I recently joined a Barack Obama group on Facebook. Given my liberal political leanings, I wonder how anyone can be surprised that I'm picking him over the other Geriatric Patient. Someone I know from many, many years go took me to task since Obama is pro-abortion and, as a person who professes a belief in Christ, he didn't understand how ANY Christian could vote for a pro-abortion candidate.
While I don't plan to go into my entire rationale here, I do need to point out that I believe all politicians are corrupt! The system we have in place requires the candidates to convince us that they agree with approximately 51% of us on all the issues - that forces them to poll us to try and find out our leanings, then piece together some kind of cohesive agenda that will appeal to enough of us to get them over that 51% hump. This approach really causes us to elect people who don't really support personally what they profess to support publically and I often tell my friends that our leaders are all just effective liars. No matter what a politician says, no one is going to completely end abortion in this country...you can believe it all you want, but you're naive if you think that will EVER happen! In all honesty, we should be selecting candidates based on their ability to use their judgment effectively, trusting that they will do the very best when faced with the many challenges that leading America places upon them.
That said, I don't understand the way that so many Christian people prioritize sins and issues on behalf of God. Theologians from all major religions agree that James 2:10 (For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it) makes it very clear that sin is sin is sin is sin in the eyes of God. How then, do people make the leap from that understanding to insist that we must vote based on the abortion issue alone, when our country is so full of issues equally worthy of consideration, in light of James 2:10. I believe so firmly that George Bush and his policies have been a complete embarrassment to our country and worry that we will never recover from what he has allowed to happen. George Bush was elected largely because the ultra-conservative Christian movement backed him as a group as the anti-abortion candidate.
In my encounter with the person who objected to my vote for Obama, it was clear that we would never agree and I really didn't even try to engage him. But he wouldn't let it rest and kept pounding me over and over with his overbearing opinions. It's been a long time since I saw, firsthand, how passionately overbearing someone can be.
I don't have a problem with people who believe that ending abortion is their top priority...I just wish they didn't claim so loudly that God agrees with them and with them alone, because that's just nonsense. God isn't a Republican and he isn't a Democrat or any other party. God is love and I believe it's His desire that we love one another above all else. That's how I try to live my life...though I fall very short much of the time.
For the record, it isn't my goal to end all abortion, though I understand how other people can come to that position. Until I can decide on behalf of the world the exact time that life begins, I don't think it's my place to get into the middle of that gray area.
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