to nothing, sometimes even making the situation worse. Fortunately, children are cute so we can usually smile at their little tantrums.

You and I are adults. And we aren’t all that cute. So if your preferred candidate isn’t elected, please don’t pout. Don’t whine. Don’t stomp your feet and declare “no one loves me.”

Maybe pouting isn’t your thing. Perhaps your response to losing is less like my children and more like George Brett. You charge the umpire, throw whatever you can grab, scream your head off, and must be restrained by multiple people.

Again, this response does not help anything. Reacting in anger may garner you some back slaps from like-minded people but it won’t make anyone change their mind on how they voted. It will just make you look like a sore loser and further convince people you’ve lost your mind.

Don’t lose influence or respect because you respond to losing like a child or lunatic. Take a breath. Count to 10. Bite your tongue. If you can’t do that, have a friend change your Facebook password for a week. Pick up yoga. Relax.

Which leads me to my next suggestion for the losing side: Take a step back.

Remember how talking heads told us Obama was the certain death of our nation? We survived. Some of us are better off, some of us are not, but we are still here.

We’ve survived Republicans and Democrats and we will again. Your preferred person not being elected is not the end of the world as we know it. (If this is the apocalypse I’ll buy you a shirt that says “Don’t blame me.”)

We need perspective. This is a four-year term. If we get it wrong, we can try again soon. People will be campaigning for 2020 by May.

We have these great checks and balances that help ensure electing a bad candidate won’t dissolve the republic. We can impeach, challenge, veto, block vetoes, and vote again in the years to come. We can go before courts to contest laws. We can elect a new Congress. We have a system strong enough to survive 44 flawed presidents thus far; I’m confident we can handle one more.

I understand you probably have some major concerns about what might happen if your candidate isn’t elected. I just want to remind you to take a step back and look at the whole picture.

Finally, let’s be good to each other.break-glass

This election has moved us further and further to the extremes. The venom and propaganda has reached a fever pitch. Let’s move away from that. Let’s move toward each other. Or at least let’s move forward together.

We won’t ever all agree, but we can do better. Imagine if we could disagree with each other with a modicum of respect and civility. Imagine if we didn’t call everyone who votes differently names. Imagine if we didn’t assume that the other side wants to ruin our lives. You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not only one.

Let’s not assume the worst of the other half of the country. They are your neighbors, your friends, your fellow worshipers, your co-workers, your kids, maybe even your spouses. Are some of them misguided? Yep. Are some motivated by the wrong things? Probably. But let’s not put any more barriers between us. Let’s come together, lets share meals, lets learn from each other. Let’s be kind in our social media posts, let’s be careful with our words to the people we encounter, and let’s be considerate even in the way we think about the folks that disagree with us.

This is hard work. It doesn’t come naturally to many of us. Just because its difficult or unnatural doesn’t mean it’s not worth our time and effort. Just because everyone else around us has adopted hateful rhetoric or a doom and gloom outlook doesn’t mean we must do likewise.

After George W. Bush defeated Al Gore and the hanging chads had been recounted, I saw a shirt with his picture that read, “Not My President.” It bothered me then and it bothers me now. We have one country, diverse as she may be. Whoever wins will be the president of all of us: those who vote Trump or Clinton, those who vote Johnson and Stein and McMullin and Castle and even those who write in Jesus or Mickey Mouse.

We are in this together. You and I. Republicans and Democrats and Independents and the Amish. So if your side loses please act your age. Remember this is probably not the end of America and try to always be good to each other.

We might lose an election but maybe we can regain some decency. Maybe we can win at the stuff that matters the most. I think we can do it. I’m committed to try. I hope you’ll join me.

And if your candidate happens to win, please celebrate graciously. That is important too.

To My Non-Christian Friends This Election Season

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To My Non-Christian Friends, dearfriends_black

This election season has been something else, huh? (Here is a video of puppies if you need something to cheer you up.) Take heart, it is almost over. We have at least until February before people start openly campaigning for 2020.

