Grow Up and Vote, But Not for Jesus

 

Make no mistake, this writer would love to be able to vote for Jesus. He is precisely the one we need; he is incorruptible, and they wouldn't be able to kill him. They already tried that. The one big flaw in His campaign, for whatever office you might name, is that He is not on the ballot, and probably never will be.

Like William Tecumseh Sherman said, and Jesus would undoubtedly echo, “I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.” Unlike Sherman, who considered himself not fit for the office of President, Jesus would decline for even better reasons, He already has a job, and it is bigger than any other.

Yet, sadly, some tell me they are planning on voting for Jesus, and not for any actual candidate running for office. They must think they are being really clever, and above the fray with that approach, but the truth is, they should simply grow up. That's right, they should grow up and realize they should do the best they can with the tools and opportunities they are given, and not just whimper down and squander those chances.

The fact is that Christians who take that kind of stance, either voting for Jesus, or deciding to not vote at all are much like the wicked servant highlighted in the parable of the talents, Matthew 25: 14-30. Three servants were given talents to invest, and of the three, one of them said, in verse 25,”And I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground...” Not voting, or casting a meaningless ballot for Jesus, or Mickey Mouse or whoever, is like that wicked and lazy servant, hiding your talent in the ground, and it is done out of fear, not reverence, or moral superiority, or even good humor.

Voting, and elections generally, in this self governing republic, are not just sporting events, or a way to virtue signal. The healthiest way to look at voting is to see elections as a kind of collective mind being engaged, all of us thinking together to work to solve our problems. We might, individually, not have the same opinions, but collectively, when we all sincerely engage to make the best decision, society will generally come to the best decisions. As such, we have a civic obligation to take part in the process, and to do it as well as we can. To just slough it off, to squander this duty, this opportunity, is very much like the wicked servant who buried his talent.

What's more, not taking a sincere and well thought out stance because you are afraid of offending some friends or relatives is doubly bad. Not only are you squandering your God given “talent”, but not taking a stance, in public, on vital, spiritually significant matters like justice, and judgment and righteousness, out of fear of offending others, is sure to offend the One who created and saved you.

You say, “But, but...I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils. That sounds ungodly to me.”

Oh do grow up. In fact, let me be very emphatic about that, without resorting to the F-bomb so often used these days to indicate deep passion about something. Grow all the way up!

Yes, you will be voting for the lesser of two evils. It is good for you to recognize that, because that is how it has always been, and, until Jesus does return, how it will always be. Do grow up and do the best you can with that.

As someone said, “If men were angels, we wouldn't need governments.” Men, needless to say, are not angels, and so we have to have governments, flawed and dangerous though they be. The are a necessary evil, and so we must choose between the lesser of two, or more, evils. That is the sad reality folks, grow up and face it like grown human adults.

While we are on the subject, don't get hung up about whether or not your side wins every battle. Another passage from the Bible might help here.

Ecclesiastes 11:6 tells us.

“In the morning sow your seed,

And in the evening do not withhold your hand;

For you do not know which will prosper,

Either this or that,

Or whether both alike will be good.”

Whether you win or lose every battle, know that your best efforts, carried out as to the Lord, will always help the cause of Christ. Some efforts will work, some won't, but it is always a good idea to make the sincere effort. So get out and vote, and use the loving spirit you have been given to maintain relationships with other folks, especially with people who disagree with you, whenever you can.

Finally, never, and that means never, give into the temptation to sit on the sidelines, to squander the gift of self governance God bestowed on us through the work and sacrifice of our forebears. Don't deign in a spirit of phony virtue signaling to not vote, or to vote for someone not on the ballot, like Jesus. When you do that, when you bury and stifle your own “talents,” you merely prevent the knowledge and wisdom God has gifted to you from being entered into and effective in that collective mind we call self government. Sure, you can still pray, and have an effect in the spiritual realm, but so can the minions of the enemy, and they also vote. In high numbers by the way.

It is time for we, the Christian people of this nation, to stand to it like true men and women. To do our dead level best to move this nation in a righteous and godly direction. In short, it is time for us to GROW UP and vote.

And may God bless us as we do.

No to More Lefty Kool Aid

 

Prevent the rise of Christian Nationalism, preserve the separation of church and state, and never allow anyone to use the power of government to impose their moral beliefs on others. That, in sum, is the main battle cry of the modern American left, one they rally around with passionate conviction, and one that resonates powerfully with a lot of non liberal citizens. Which is all truly ironic, because the left, the Progressives, the big “L” Liberals, are not only the worst violators of those principles in the last one hundred years, but in that same time period they have also produced the most despicable and downright evil expressions of religious zeal combined with political ambition. I know, I know, I have some 'splainin to do about this, so let me explain.

The first big lie around all this separation of church and state stuff is the idea that it applies only to those beliefs that involve God, or some kind of deity. That lie can be easily dispelled by transliterating the term “religion” and converting it, as is done in solving mathematical equations, to the term “Belief system.” Then we can see that belief systems don't have to refer to any god.

