sojourns with Jesus

This post is cross posted at willadair.com and on Jesus Creed at Beliefnet.

I live in NC and like in TX there has been here a great deal of hub-bub over the President’s address to public school kids. I want to add to that hub-bub. » Read the rest of this entry «

Barak Obama has won the 2008 presidency. It is a historic day. We the American people have chosen to elect a Democrat to the White House in the hopes of putting America on a better financial path. I pray that my fellow countrymen have made a wise decision and that the policies that president Elect Obama endorses are good public policies for families and champion Constitutional values.

It would be unrealistic not to mention the most historic nature of Obama’s election is that he is the first black president in US history. Congratulations to him and all his supporters.

Here is my prayer for the next president. May he run the country well for the next four years. May he strive daily to follow after God’s purpose for this nation. May he seek God to correct him where and when he errs. Amen.

Here is my prayer for those who didn’t vote for him especially conservative Christians. May those of us who often so readily express our Christian conservative convictions do the following. May we pray for him daily, support him where we can, and may we have the courage to fight for the soul of our country as we try to follow after what we believe is the best path for America. Amen.

Here is my final prayer and it is to God himself. May the path that has been chosen by my countrymen be used of God to lead many to the true path and way that leads to God and his glory and holiness. May God have mercy on us and during this next four years may the grace of God change this country to truly become a Nation of Christians. Amen.

May God bless America.

I and my wife voted early on Friday afternoon. Our wait was about a hour and half long. Last Monday I had made up my mind and we finally made it to the polls for early voting. I held my eight month old daughter for about half that time as she slept in my arms, we slowly snaked up the incredibly slow moving line. It took me a long time to figure out how I was going to vote for the presidential ticket after I had ruled out voting for Obama. I had planned not to vote unless it was for a Third Party candidate. I really want to see the end of the two party system of just Democrat and just Republicans. Sadly none of the major Third Party candidates appealed to me that much. Barr is a joke. He has hurt the Libertarian ticket in my opinion maybe beyond repair. Chuck Baldwin seemed interesting but he didn’t even make the ballot in NC.

For full disclosure, I voted for Ron Paul in the Republican primary, my wife voted for Huckabee. Neither of us where die-hard McCain supporters but we thought he would be slightly better than Obama. His senate record is a endorsement to conservative pragmatism and bipartisanship, be that a good thing or bad thing.

I really liked McCain in the 2000 primary. I even enthusiastically voted for him then. The McCain of 2008 seems to be inconsistent. He seems like part McCain 2000 mixed with whoever the Republican spin doctors were that tried to remake him into their mold. They wanted him always smiling and didn’t want him to get angry or appear to be too emotional. I hate spin. I voted for McCain in 2000 in the Republican primary and wished he had won. He didn’t. To be honest, I think Bush was a awful president on pretty much every single fiscal issue that his administration has touched. The GWB version of compassionate conservatism added to the fiscal mess America is now in. It was coupled with a version of a dead Republicanism that had died after the 1998 Clinton scandal. The RNC was obsessed with impeachment and forgot about reforming America, coupled with bad housing policy from the Democratic Carter era that got steam rolling under Clinton and again under Bush has led to our economy tanking. This has all been coupled with American greed for “the good life” which has led to the big mess our economy is now in.

Bush did do some good for the country but on a whole it was not a well run administration. In 2008 I voted for Ron Paul in the primary because I felt McCain wasn’t being himself. Huckabee didn’t impress me in that he didn’t seem to articulate what he would do as President, Thompson didn’t have the fire to fight, Romney just didn’t impress me until ironically his succession speech, and Giluini is pro-choice so I couldn’t support him on those grounds. Ron Paul for better or worse is always Ron Paul. I think McCain listened way to much to his campaign advisers. As a result his just didn’t seem genuine. The story of John McCain is very remarkable an admirable story. Ironically, in the last month of the campaign he has seemed more like the McCain of 2000. He started talking more about his views (excluding the pandering bailout package which he supposedly supports) and started to sound more like a old school Reagan style Republican. I liked that and decided to vote for him for that reason, as did my wife.

