Tag / Freedom

by Greg

[ThisDay] The Presidential Election of 2012

Some posts here at GregsHead.net are visited many times every day. One of those posts was originally published on January 30th, 2005—nine years ago this day! But it’s not the one I chose to highlight today. (It certainly gets enough views on its own; if you’d like to read that short post about the word “Hiccough”, click the link at the end of this post.) In 2012, I wrote out some thoughts about the election process for the office of President of the United States (and our government in general). If you live in this country, it’s important to think about, and know what you think. So, it’s not a presidential election year (2014), but read on, and add your thoughts in the comments, if you wish. (Thanks!)

The Presidential Election of 2012

January 30th, 2012

“I’ve grown weary of the Republican primary campaigns.”

I think I may have spoken those words even an entire year ago.

Aren’t you? Or are you not even following along?

A friend asked a couple times recently what I thought of the presidential election race and I hesitated to offer my thoughts both because they are honestly not that well-formed, and equally because I am just a bit tired of thinking about it already!

But, as we are a republic, and we are electing one third of our governmental structure in about ten months, I suppose we all must pay attention at some point.

(But over a year before the election?!?)

Wearied by all the banter I see in articles (and subsequent reader comments) as well as things I hear on radio, and see in the multiple email forwards I receive from my politically-astute Dad, I decided to look up that website I had discovered a year or two ago.

VoteSmart.org has their VoteEasy tool up and running again (I’d guess it never comes down) and it’s a great way to start out gathering information and narrowing down who might be a candidate that would best represent you in Washington.

Please note that I said start out. It is critical that we investigate all claims made by reporters, political ads (especially these), and even friends. Whenever possible, go to the source.

I can’t emphasize that enough. (I did the best I could with the <strong> and <em> tags…)

I answered all the questions that VoteEasy uses to help you figure out which candidate might be the “best match” for you. I believe it’s clear that the site creators know they are just a good starting point because they don’t just tell you who to vote for. You can click on the picture of your Best Match and read their voting record, bills they authored, read/hear speeches, and see tons of information in their public record. Plus, you can of course click on all the other candidates, too, and do the same.

But, as I intend to do, verify the claims of any resource. And it’s best to verify by going to the original source as much as possible. The closer the information is to original (not filtered through several reports) the more reliable. (The reliability of the source should be gauged as well.)

It’s a lot of work, but I think we have a pretty messed up situation at all levels of government because for too long nearly all of us have neglected to actually verify the information we are fed; especially the crap that you hear from almost every political ad. Yuck.

(Ads in general greatly annoy me, but…. that’s a subject for a future post. It’s in my Draft folder…)

I’d love to know what your resources are for information on the candidates for President. Please add your thoughts and—most helpfully—links to the comments below.

The condition of our government is really always a reflection of the condition of us: We The People. After all, our elected officials—corrupt, greedy, power-hungry, disconnected, slimy politicians though they may be—are indeed pulled from the pool of us.

I believe that for so long we’ve been trained that our votes don’t matter. Conditioned to think we should leave government and “politics” up to the professionals. Sure we can vote, but since it’s not “our thing” we vote for the party our parents or our friends like (sometimes simply to avoid scorn) and we are quite easily swayed by the propaganda-like ads that bombard us for nearly a whole year before a “big” election. And so, we go on barely paying attention while money and power determine who “represents” us and the big-picture direction our country will take in the near and long-term future.

And it will only continue to get worse as long as we think that the government dictates to us, rather than represents us. We are the vehicle for change in a republican government (note the small ‘r’) and that goes beyond a vote cast every four years.

Get involved. Know what’s being done with your tax money. Both in your town and state, locally, and on the federal level as your state is represented in Washington. Information and knowledge go a long way; wield a lot of power.

But most of all, be a person of integrity. Character matters. You probably know that. You probably live that. But one reason we so disapprove of our representatives in government is that for so long in this country, character and integrity have not mattered. And, since our elected leaders are us… well… it’s a rather bleak picture.

The only way to reverse the trend is to know what you believe and live it. Honor life, freedom, liberty. Consider others before yourself. Live at peace with everyone.

It is indeed we who abide in Jesus who could (if we would) most affect the political landscape of our country.

I’m not talking about elections. I’m talking about living lives of integrity, loving justice, and treating everyone with the grace and mercy we’ve known so deeply we taste it.

