I can imagine last night there were scores of moms and dads that gathered around their TV-sets to watch the returns. They probably took their kids with them to vote – to show them how important it is that we are involved in decisions of who will govern this nation. Their kids settling in with them, perhaps some popcorn and Pepsi sitting around.
“Watch what God is going to do,” they might have said to their kids. “Watch how God honors the prayers of His people!” And we know, fervent prayers have been raised by scores of people for God of cause John McCain to win the presidency – that God’s will be accomplished, that Christian American will triumph even in the face of not-so-good poll results. Perhaps not their first choice, but he is the best they got.
“Watch as God accomplishes His will, and we know that God’s will is for a faithful man who upholds the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage between one man and one woman, and America’s place as a shining city upon a hill,” the dad might say. God will honor the prayers of His people who pray against someone like Obama taking the reigns of power, against the godless secularists who are intent on ridding the Public Square of people of faith, against the Socialists who want to take our hard-earned money away from us and give to lazy people or funnel it into big-government, who will sanction sin by ending discrimination against homosexuals. God’s will is plain, because we know the Bible and the words of the Bible are quite easy to understand. Any God-fearing and God-loving Christian knows this!
So, they begin to watch the TV, Fox News, and the returns. It looks good at first. The parents say to their kids, “See! What did we tell you! If John McCain wins it is because God caused him to win!” But a little while later, things begin to change.
One of the kids looks up at his or her father or mother and says, “What’s happening mom/dad? Is God losing?” “No, of course not, son/daughter! God always comes through. Nothing can stand against the will of God. When things begin to look tough, that is when God shines all the stronger,” mom or dad might say. More states fall.
“Dad, McCain isn’t going to win, is he?” “No son, just have faith! When things are the most bleak, that is when God comes through all the more. He does this to show us humans that He is in control and that things like polls and TV commentators cannot thwart His will.” “Watch how God pulls out our victory!”
Then, they call it. Then, McCain gives a concession speech. No lawsuits trying to stop the Democrats from winning. No accusatory language of hanging chads or voter fraud by ACORN. McCain gave such a graceful and dignified speech. If he had acted like this throughout the campaign, perhaps he might have won.
What do the parents tell their children, now? Satan and the secularist thwarted God’s will? Maybe if you’re a good Arminian, but if you’re a good Calvinist… If it was God’s will that McCain win the presidency, what now? Is it God’s will that Obama won? “Isn’t God able to make His will to be done,” asks one of the kids. “Is Satan stronger than God?” “Are we all going to be put in jail because we are Christians? Are they going to make us believe in Darwinism or that homosexuals should be allowed to get married?” the kids might ask. Since, after all, the fear mongering by the politicized Religious Right has been astounding. What do they tell their children? “America” is now lost. American Family Association declared that if McCain loses it will mean the end of “American as we know it.” It will mean that our nation will be so terribly harmed that it will never be able to be corrected. (I have the e-mail sent out by Don Wildmon, chairman of AFA).
I’ve read and heard plenty of fervent prayers to God that go something like, “please, please let John McCain win!” I’ve heard Christians pleading with God to make McCain win. Why is it so hard simply to fervently pray, “Thy will be done!?” Why is it so difficult to not pray for our own agenda to be taken up by God and made real in the world, but rather to humble ourselves and think that what we know and what we believe may not be right – to pray God’s will be done and not our own!
There are a lot of people in America that are very depressed, today. A lot of people who believe that God’s very will was rejected by the country – we shook a fist in the face of God, last night. They are truly afraid that God’s punishment will now descend upon the United States. What they have a very difficult time believing is that the leaders of the politicized Religious Right or that they might have been wrong. Plainly and simply, wrong.
How much better is it to explain to our children that God’s will is not necessarily the implementation of social, political, or economic theory or systems, but in the living of life in humility, in grace, in mercy (which is “strength under control”), in simplicity. That regardless of who won the election, our Christian task is to pray for the man – this man of color, and some day a woman. “God’s will be done,” and I am certainly not smart or experienced enough to know that will in such a way to be able to tell my nieces and nephews which man or woman He wants to be president.