In the meantime, I’d like to say something to you. Specifically, I’d like to say sorry. I think you have seen us Christians at our worst lately and for that I apologize.

I’m sorry that you’ve seen so much fighting between us. We can be brutal to each other and we call ourselves family. We fire missiles from all sides of the aisle and don’t worry too much about collateral damage. It probably isn’t very inviting when we behave this way. I’m sorry if you are less likely to want to be around us after all this.

I’m sorry that you’ve probably gotten into a debate or two with one of us. I’m sorry that we don’t often fight very graciously. I’m sorry that we stoop to things like name calling and rapid dismissal.

I regret that we often want to be heard, rather than hear. That isn’t very kind of us.

I’m sorry if you were unfriended because of your political views. I’m sorry we value our opinions more than your friendship. I’m sorry that we let partisanship get in the way of relationship. There are things we will all never agree on, but that shouldn’t stop us from sharing meals and photos of our kids and life in general.

I’m sorry that you see us defending things that are indefensible. Things Jesus would oppose. Things we have routinely and loudly condemned. I’m sorry that we hold a double standard so that we can excuse our candidates and condemn someone else’s. That’s not consistent and its certainly not Christlike.

I’m sorry for all the false memes and bunk articles we have posted. We don’t think very highly of lying, but we are at times in such a rush to be right we fail to check our information. That isn’t very good of us.

I’m sorry if we have led you to believe that a person’s eternal destiny hinges on how they vote. We don’t actually believe that, though we sometimes act and preach like it. Sometimes we (rightly or wrongly) put a lot of hope and energy into these things, but if you give us a time to catch our breath we will remember it is grace, not ballots, that save us.

We sing a song that says our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus. I’m sorry we haven’t acted that way lately. While we want to have a say in government, ultimately our hope is not in presidents and senators and legislation.

I’m sorry if you’ve been hurt by the way we talk about the candidates and their supporters. Regardless of politics you and they are loved and cherished by God. We’ve failed to reflect that too often. That grieves me.

I apologize that regardless of which side we are on, we are often unable to understand where you are coming from. I’m sorry if we talk down to you or figure you couldn’t possibly know or have hurt you with our assumptions.

I know it is probably hard to see through all the nonsense, but Jesus is better than we represent. I’m not sure of a lot of things, but I’m absolutely positive of that. I’m sorry if we have failed him and you this election season.

If we are honest we are just regular ole humans. We mess up, we don’t always do what we want. We can be too passionate, we can be misguided, we can be flat wrong. Please don’t hold that against Jesus.

I can’t speak for all of us, but I can speak for me. I would trade in all this election stuff if it meant people would be more likely to consider following Jesus. His ways are better. We have a saying that goes like this, “His grace is sufficient.” The grace of God is sufficient to cover our weakness and our mistakes. We greatly depend on that.

Now I’m asking for grace from you. Please forgive us for our actions and attitudes, our words and our compliance. Please forgive us for pointing you toward a political party more than Jesus. Please forgive us when we cross the line, wound others, or look no different than any other person you know.

We are supposed to do better than that. We have been wrong. Maybe not all of us, but some of us, including me. And I’m sorry.

Church, We Have No Dog In This Fight

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One of the worst aspects of an election is that it pits people against each other. We start noticing who is with us and who is against. We draw lines and form ranks. Its us versus them.

As we line up to choose sides the candidates lay out their battle plans. Pro-this and anti-that. We (hopefully) weigh the pros and cons and we chose our side.

We select our candidate. We stand united. We rally behind them. We argue as to why they are the most suited to hold office. We applaud their good nature. We justify their bad behavior. And we stand at the ready to defend and fight for their rightful place. This is our normal.

The question I have been wondering this election cycle is, why do we, the church, feel the need to pick a candidate? Why do we feel like we have to take a side? And perhaps most soul searching, why do we feel like we have to baptize our candidate of choice and line them up with our religious beliefs?