That’s the only way we will truly change our country. No politician, no elected official, no representative can do anything as monumental as a concerned neighbor. You will most likely live your entire life not residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, as will I. But if each one of us treated the other like we’d want to be treated, then our country—even in Washington—would be the light on a hill our founders dreamt it could be.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with this. Watch this video. I posted it a while back. It’s a really neat way to see the current condition of our republic. Just depends on your perspective.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYhgK15fDFE

OTHER POSTS from JANUARY 30th

by Greg

Let Them Go [Church Book Excerpt]

There's The Steeple - Here's The Church | Greg Campbell | The Church BookFridays in August will be featuring a selected chapter from the book I published on the topic of the Church, titled, There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church—I call it “The Church Book”. If you’d like to read the rest, click the book cover to the left to purchase your copy from Amazon.com! (And, thank you!) Or, see the footer of this post for how to obtain a FREE copy.

Following up on Monday’s post, Natural Consequences, this chapter seems to fit really well with many thoughts recently churning in my heart and mind. It can be so hard to allow freedom toward people we love, especially when it seems obvious that their exercise of that freedom will only lead to hurt. But the greatest love allows the greatest freedom. The Incredible Father in the Prodigal Son story is such a great example of this. I believe it’s truly the heart of our Father.

Let Them Go

while talking with a friend tonight, I think I realized anew a trait of humanity that does not really mirror our Father. On the surface it is not a bad thing. Quite the opposite. But I always wonder when our ways are very clearly not His, perhaps we should take a look at our “ways”?

We are obssessed with fixing stuff. When things go wrong in our lives, or the lives of our brothers and sisters, or others who are close to us, we want to do anything we can to help. And why not? Love your neighbor as yourself, right? Don’t we try and do everything we can to fix our lives when something goes wrong?

Perhaps there is the first mistake.

Life is so much about trust, and most often our first response to adversity is not to stop and listen to what God would have us do, but to roll up our sleeves and tackle the issue head on. Sometimes the blow is too devastating for an immediate response, so then we just reel back and lose any sense of forward direction. Again, we are not trusting our Father to be with us, and take us forward—to go with us there.

When someone we know is in trouble, even by their own choice, the response is quite similar. We want to take matters into our own hands and help them get back on the right track. We offer advice, help straighten out bad thinking, admonish them… and all with an urgency brought about by the discomfort we have with suffering.

I am not saying that I am immune to this. I know I do this very thing. It is hard to watch someone whom I love be beaten down by life, or worse yet, by their own persitently bad choices.

But God does. God allows us so much more room than any of us give to each other. The Father let his wild son have his full inheritance, knowing very well that his son would get hurt. This son, whom he later runs to meet, receives the largest welcome-home party imaginable. This after having made horribly pitiful choices, wasting half of his father’s wealth.

And he let him go.

That is crazy love. That is so crazy, I think I get it, and it still doesn’t make sense. It is so hard to let someone suffer. To not step in and fix stuff. But God does not always fix stuff. Sometimes the greater good, the greater freedom and joy can come from the lower depths of our bad choices.

The ultimate freedom was in the son returning to his father after he had finally hit the bottom. That can not have been easy for the Father. He loved his son. But the greatest good is not always in the immediate fix. Sometimes loving someone really means letting them fail.

So, does that mean we allow our brothers and sisters to wallow in sin? Until they completely destroy their lives? No. If a brother is in sin, restore him gently. We ought to encourage each other to live in the light, since we are new creations—the old has gone the new has come. But once we encourage, once we admonish, once we have lovingly confronted someone in a behavior or mindset that will hurt them or others, we must allow them to choose. We can not make their choices for them, even if we try. God does not miss anyone’s poor choices. He knows all things. Nor does he want for anyone to suffer eternal condemnation due to poor choices. Even still, he does not always step in and fix stuff.

The greatest love allows the greatest freedom. True freedom produces the greatest love.

As hard as it may be, sometimes we just have to let them go.

htc-small
This post is a chapter in the book There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church by Greg Campbell, available through Amazon.com. If you’d like to purchase the book, please click the book title in the previous sentence. If you’d like a free PDF version, it is available here. Also have some of the audio version available at church.gregshead.net. Thanks for reading, sharing, and feel free to add to the discussion in the comments below, or wherever else you can reach me.