I don’t have kids. And, if I lived in Arkansas whether I am part of a gay couple or a co-habitating straight couple, I am now barred from adopting children. But of course, the good people of Arkansas voted for “God’s will to be done!,” and they know what that will is.
On an other note, Jessy Jackson was so taken with emotion last night while standing on the large field with thousands of other Chicagoans, that for a long time all he seemed to be able to do is hold his finger to his mouth and cry. Oprah Winfrey was there, too – tears in her eyes. I cannot begin to imagine what this is like to so many African Americans. Reading the headlines from around the world this is not just a happening in the lives of Americans – Obama’s teacher from Indonesia, the people of Obama Japan, the people from the village of his father in Kenya, of young people in India, of his step-brother in Africa – A MAN OF COLOR WILL BE THE PRESIDENT OF THE STRONGEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD. That, is an accomplishment!
Is it God’s will? I don’t know. I have no reason to believe it isn’t. I know of plenty of people who do not share my feelings. We shall see whether he can govern and/or whether others will allow him to govern.
Category Archives: politics/culture
McCain and his Concession Speech
If McCain maintained himself throughout his campaign by way of the example of his concession speech, I might have actually voted for him. What happened to him? Did he simply give himself over to his handlers? Was his want for power so strong that he gave himself over to his worst inclinations?
I simply cannot begin to imagine what this win means for so many African Americans.
It’s the Stupid Economy – Fact, Wisdom, and Virtue
Tobias Haller, BSG, has written a good post on his “In a Godward Direction” blog entitled, “It’s the Stupid Economy.”
Here is a paragraph:
For The Economy is far from a single unified entity, but a chaotic system built up, sad to say, from the very worst in human nature: primarily greed and fear. These primitive emotions are not limited to Wall Street, but are well established on Main Street too; they find a place in every home and heart.
and ending with this:
I pray this nation will have the good sense to reject McCain’s fairy tale magic, and empty promise. The next generation will indeed pay dearly if we fall prey to the seductive promise that wealth can be universal, and cost no one anything. Rather let us ask more of those who have more, and redistribute the wealth that actually exists. That, we know, can work. And it does have the imprimatur of the Gospel in its favor.
He goes on to discuss the McCain accusations against Obama with regard to socialism, redistribution of wealth, and so on. At one point, Tobias brings up that which is ethical.
Last Sunday in my sermon I preached about that which the Church and the Christian experience seek, regardless of what we want both to seek. The Church and Christian experience seek these twin goals: Wisdom and Virtue – not necessarily Fact. The Old Testament reading for last week saw God speaking through Moses and telling His people Israel what they should and should not do and in the Gospel gives us his two great commandments. We approach Scripture and the Tradition and Reason for the purpose of gaining Wisdom and realizing Virtue. Too many Christians, both liberal and conservative, approach Scripture, the Tradition, and Reason for the purpose of proving something – proving their theory, proving the rightness of their agenda, proving their schema True, but the Scriptures, the Tradition, and even Reason in this context is not about proving something true, exact, as within the Scientific Method.
The Church and the Christian experience in this world and with God, well, we don’t necessarily seek Facts or Information, we seek Wisdom and Virtue. McCain and Obama (or at least their handlers) attempt to assert Fact, negatively or positively. The seeking of verifiable, provable Facts and the seeking of Wisdom are twins aspects of Knowledge, but not identical twins. The doing-of-fact-finding and the doing-of-theology complement one another, or at least they should. Too many Christians today put them at odds, resulting in either the demand that Scripture be all factually true else they can’t believe or the assertion that none of it is actually reliable so it can all be relatively dismissed. We do the same with economic theory or political theory – Socialism or Capitalism must be verifiably false or true, but they are neither. Battle back and forth if we must, but for the Christian we should seek something other – Wisdom and Virtue that allows us to live “well” within any system.
So, when it comes to the economy and politics, the Church should call for the candidates to explain how their ideas are wise and virtuous. The theories come and go, attempted in practice and only realized too late that what is on paper does not work on the ground. Wisdom, however, is beside the point of fact or exacting proof. In Wisdom, we can say that we don’t know at this particular point in time and place what is best, but we know how to seek and to discern and to judge come what may. In Virtue, we can assert that in whatever system or circumstance we find ourselves, we can act in ways that benefit all. Virtue makes any system-of-this-world work better. For the Christian, whether we live in a laissez-faire capitalist economy or a socialist economy and whether we assert that either kind of system will be our salvation is beside the point, being wise and virtuous should be our goal; and the extolling of a system that is destined to fall short of the Glory of God already because, as Tobias stated, our human nature demands it, should not be our focus.
