Jesus For President
Jesus For President
OK. All you Democratic and Republican diehards out there, I want you to suppose for a moment that Jesus were here among us, physically, right now and He has decided to run for president. Would you vote for Him? What if He didn't have a chance to win? Not even a long shot. Would you vote for Him then? Or would you fall back on your reasoning that as a Christian we should vote for the best of the worst, that is the lesser of two evils, but nevertheless evil? The strategy here is to vote for a possible winner whose platform we can build on to the point of ushering in the new millennium.
Um...why not just vote for Jesus? Yeah, I know that He isn't here bodily. But think about every other area of our lives. Do you choose a church like you choose a politician? Or how you decide to educate your children like you choose a president? Or form your worldview as you choose a candidate? You probably do!
So that's why I'm writing this, to exhort you to consider that voting for the two front runners might just be your latest sin. After all, affiliation is the basis of relationship. (This is true also for churches, just another little reminder to all you "conservative" members of the PC-USA).
It will take a little work on your part but you should investigate the merits and demerits of alternative political parties. Check out the Libertarians, the Green party, the Constitution party, and others. Some
just for the amusement. (Those who are communistic and socialistic are quite laughable. It is almost like they think their philosophy will work here when it hasn't worked anywhere else!)
Reform, revival, reformation, and revolution all start small and grow to the point of being an unstoppable force as thinking people rally behind an ideology. And partner, it is time you got on board.
The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies
As I write we are just days away from successfully making our way through the last of the major party conventions. (Which is my excuse for having two Hit and Run pieces in a row sort of on politics.) I've been paying attention to these things now for the last twenty-five years or so. I remember as a boy of 11 pulling for an upset by Reagan in 76. But for the last three or four rounds of conventions I've noticed something odd. The media, each time, tells us how the whole thing is scripted. Nothing is spontaneous, and the purpose for the dance is to make the star look good. They don't convene to do stuff; they convene to parade. Fair enough. But what's the point, if we know it already? I mean, if you're going to try to pull the wool over my eyes, please don't start by saying, "In a few moments I will begin pulling the wool over your eyes." If you're going to sell me the sizzle instead of the steak, don't start by saying, "What follows is designed to keep your attention on the sizzle, so you won't notice the steak has turned green." No magician says, "Don't look in my right palm, look at my left arm as it does the big grand wave."
We're dupes, who love to be duped, and don't mind being told we're being duped. We'll just sit around like Olympic judges, giving scores on how well the dupe might have worked, if we didn't know it was a dupe. Don't be a dupe. Television conventions are to politics what television wrestling is to sports.
Keep Your Pants On
Just recently Radio Hanoi, um, I mean, National Public Radio, featured a rather long report on the Migrating Nature of Aids in Africa. The problem as stated by the press is that as husbands and fathers are pressed into military service or leave their villages to seek work in the cities...they get lonely. So, they sleep around, mostly with prostitutes. In turn, the wives are left at home without their husbands for extended periods of time. Well... they get lonely. So they sleep around too. Once the men return to the village they give the AIDS virus that they have been infected with to their wives. If the husband hasn't contracted the disease, his wife probably has and the problem comes full circle.
I was amazed at how long the commentator could talk about this without saying something about responsibility or idiocy. But he never did. I think the conclusion was something about white males being the cause of it all. That and the lack of millions of dollars that is needed for educating these folks on how the Aids virus spreads.
Just before we left Orlando, Angela and I were invited to a dinner also attended by a couple who were returning to Africa as missionaries. They belonged to a well-known worldwide ministry whose crusade is to spread the gospel. The husband told me that Africa is "wide open" because of the spread of Aids and is letting just about anyone in that will talk about abstinence. I asked this fellow if the male Africans needed to leave their villages in order to provide for their families. He looked puzzled. I rephrased the question. Instead of leaving their families in the pursuit of things they covet and then being exposed to temptations that they are too weak to avoid, is it possible for them to hunt and fish and farm and barter, like they have for years, and stay home? He said, yes. Then I suggested a better message to take to the Dark Continent would be one of the expectations of God for husbands and wives and the dangers of breaking the tenth commandment. Gosh it would have been so good if that NPR reporter would have said, "What we have over here is a bunch of adulterers who are paying the ultimate price for not keeping their pants on."