Oh, as for the pick of Sarah Palin as VP, I think Palin was a mixed bag for the ticket. Her first appearance was awesome it really helped rally the base of the RNC behind McCain. Her media appearances have been a mixed bag. My guess is she likely will be a fresh face for a new kind of Republicanism in America. Her pro-life stance is admirable. I think we will see her out there again if the McCain/Palin ticket doesn’t win this election. I think what hurt her most was listening to the same advisers that tried to change John McCain into someone he is not and told her not to speak to the press. It cut into her reformer maverick image. Listening to those advisers was a huge mistake and it may have cost them a election.

I wanted to vote for Barak Obama. Here’s why. Of the two major party candidates he is on the surface different and has a lot going for him. He is articulate unlike our current president. He seems to be outside the status quo of the establishment in DC. His mixed ethnicity is a page right out of the story book of American diversity and opportunity. The idea of voting for a new kind of politician really does appeal to me. I liked the purple states comment the Obama made back in the 2004 Democratic National Convention. I had hoped that Obama was a new type of Democrat who would work to build bridges between cultural conservatives and cultural liberals. Sadly I had hoped that same thing eight years ago when I back George Bush who was suppose to be a new kind of Republican. He after all ran as a “Compassionate Conservative.” The Republican party as a whole under GWB really didn’t impress me much. I was looking for something new and hopefully more inline with my values. Sadly what I see in Obama is what appears to be nothing more than a well rehearsed empty rhetoric that is designed to do nothing more than get him elected. I think he will be the Democrats version of GWB. All flash and no substance of being a bridge builder. I am far more afraid than just being a democratic version of Bush that he is a far left progressive that wants to change America towards a progressive agenda.

There is something so appealing about electing a black president that does embody a large part of the American dream. I grew up in the South and I have seen racism in my own family and also in the culture around me. It disgust me to see that it still exists in the 21st century. Obama is a articulate and well spoken man. He first seemed to be someone that could lead well. That would definitely help heal some of the wounds that run deep between the races, parties, and ever changing social landscape of America.

Yet in the end I could not vote for the man. Martin Luther King Jr. once said “I have a dream of a day when people will not be judged by the color of the skin but by the character of their heart.” I try my best to each day follow that God inspired advice. I try to discern to the best of my limited ability what a person’s true character is. With that in mind there are two major reasons I could not vote for Barak Obama based solely on his moral character.

First I don’t like his policy on human life. Simply put it is callous. The most important issue to me by far is the sanctity of human life. Obama is radically pro-choice (that choice by the way always is murder). His words on the subject are callous. Referring to his daughters in a hypothetical situation of being found pregnant he said: “I wouldn’t want my daughter punished with a kid.” That is beyond callous. As a Christian there is no way that I can vote for a guy who thinks children how ever they are conceived could ever be considered a punishment. I have a daughter and if she one day had a child outside of wedlock I wouldn’t consider her having the child as a “punishment.”

Second, the day before the general election I still have no idea who Barak Obama really is. What are his religious views? I’ve heard him say that he is a Christian but what does he mean by that? It seems from the church he was a member of for 20 years that he believes in black liberation theology which is nothing more than afrocentric quasi-religious Marxism. Why wasn’t that explained in the mainstream media. Are the guys at href="http://getreligon.com">getreligion.com the only ones that can talk about religion and how it shapes a candidates thought process? If that theology is his position then it is scary to think that a person that believes that Jesus was pro-Marxism mixed with latent black racism is ever okay. That certainly does not reflect the uniting ideas of true equality as found in the New Testament nor what this nation needs.

What is his understanding of fairness? I don’t understand how 40% of the 95% of people he is promising a tax refund can even qualify if they don’t pay property taxes. Those who don’t pay property taxes should not get a tax cut. There is nothing to cut. I don’t like it when politician or anyone plays the semantic game. It simply is welfare under the auspices of “fairness”. How is that fair? How does his religious views effect this?