God tells His people, do this and don’t do this. Why? So that we will grow in Wisdom and Virtue and learn to have life-to-the-full, a peaceful and joyous life despite the circumstances, despite what economic system we inhabit, despite what we desperately want to be and try to prove to be in our self-deception to be Fact.
Something like that…
When we are about living “on the ground” rather than desperately proving our point factually true… Seek Wisdom and Virtue…
The Whole Story…
If we are to be informed voters, then we need to understand the whole story. We need to read and seek out opposing opinions, not just from those with whom we already agree. This is a bit difficult because journalism and journalists, in the aggregate, have given themselves over to political or social position promotion rather than truth telling. Nothing really new, I suspect, but in the waxing and waning of ethical behavior there are times when the reality of the wrongness is more prevalent and common.
Like the Religious Right political machine and their leaders push their agendas regardless of whether their means are ethical/moral because the end justifies all means, journalism and too many journalists are intent on pushing political and social positions/policies/theories rather than the objective reporting of news/people/events – or objective investigative journalism for the common good. Not all of them, of course, just like not all American-Evangelicals are in the thralls of the politicized, New-Conservative, Religious Right.
So, here is an opinion piece written by Orson Scott Card (or click here). For those who may not know of him, he is a writer and columnist. I first “met” him through his science fiction series begun with “Ender’s Game.” I’ve been told from a couple different sources that this book series is actually studied at the U.S. military’s War College. He has also written a number of essays (or some such thing) pertaining to culture, empire, and various other national, cultural, and geo-political topics.
Here, he chastises journalists for their lack of truth-telling. He is a Democrat, according to the personal description at the beginning of the opinion piece. He is also a Mormon. I suspect not many Mormon’s are Democrats, but I could be wrong. Anyway, for the sake of the whole story, this is an interesting piece to read….
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
By Orson Scott Card
Editor’s note: Orson Scott Card is a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism.
An open letter to the local daily paper — almost every local daily paper in America:
I remember reading All the President’s Men and thinking: That’s journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.
This housing crisis didn’t come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.
It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.
What is a risky loan? It’s a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.
The goal of this rule change was to help the poor — which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can’t repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can’t make the payments, they lose the house — along with their credit rating.
They end up worse off than before.
Value Voters…
Well, the election is just days away. I can’t believe it is approaching so quickly, but here in New York (at least in the City) there have been almost no campaign commercials. It doesn’t seem like an election at all, aside from the debates.
Here is the latest promotional/motivational video put out by the Religious Right organization ValuesVotersUSA to “get out the vote.” This tactic in the end will only come to one kind of action.
I find it strange and off putting when the image behind the statement “Judeo-Christian Values” presents a bunch of men on one knee, not genuflecting, but aiming a rifle. “Judeo-Christian values” begins with guns. Now, I know that the point is that Americans have been defending the Constitution and their rights all along and now is such a time (it is an attempt to honor those who defended OUR rights in the past and imply that this is such a time, again), but the implication of that image is not there/implied by mistake. Is it a nudging or a planting of the idea in values voters’ minds that they may need to pick up arms again if Obama wins?
The other thing that strikes me has to do with why these kinds of organizations and the people who have their psyches formed by these groups honestly believe that straight people’s marriages will be doomed, or the whole institution of marriage destroyed, if same-sex couples are allowed to marry? It makes no sense. “Saving Marriage” has much more to do with straight people and THEIR attitude concerning their own marriages and the institution than anything the prospect of same-sex marriage can do. It is fear baiting. It is ridiculous, and the leaders of these groups know it. Fear mongering brings in money and fearful people remain devoted to “the cause” (read Neo-Conservativism and Christian fundamentalism) and the maintenance of the leaders’ own power.
