Month: November 2016

I’ve gone round and round about what to write concerning our current state of political affairs and I have no consistent, singular thought.

Amid the hand-wringing and stress eating and earnest desire to understand what in the hell is going on, I keep coming back to the idea that politics has morphed into a caricature of culture.

It’s never been easier to run our own campaigns, what with the blogs, the FaceBooks, the Insta’s and the twitter accounts.  What we thought was a longing to connect, turns out was an insatiable desire to Be something.  Say something. Write something.

We spend large amounts of hours, culling through cleverly crafted information, gathering thunder, so we can re-write, re-produce and re-release our own version of similar thoughts in hopes of being lauded by our like-minded followers or shock the airwaves with bold soliloquies, daring the haters to show themselves.  It’s an addiction; and we are victims and peddlers alike.

Meanwhile, back at party headquarters, look who snuck up on us.

If you’re inclined to think that one candidate or the other this year was the actual devil in disguise, then you must accept that they are our devils, made in our image, because we as an electorate have been practicing their sorcery for quite awhile now.

calculating … hedging … extrapolating … angling … inflaming … pontificating

Yes. We. Do.

We the people have not taken our responsibilities as a republic seriously. We’ve sacrificed our mandate to form a more perfect union on the alter of individual grandstanding.  We’ve ceded the power of dialogue to talking points.  We’re essentially holding campaign rallies on social media; scrolling through feedback, giving the perfunctory, presidential-like thumbs-up to adulating cheers while escorting any hecklers right on off our stage.

Too bad for us.

If the sky appears to be falling, perhaps its time we close our computers and put down our phones.

For starters, christians need to stop being so petty. Just stop. We all bring traits of an incomparable God to his table of infinite worth, so there is room enough for pro-life supreme court watch dogs and immigrant/refugee policy influencers alike. God loves with equal fervor the unborn and the outcast.  We can and should advocate for both.

We aren’t all called to charge the same hill, though. Our great big God navigates injustice in all sorts of creative, distinct ways, often confounding the wise, so deliberate his plan and ability to execute.

But what we can do, each of us on our commissioned battlefront, is be the candidate we wish we could’ve voted for; we can be the policy we wish was now enacted.

What if we allotted each other the same grace we extend to those we champion?

What if we treated christians voting right of us, as strangers in an unknown land…that is to say, tenderly and without prejudice.

What if we treated christians voting left of us, as beating hearts at risk…that is to say,  deserving of protection.

Or this…

What if we remembered that we like each other? What if we remembered things we’ve shared… like college dorm rooms, random road trips, big time plays in big time games, the perfect song for an occasion, wedding bells and newborn babies, finding purpose in the middle years, all the secrets safely kept.

What if we did that all day on Facebook?

Then again, maybe history conjures up a pain, inflicted or received, that these dramatic themes expose, which might explain why this feels personal.

I don’t know.

While on another slow jog, lamenting these very things, the Foo Fighters popped up on my music shuffle (which lent to a quickening of my pace, but that’s not really important 🙂 ). Here’s the  challenge their song presented…

It’s times like these we learn to live again,

It’s times like these we give and give again,

It’s times like these we learn to love again,

It’s times like these, time and time again…

This isn’t the first and it won’t be the last, but now is definitely a time when christians are being defined. The question we must contemplate is one that Jesus posed (in the Gospel of Mark, no less) when the whole concept of “the church” looked like it may go under before it even got off the ground (and trust me, those were darker days than these)

“What good is it if we gain the whole {political landscape}, yet forfeit our soul? What can we give in exchange for our soul?”

The short answer is nothing and no good. No compassion, no empathy, no anything that’s real. Without a soul all we’ve got is a bunch of campaign bullshit.

The American church which I deeply love and ache for daily, I pray is defined by a love that never ends, not a democracy that’s destined to.