This is a concept foreign to many Christians in the world today and for most of church history. Things like democratic elections are still rare when you consider the breadth of human experience and existence. Yet here we are lining up, doing battle, anointing our candidates.

What if we decided we don’t have a dog in the fight? What if we said, you know what, these candidates are so flawed, so disingenuous, so other-kingdom focused, that we’re not even going to bother taking sides?

I believe this is what the early church would do. As the church was being born, first making its way across foreign lands, the Roman Empire held much of the known world and would soon experience great politic unrest. They didn’t hold elections and they didn’t care too much about what the church thought, but I think there is a lesson here for us.

If you would please allow me a moment for a brief history. Just a few decades after the death and resurrection of Christ, the Roman emperor Nero had become so unpopular that the empire turned against him. In response he took his own life, leaving a vacancy for the throne.

In the year that followed, four different men would hold the title Emperor of Rome. Galba would be the first and hold office for seven months. He withheld payment from his soldiers and they in turn killed him, backing the authority of a man named Otho. Otho would take the throne only to learn that yet another man was marching on Rome. This man, Vitellius, would conquer Otho’s forces and be recognized as the legitimate ruler of the empire. That is, until Vespasian arrived from the Middle East and dispatched Vitellius and his sympathizers, and took the throne for himself.

Talk about a crazy twelve months. It makes 2016 look fairly tame in comparison.

The reason I tell you this story is because I doubt the early church, our foremothers and fathers, put much stock in which emperor they supported. I’m guessing they didn’t pass out voter’s guides at the weekly gathering or put signs out in their yards. I am fairly certain they weren’t overly concerned with which one was going to raise or lower taxes and which one had a better economic policy or even which one was more pro-life.

I am positive they weren’t looking to see which candidate would more closely line up with their Christian values. They would have never tried to force one of them to fit their worldview in order to justify their support. I don’t imagine them saying, “Well if you don’t like Vespasian you must be pro-Galba.”

They likely would not have chosen a side. They had no dog in the fight. No horse in the race. Whoever sat in the Roman equivalent to the Oval Office made little difference to the church. I can hear them saying, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”

The church didn’t pick sides because no matter who is emperor, Jesus is Lord. They didn’t pick sides because the options laid out before them were unsatisfactory. They didn’t pick sides because the laws the Romans passed had very little to do with how they were called to live. They didn’t pick sides because God already sat on the only throne that mattered.

There is the Kingdom of God and there is the empire of Rome. They are two different realities. The church firmly established that they were Kingdom people. “Strangers in the world,” one writer would say.

Kingdom people have too much to do to worry about who is going to be the next Caesar. In the Roman world when babies were abandoned to die, the church brought them in and built orphanages. In the Roman world when health was fleeting and disease was rampant, the church brought them in and built hospitals and administered healthcare. It was the church who brought in strangers and foreigners and took care of the poor and widows. It was the church who stood against a world full of racism and sexism and classism and slavery. And they did it without petitions or lobbyists or super pacs.

The early church didn’t look for the government to legislate morality or justifiably use tax money. They didn’t look to the government for tax breaks or religious liberty. They looked to Jesus and tried to live faithfully.

Galba. Otho. Vitellius. Vespasian. Why pick a side? We are pledged to Christ.

Church, I truly believe in this election (and probably most elections) we don’t have a dog in the fight. I don’t think it is worth choosing sides. We have the two least liked candidates in our nation’s history and we keep saying you can or can’t be a certain kind of person if you don’t pick the right one.

To be so emotionally invested in picking the next Caesar is a waste of energy. To put our hope in whichever one we think will protect our freedoms the most is dangerously shortsighted. Emperor-to-be Otho promised the world to his soldiers, they put him in power, and then he withheld everything he promised and was forced out three months later. Don’t sell yourself to the highest bidder.