With that insight in mind, let's look at public laws, and realize that every law is based on, or at least informed by, someone's belief system. Every law on the books is put there because of somebody's idea about what is right and wrong. Every law is imposing someone's moral conclusions on others.

Many of these moral conclusions most all of us agree on. Such as the laws against murder, slavery, rape and theft. There are, however, people who don't agree with those conclusions; we call them murderers, rapists, enslavers and thieves. Most of us feel it is perfectly acceptable to impose those beliefs, our beliefs, on such people.

Next we must consider laws which don't have such widespread support, laws which reflect belief systems held by only a portion of the pubic. This is where we will hear the leftists shouting, keep your God based beliefs and laws out of our lives. It is forbidden to impose your religious values on others. They will then turn around and impose their values, which are based on their unproven belief systems, on the rest of us.

Such as insisting that every city, town and village must remove prayer and bible reading from the public schools. Sure, some of that is being rolled back at this moment in some few states, but just wait until the Democrats are back in power and, as promised, pack the Supreme Court. Then all their agenda will be back in full force.

Once again, it will be prohibited to ban burning the American flag, because that is free speech, but burning the flag of some other nation is prohibited as hate speech and ethnic intimidation. Every little village must accept pornography, and pornographic expression, no matter how much it violates the local beliefs. Abortion must be legal, as must homosexuality, same sex marriage and transgenderism. In fact, not only made legal, but be awarded government funding when needed.

Traditional moral education must be removed from public schools, but it must be replaced by leftist beliefs. Tolerance must be taught, but tolerance only of certain identified groups and beliefs. Other unnamed groups are to be ignored, discouraged and demeaned, all in the name of conducting some kind of intersectional judgment day.

The Liberals will respond that they are merely protecting marginalized folks who need protecting. They are not imposing their beliefs on others. But then we must consider laws that force bakers to decorate cakes in ways the baker finds morally repugnant. Why not just force him to produce a cake decorated with pornography? There is no difference once we endorse the concept that forcing some creator to create something they hate is acceptable.

Medical personnel are required to perform surgeries, such as abortions and transsexual procedures, with which they disagree. Some store owners are legally required to use transsexual pronouns which they consider delusional. Sure sounds like the left is imposing their unproven moral beliefs, their secular religion, on others.

As to evil, and which side has engaged in more of it, the question becomes a little cloudy. Certainly, on the subject of sexual exploitation of children, there is plenty of blame to spread around, with both left and right wing churches sharing in the guilt, and both liberal and conservative political groups also complicit in the crimes.

When we look, however, at the last hundred or so years of the history of this troubled planet, the left wing starts to look like the more evil side. While they can point to Chile under Pinochet, Spain under Franco, or Iran under the Shah as examples of right wing excess, the crimes of left wing ideology, such as in the old Soviet Union, or China under Mao, dwarfs those examples. Russia, because Ukrainian farmers stood in the way of collectivizing agriculture starved many million to death in the Holdomor. China, under Mao and in the interest of doing what they considered the the right thing in bringing China into modern times, purged multiple, maybe hundreds of, millions of people to death. All that evil, and much more left unmentioned here, was done in the name of doing the right thing according to somebody's unproven secular humanist belief systems.

Back here in the good old USA, the liberal churches don't have hands that are nearly as immaculately clean as they imagine. A barely remembered episode in recent history points that out. Remember the Jones town Massacre from 1978, when about 900 people were forced by their pastor, Jim Jones, into committing suicide by drinking poisoned kool aid? After that happened we were never really informed about what denomination Jim Jones, and his People's Temple, was affiliated with. The media was content to let us assume he was just a rogue fundamentalist preacher who got badly off the rails. Not so.

According to the book, “Cult City” by Daniel J. Flynn, Jim Jones was intimately connected to the liberal political establishment in San Francisco. In fact, he and his flock at the People's Temple (the name reveals the agenda) were instrumental in getting Harvey Milk, who at the time was the first openly gay person to run for public office, elected to become City Supervisor. Jim Jones was a radical left wing preacher, steeped in blasphemy and heresy.

The conclusion is that before we go off and think that liberal, progressive and wonderfully minded folks are nothing but good and never harmless, we should consider the kinds of evil they have proven themselves capable of. We should take that into consideration when they try to impose their values on us in the name of preventing us from imposing our values on them.

Even more, we should consider all that before we give our support to a new generation of left wing blaspheming heretics like James Talarico and Adam Hamilton. The campaign ads the good Reverend Hamilton puts out portray him as a reasonable, compromise minded man whose simple wonderfulness will bring good solutions to the mess in DC. Just as, it must be assumed, he influenced one of Americas oldest and largest Christian denominations, the United Methodist Church, into painfully splitting up.

Think long and hard about what kinds of horror such seemingly well meant liberalism has led to in the past, and are likely to lead to in the future if we let them. Don't buy into their myths about separating church and state, and by all means, don't drink their kool aid.