#werewithhim  #makehisnamegreatagain

What is the driving force behind your motivations, your decisions? Is it wanting to leave the world a better place? Is it personal happiness? A determination to be different than how you grew up or who you’ve become? The Golden Rule?

It’s definitely something. In a moment of crisis, when faced with a life-altering decision, not a one of us are islands unto ourselves, operating in a vacuum.  We’ve been taught, conditioned, educated or aroused by something that informs our conscience how to guide us in crucial moments. Not that we don’t get side tracked or succumb to detours along the dreary/weary/fraught-strewn way. We do. But when there is a heightened commitment to clarity, what is your guiding force?

Because this has come up a lot in this election. Who you vote for seems almost secondary to how you decide who to vote for.  It would seem we’re well beyond party affiliation or policy, and have forayed into territory we’re calling “the lesser evil”.  Just vote for that.

Easy enough.

Except it isn’t.

How do we evaluate the “evilness” of one action over another? Scale of 1 to 10 it? Problem is, we’ve no idea the scope of where one behavior began and where the other might end.  How then can we know with certainty which evil is lesser, when we don’t have the sum of their totalities?

Then all good christians everywhere shouted, “the Bible!” That’s our guide.

Agreed.

But is it?

Most christians I know follow better bloggers than I, listen to podcasts of amazing speakers, go to (perhaps even teach at) church weekly, and read well written, brilliantly researched books on every topic from A to Z, and thus believe the Bible is their guide.

While all of the aforementioned activities are super great, I think its more accurate to say they’re describing what we’ve been told about the Bible.

Which almost never stands up under the pressure of the bottom falling out of our life, or the desperation associated with critical decision making because we know we are the ones that will ultimately live with our choices. Not the awesome podcaster who really made us think.

So I’ll be honest; this non-stop daily waffling has rattled me. I’ve read the pros and cons of how to cast my vote from all sorts of people I respect. But strip all that away, and it’s just me and my conscience, paralyzed.

And I’m a fairly decisive person.

When one day last week as I was pounding it out with a slow jog (because I enjoy breathing), I looked over in a direction opposite of the way I was headed and saw Jesus standing there, leaning on an out-building, watching me (not really – no one was even there – but it was an impression I got). Suddenly it was clear: have my years of knowing Jesus meant nothing?  I started to cry (more perks of the slow jog, ability to emote), because the tension from the uncertainty of how to accurately weigh an evil or cast a vote, faded away.

But then more.

While my tear-stained smile still radiated, this came: Read.Your.Bible. I’m going to assume Jesus tossed that out there quick as he could, lest my dizzying pace get the best of me.

So I have been. Particularly the book of Mark, over and over again, looking for Jesus there on the pages, alive. He isn’t boring and he isn’t weird and if you think he might be, perhaps it’s because some boring weird person told you about him.

Which is not the same as knowing him for yourself.

So do that more. Talk to him. Out loud. How can this possibly still be a thing when just about everyone uses their blue tooth in public spaces? Or even more unnerving, while driving by themselves, appearing insane?  People freaking talk to people they can’t see all day long. We need to move beyond this as a stumbling block. He is there, with you, wanting to be known. By you. Awkwardness be gone.

Now that I’ve sufficiently gotten the Holy Ghost, I’ll settle down.

Dearest friends whom I deeply love, I really think the point of this whole election extravaganza has been to ask ourselves, then grapple with, what really guides us? What truly informs our decisions?  Dig deep.  Do we allow some unacknowledged driving force to pervade the space a still small voice is speaking? Do we do the work of Jesus relating, or do we contract it out to dynamic speakers and funny bloggers and thus conclude we’ve had our Bible for the day? Because however “more than” they appear to know or be, they’re not Jesus.

And Only Jesus will remain throughout the course of your lifetime events. Everything else has an expiration date.

But don’t take my word for it. Find out for yourself. Read your actual Bible 🙂

Because here’s another profound little tidbit: the lesser evil, by definition, is still evil. The best that you can do then, come November 8th, is know Jesus for yourself.