You don’t have to do all the lining up behind your choice. You don’t have to become their champion. You don’t have to justify their every move or attempt to get their world and your world to line up perfectly. Spoiler alert: they don’t fit. You don’t have to compromise your fundamental beliefs in order to pick one of the people desperate for power.

If you objectively study the candidates (and not just the top two) and can vote for one, okay. It is also a completely Christian response to say I can’t choose between these people battling for the throne. It isn’t a waste, it isn’t a vote for the other side, it is a matter of principle.

We are Kingdom people first. Our fight is a different fight. Our Kingdom doesn’t require borders or laws or military or taxes or presidents or elections. We have already made our choice. Caesar can have the throne, the land, the money, the power. None of that matters. Caesars come and go. Presidents come and go. Nations come and go. But the Kingdom of God endures forever.

So don’t worry. Don’t fret. Don’t feel like you have to pick between the lesser of two evils. Pick Jesus. Live faithfully. Love people.

If you feel you must make a choice and just have to put out a yard sign or bumper sticker, go with one that says, “I’m with Jesus.”

Our Political Gymnastics

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Gymnastic_Background

Image Source: Club Penguin

When George W. Bush was in office he was harshly condemned from the political left and loyally defended from the right for his response to Hurricane Katrina. Instead of visiting in the immediate aftermath, President Bush was photographed observing the destruction from the comfort of Air Force One as it flew over.The image would be used to supposedly show the president was disengaged from the storm’s victims.

bush flyover

Jim Watson/Getty Images

Later Bush reflected on how he would have been taken to task if he had landed instead. He imagined his critics would have said, “How could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?”

Which happens to be the exact reasoning people are using to defend President Obama for golfing instead of going to assess the current flooding in Louisiana. The tables have turned and it is the lack of boots on the ground that is now ridiculed from the right and rationalized from the left.

I don’t pretend to know what the right response is for a president in times of crisis. I don’t know when one should abandon a needed vacation or when the magnitude of a disaster requires the president’s presence.

What I do know is that we are overly willing to bend and maneuver our opinions in order to line up with the politicians we support.

We have become Olympic level gymnasts in our ability to backflip and contort ourselves into whatever position will most serve our politics. We jump and twist and twirl, though without any of the elegance exhibited by the Simone Biles of the world.

Had it been Hillary who recently showed up to Louisiana with a truckload of supplies the folks at Fox News would have called it a publicity stunt and the people at MSNBC would have skewered Trump for not caring enough to respond. Instead it is the opposite. Our opinions change based on which side did what.

If our preferred politician does a thing, we defend or justify their actions. “Give them grace,” we say. If a politician we don’t support does the same or a similar thing, we condemn or vilify their behavior. We cry, “Crucify them!”

This is why Trump backers can talk about Bill Clinton’s infidelity with straight faces and Hillary supporters can claim that Trump is out of touch with ordinary citizens.

We are so devoted to our political positions that we’ve lost the ability to be objective, honest, and consistent. We reek of hypocrisy. Our flexibility exceeds that of the world’s elite gymnasts and we are probably going to hurt ourselves.

Somehow we have reached the point where we are afraid to call out the behavior of the people we support politically. We are unable to acknowledge that people from our political slant make mistakes or that at times we may strongly disagree with them.

It should not be hard for us to say, “Despite supporting this person on a large percentage of issues, this decision was wrong.” Or “I will probably vote for this person, but the way they responded to this was not okay.”

Sadly, it has become unfathomable to admire the response or policies or decency of a person from the other side of the aisle. Instead we end up awkwardly swinging back and forth as if we are on the uneven bars. Our moral position is summed up as, “Today it is okay when my side does it, next time it will be wrong when your side does.”

If our moral indignation is determined by the person, not the behavior or belief, we lack core values of much substance. If the party name behind a politician is what determines how we respond to what is said or done, we lack intellectual integrity. When we have selective outrage and relativistic convictions we lose our credibility. There no medals for this balance beam routine.

