I am a rare breed in Idaho. I attend church every weekend. I have three kids and a dog. I work Monday through Friday at a small Internet software company. I love my wife. I have a college education and will pay for it over the next twenty years. So what’s so rare about me? I have chosen to follow an ideology that is rare in my social circles and rare in our great State. I am liberal.
“I’m so glad God won this election,” a friend said to me as I sat in our Sunday School room on a Sunday in the Fall of 2004. I cringed inside and thought to myself, “Oh how mistaken you are.” You see, my church background is such that I was expected to vote Republican. Thankfully the church that I and my family attend does not preach politics from the pulpit, but it is assumed that everyone leans to the Right. Afterall, doesn’t Jesus?
The answer is no, he doesn’t, and he doesn’t lean to the Left either. He cares for the plight of the disenfranchised and the causes of the needy and downtrodden. He cries out with the pain of the U.S. marine dying in a ditch and weeps the tears of the Iraqi mother clutching her dying child to her breast. His battle cry is not created in an election war room but is formed on the lips of a child as she sobs a prayer asking for someone to love her in her abusive world. He seeks to break molds, tear down walls, and destroy stereotypes.
The Jesus I know sets people free - free from the dogma, the bigotry and the fear of the unknown. He leads me forward, opens my mind to new possibilities and grants me the opportunity to see others as I want them to see me - as a human being with the desire to be truly free and to be fully loved.
So you see, I am a liberal, not because of the way I vote, but because I have taken on the burden of loving, caring, and working to ensure that others can enjoy the freedom that I do.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Does Jesus Lean Right?
Christie sent me to this. I thought it rang pretty true.
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2 comments:
Oh, thank the good sweet heavens there are people like whoever wrote that, and yourself for agreeing with it.
I live in Canada, as you may or may not be aware of, and let me tell you, the people here are pretty hisheartened in general with the US
I have no problems with Americans as a people, and bode them no harm as people, but I am not a big fan of your administration, and I think you would be hard-pressed to find one here.
I have friends in Texas, and they are liberal, it seemed abnormal to me, but we need more people like them.
I don't think that people who voted Republican because they are stringly Chrsitian are bad people, they are just misinformed. Ignorance is the real enemy. We need a war on ignorance, not terrorism.
I have to say that I really don't hate George Bush. George doesn't make all the decisions. The entire government makes the decisions.
And I really am not upset about the war in Iraq. I wish that we could wrap it up, and I wish that our soldiers could come home, but I am not anti-war. I sometimes wish I could be when I see all the terrible things that happen to innocent civilians overseas, but I know that with Suddam Hussein out of power his people are safer and will be better off in the long run. And this isn't just the belief of what TV tells me to believe, because here there is more anti-war television and political talk than there is pro war.
My thoughts come from a gut feeling that I have, and from soldiers and their wives and families. People who are more informed than me. People who know why they are fighting and are inspiring to me because they do things for their country that I could never be brave enough to do.
I completely agree that we need a war on ignorance. The people who are worried about race and homosexuality and religion and are intolerant of other people's thoughts and feelings and beliefs, that bothers me.
I guess that with the war on terrorism, I see the terrorists as the ultimate extreme racists. They hate Americans and most other countries because we all don't believe in what the terrorists believe in (religion and extremist wise). They believe that anyone not agreeing with them or standing in their way should be irradicated, and in freakish ways that can't be comprehended by normal, compassionate people, like 911 as example. They make me think of how Hitler wanted to eradicate Jews and anyone standing in his way was eradicated right along with them.
It's cold and calculating and it's very scary.
By the way, I love Canada. Husband and I spent two weeks in Vancouver in August, where we got married. We had a great time. People were super friendly and we felt right at home. My husband had many a political discussion with many a cab driver in Vancouver. LOL. We did the usual, Grouse and Capilano, Stanley Park (we got married on a rock beach below Lookout Point) and Chinatown, Yaletown, Granville Island, etc etc. I shopped all over and we ate lots of great places. I love Canada.
We hope to be back soon, we were talking about Whistler Olympics but I think I would rather go when it is quieter and less busy.
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