Onion News Network
Most people know of the “Onion,” the satirical newspaper. They also have the “Onion News Network,” a satirical “CNN.”
Here is the latest coverage on the “War for the White House”
Its the commercials, stupid
I really didn’t realize this until presidential debate last Wednesday. I am continually surprised when I hear that the election is so close and getting closer. Then I got it – there are no political commercials playing in New York (at least New York City)! It doesn’t seem like an election. McCain gave up and ceded New York, as he did Michigan (and I suppose other places as well), so pay put money into paying for commercials, I guess.
It seems so odd…
What do they do next?
The quoted paragraph below is from the American Family Association, a very prominent Religious Right organization lead by Don Wildmon. This organization along with Focus-on-the-Family and several others are the primary forces behind the reactionary and polarizing Culture Wars in the United States.
I am truly sadden by their tactics and their short-sightedness. It came to the point several years ago where their leadership decided that political and cultural domination warranted winning at all costs and by whatever means. For them, the end justifies the means. By their rhetoric and tactics, their witness, I have a very difficult time recognizing their Christianity, despite their stated beliefs.
Here is Don’s e-mail trying to rally the troops to get out and vote. His hyperbolic statements are astounding and frightening, and he does mean it literally not out of ignorance but by intent. The Religious Right and the Neo-Conservatives push for conflict and polarization, frightening whomever they can and distorting the truth in order to get their way. Others do this too, of course, but these people are supposed to be Christian. History will show, I’m convinced, that this period in American cultural and religious history will come to be profoundly damaging to the Christian witness – the cause of Christ – in this country.
Here is a paragraph from his get-out-the-vote effort to his millions of members:
Dear Friend…
If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity. This “city set on a hill†which our forefathers founded, will go dark. The damage will be deep and long lasting. It cannot be turned around in the next election, or the one after that, or by any election in the future. The damage will be permanent. That is why it is so important for you to vote and to encourage friends and family to vote. This is one election where your vote really counts.
What credibility will they have when a Democrat does win and American does not “no longer exist.” Did this doomsday scenario happen when the last Democrate was in office? Of course not, and if Obama wins it won’t happen this time, unless the damage done by the last eight years by this failed president has set the stage for the end of empire. Frankly, I never wanted “empire” anyway, so I wouldn’t be so saddened if it ends. (Of course, that all depends on what takes its place in the world – dictatorship, authoritarianism, barbarism are all possible.)
And, what is left to do by all these people who believe Wildmon and Dobson and the other Religious Right leaders? Will they take up arms for God and attempt by force to impose their vision of a “city set on a hill,” a “Godly American?” What choice will they have if Obama wins, since by his winning America will be no more and real Christians will be so persecuted that they might as well be martyrs? The intentional striving for the polarization of American society by demagoguery in order to win, attain, and gain more power will come to no good end, not because of some evil liberal force taking control of their beloved geopolitical entity, but because of their own anti-democratic efforts and by their own means for imposing upon everyone in God’s name their sectarian and “fundamentalist” vision (and I don’t use the “f-word” willy-nilly).
Read Wildmon’s whole letter below.
Hum, perhaps…
When I left Northeast Ohio to attend seminary, my state seemed to take a turn politically and socially in a direction that caused me to not recognize my own state.
Then, there is this suggestion:
Well, I would probably include Toledo and Bowling Green in the mix.
The more information we have…
I strongly believe that in order to form solid opinions, we need to be aware of and even seek out information even when that information will disagree with what we want to believe.
In our current political climate, the analysis of double-speak issued out of the two campaigns over anything and everything can be wearying, but to have an informed electorate (which is diminishing in quantity these days, sadly) we need to have exacting analysis of the proposals and positions of both candidates and their campaigns.
This analysis of Obama’s middle-class “tax cut,” from the Wall Street Journal (which is obviously more conservative and completely reliable):
Obama’s 95% Illusion: It depends on what the meaning of ‘tax cut’ is
“Wealth transfer” or “redistribution” favored by Democrats, generally, has not been or will not be any more effective in the long run that has been the deregulated profit-at-whatever-costs policies favored by the Republicans, generally, over the last 20+ years. Taking care of the poor and needy should be the domain of the religious communities, with the assistance of government, and not the other way around.