What about the concept of equal sacrifice? I think the fair tax is far more biblical than wealth redistribution. By the way the fact that Rick Warren had Obama for a hour answering questions about his faith and policy and never asked these questions is seriously disturbing to me. Shame on you Rick for not helping clarify these issue for your fellow Christians like me who really wanted to know where this man stands apart from well crafted political rhetoric on the stump.

I think Barak Obama may win. Yet he will do so because the media as a whole dropped the ball and didn’t really seek to show who this man is. To be honest I don’t think any of us really know. He could be a really great guy or he could be the worst candidate to ever become president. The mainstream media simply didn’t challenge the man or his history. The media was and still is in love with the idea of a charismatic black man that could atone for all the sins that America has done to black people in America. By the way a nonwhite guy named Jesus did that about 2000 years ago on the cross. He was ethnically from one of the most oppressed people groups in world history.

I really want to know more about Obama’s relationship with the people in his life. What about Resco, Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and what about leftist groups like Acorn? Why hasn’t the media helped clear this up? Where has he traveled to, how have those experiences shaped him, and what is his view of how to create a fair and just society.

Regardless of who wins I will be praying for them. If it is Barak Obama I hope some of his positions change and that the change he brings to America curries the favor and blessings of God. If it is McCain I will pray for the same thing. It is about all I can do for now.

I think things just got interesting. The historical nature of this election is now a bit more monumental. Palin is first serious female VP candidate in the Republican party. Obama is first national black Presidential candidate for the Democratic party. Jesse Jackson did come close but of course didn’t win the primary back in 1988. I am now excited about the opportunity to elect not just the first female VP but a pro-lifer. I am much more open to supporting the McCain ticket. I will address in another post why I pray daily for Mr. Obama but hope that he does not win the presidency. Hopefully those of us who are theologically-conservative Christians will have in 2012 or 2016 the opportunity to elect the first female president in America who is a social and fiscal conservative and more importantly strongly pro-life. Mike Huckabee once well said that for pro-lifers that “we believe that life begins at conception but it doesn’t end there.” I hope that Mrs. Palin will be able to articulate and help influence our culture to choose the pro-life position. If that occurs abortion will be a moot issue.

I am hoping that McCain gets a big boost for his pick and I hope this is only the beginning of Mrs. Palin’s national career. I also hope Mrs. Palin takes the opportunity to explain why pro-life people are pro-life and not pro-death. Mrs. Palin will have a national platform to explain her choice to have her last child whom doctors advised killing while in the womb simply because it had downs syndrome. The issue for those of us who are pro-life is just that, it is all about life. We are pro that is to say for life, even life that is not convenient or going to be easy for the woman caring it to term. I think Mrs. Palin will able to speak to that issue better than anyone else since she and her husband had to make the decision to have a child with down syndrome. I think that Mr. McCain has now made a powerful case to vote McCain-Palin. I hope that they win and the McCain ticket now has confirmed two more votes from my wife and me. The Maverick made the right choice and I hope America does as well.

Bob Barr the Libertarian candidate for president! Not Bar Bar the possibly Republican elephant!

Check out this link for the reason this comment is posted on my site.
As a pastor, all be it a new one, I would like to add the following comments. » Read the rest of this entry «

I have a pension for doing those completely unreliable online personality test. I was up for a few minutes reading on the ‘08 candidates and decided I would take a test on the link of one the candidate’s sons. According to the poll it said I was 52% Republican. To quote Seinfield “not that there is anything wrong with that.”

I generally do vote Republican but I hope my political values aren’t ever blindly aligned to any earthly party but instead are hopefully always aligned to the Kingdom of God. What bothers me about the results of the test, is that the author probably is assuming that certain secondary and tertiary issues are what defines a persons political views. » Read the rest of this entry «

Of all the candidates that I have seen, I think I am going to back Mike Huckabee of Hope, Arkansas. The last time a guy from that town ran for president he won two terms in office. Mike impresses me and I think he could make a good solid pro-Christian politician. I think he is worth a shot :) His website can be found here at Explore Mike Huckabee. I like the guy enough that I a putting a link up to him.