Updates and Thoughts

My apologies to the blogging community for the long delay. It’s hard to believe it has been over a month since I last posted. For those of you that don’t know, we are expecting our third child in January!! We are very excited. More to come as the pregnancy marches on.

As some of you also know, I just returned from a long weekend in Boston where I saw a friend of mine whom I had not seen in nearly 5 years. It was a great blessing. His wife flew me out there to surprise him for his birthday. He was quite shocked.

So now that you are up to date, how about some current thoughts?

Like this one from Donald Miller’s book, Blue Like Jazz. This is his final complaint about some of the churches that he had recently attended:

“The churches I attended would embrace war metaphor. They would talk about how we are in a battle, and I agreed with them, only they wouldn’t clarify that we were battling poverty and hate and injustice and pride and the powers of darkness. They left us thinking that our war was against liberals and homosexuals. Their teaching would have me believe I was the good person in the world and the liberals were the bad people in the world.”

This sums up so much of my thinking these days. I am learning that Jesus had a heart for the weak, the broken, the outcast, the poor, and the hungry. He stood against injustice and contended against the powers of darkness with authority and holy resolve. This Jesus is new, unbridled, and doesn’t fit with the flannelgraph Jesus from my childhood.

I grew up believing that being a Christian and being a Republican were intrinsically linked, and abortion and gay marriage were the only important issues in politics. Turns out neither is true. I am pro-life, but I am also anti-poverty and for social justice. I am against large tax breaks for major corporations and the upper class. I am for world trade, but not at the cost of child labor and exploitation. I am against the war in Iraq, but I am for capitol punishment. I favor a more reasonable minimum wage and better job training for the poor. I think our very rich country should do more humanitarian relief and wage fewer wars (and “security details”). In short, I am neither a Republican or a Democrat – and I don’t think Jesus was one of these either.

Faith and Politics are the two topics you are not supposed to bring up in social situations. Why? Because everyone has a different opinion – and some of those can be quite divisive. The issues are too multifaceted to be addressed with simple answers and partisan solutions. The truth is that the Bible does not address every issue on the ballot. Instead, we are given a model of how to bring God’s compassion, redemption and love to this world. At times that means I will be labeled as a flaming liberal, at others a staunch conservative. But regardless of the label, we are told to live out our faith with love and grace – features all too absent in both the church and political arenas.

As November looms, I am reminded that my duty as an American is to vote and be an informed Christ-following voter. However, my duty as a Christ-follower is even greater still. Jesus said to feed the poor, cloth the naked, heal the sick, rescue the dying, defend the powerless, and bring His kingdom to earth. Truth be told, now that I’ve been introduced to the right battle, I need to start fighting.