There are certainly times worth calling out politicians. Let’s just do it with integrity. Let’s not excuse or dismiss behavior we wouldn’t allow in a person from a different political persuasion. Or condone behavior we opposed yesterday. Let’s not condemn things we have previously applauded or applaud that which we have previously condemned.

Let’s be fair and honest in our political assessments. And consistent and principled in the things we believe and the standards we hold our leaders to. And let’s leave the backhand springs and gravity defying stunts to the professionals.

Book Review: Vote Your Conscience

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— I was provided with a copy of the new book Vote Your Conscience: Party Must Not Trump Principle by Brian Kaylor in exchange for an unbiased and fair review.- –

Vote Your Conscience is a quick read at just six chapters long. It is $2.99 for Kindvote bookle at the time of this writing. The Amazon blurb includes this, “In this book, award-winning author Brian Kaylor addresses the moral issues at stake in the 2016 election, explores how the Christian faith became too closely tied to partisan politics, and considers the alternative political engagement called for in scripture.”

If you are Christian, particularly an evangelical Christian, this book has some things we need to hear. In the later chapters Kaylor spells out some basic truths for us: for too long we have wed our political platforms with our faith (to the detriment of our faith) and our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God, not a nation or a political party. If I could come to your house and read those couple chapters to you, I would. And I may. My biggest concern for this book is that those messages will be lost on people who don’t make it past the author describing why he feels their preferred candidate is morally suspect, which happens in the first couple chapters.

The basic thesis of the book is this, “We do not owe our chief loyalty to the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. Our devotion is not to conservative causes and politicians or liberal causes and politicians. Our allegiance is to the Kingdom of God. We don’t follow the elephant or the donkey; we follow the Lamb.”

Amen.

Kaylor’s concern (one I completely resonate with) is that many Christians have given our preferred political parties our first allegiance. We have been looking for a savior from Washington DC and we often “sell our birthright for a bowl of red (or blue) stew.” He says too many of us are willing to blindly follow a party leader over the principles of our faith or even our basic political leanings. This book is a call to remember what we believe and then align how we vote behind those values, not realign our values based on how we may have to vote.

Kaylor lays out an argument as to why he feels both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are morally unfit to be president of the United States. He clearly states he does not support Ms. Clinton and presents a case against her, but spends most of his time arguing against Mr. Trump. He, like myself, is deeply rooted in white, conservative, evangelical circles. When he spends a disproportional amount of time speaking about Trump he does so because the people he is most familiar with are disproportionally more likely to support the GOP candidate.

I find his moral arguments convincing, though those who are deeply entrenched in support behind one candidate or the other will not be quick to hear them. He calls out a number of conservative Christians and politicians for what he thinks is dangerous capitulation to a person who doesn’t represent their stated values or even basic levels of human decency. He calls out Trump for his misogyny, racism, religious intolerance, and general behavior. He says that to support a candidate who acts and believes in those ways is the same as holding those positions ourselves. That will be a tough pill to swallow for many people. At times his sarcasm and frustration may put people on the defensive.

But again, the overarching message of the book is worth the read. If you don’t want to hear about why you shouldn’t vote for Clinton or Trump, just skip to Chapter 3. At the end he includes a chapter on what to do in response to these two major party candidates and some ideas for how Christians can rise above partisan rhetoric for the sake of the Kingdom.

I join Kaylor in his concern that the work and witness of the Church is being hindered as we line up behind morally bankrupt politicians and alienate people who vote or feel differently than we do. He beautifully says, “We are called to avoid the temptations of power. We’re called to avoid joining the team just because it’s the winning side. We’re called to stand on the margins, prophetically proclaiming the truth.”

I absolutely recommend this book and encourage you to grab a copy today. You will at least become more informed and perhaps you will be more faithful to the work of the Gospel because of it.