Is God Playing Favorites?

A friend told me that you don't choose to follow God, God chooses you to be a follower. He says the song "I have Decided to Follow Jesus" particularly irks him because the song makes it look like it's your choice, not God's. I'm saying he's right about God choosing us first, but wrong to think there is anyone God does not choose.

First, the party line argument. God chooses everybody. He chose people who had a Pauline conversion experience and people who felt their heart strangely warmed. He chooses the people who claim to know him and he chooses those who seem to work against him. God even chooses the people who we good Christians think couldn't possibly know him. And God is waiting for us to get the word out to everybody else. God got first choice, and he chose all of us.

It doesn't matter whether you accept that argument or not. Blind adherence to dogma is a way to avoid thinking. Dogma simply means that someone has already thought through the ramifications of a particular position. The risk in dogma is that you may be encountering a situation that doesn't apply.

As for choosing to follow God, evangelism suffers when you ignore any person because you think God is ignoring him or her. Even the die-hard predestination (preordination) people admit that it is foolishness to second guess God - you can't pretend to know who God has elected for his grace. You've got to evangelize everyone.

A lot of us read "many are called" to mean that all are called; and "few are chosen" to mean that only some people will ultimately accept God's grace. If people are led to believe that God isn't choosing them, their eventual acceptance of God's grace is unlikely. That's it. Let's not mess them up by pretending they don't matter to God.

How about the apostle Paul? Was he so important to God that God was willing to go around the normal evangelism channels and directly recruit Paul? I'm sure that Paul didn't intend this, but he makes me feel like a second class Christian. Surely if God loved me as much as Paul, wouldn't he have blinded me on the road to Branson?

Some think their conversion experience to be more valid than mine. They want to put into practice the elitism that Paul hinted at. Don't go there, people. Paul was just a man; an extremely hard working, dedicated and influential man, but only a man. God invites us into his fellowship in different ways; each way is an affirmation and not a rejection. Let's think through our beliefs and try to find the ones that harmonize with God's lead.

Religious Conservatism

A United Methodist pastor of my recent acquaintance told me that he is religiously conservative. I couldn’t figure out what he meant. Surely the desire to love God and our fellow humans is not a left or a right issue. So I responded with my puzzlement, and said that I believe God calls every last one of us to follow him. I don’t know whether the belief that God favors certain people is liberal, conservative, or just calvinist.

The pastor somewhat straightened me out by saying he totally accepts the Bible. I still didn’t really understand how that makes someone conservative. Then he went on to say that evangelicalism is a conservative approach to life.

So just what is conservative? The word often means a belief in proven tenets. Or the desire to conserve those tenets. I accept that evangelicalism is conservative because it seems very close to the attitudes of the first followers of Jesus. It conserves the spirit of reaching out to all people.

The question becomes – which tenets are worth conserving? I think the Bible was written to show us the processes that other people have gone through in searching for God; not as a guidebook to the streets of heaven. This position conserves the spirit of Jesus’ teachings (IMO). But others would say it is liberal because it pays heed to some parts of the Bible more than others. I’m still confused. So forget that nonsense. Conservative is just a label. I feel like a conservative; but if the tenets I try to preserve warrant it, then please do consider me a fellow liberal. I’ll be proud to wear either label.

My First Democratic Party Email

What do the Republicans do right that the Democrats are getting wrong? The Republicans don't send me stupid emails, the Democrats do.

A friend suggested I would learn lots of good stuff about Barack Obama if I would go to his web site. Well, I went. But before I could get any information, it demanded my email address. Enough of that nonsense, thought I, as the mouse clicked the Back button – Obama’s price for campaign hucksterism is too high.

Now I'm getting email from the Democrats in Missouri. I dutifully read their stuff before consigning it to the virtual round file cabinet. Bad move - not for yours truly but for the Democrats. Why would they want to send a good independent voter like me such a bunch of trash talking ennui? Sure, I’m disgusted at President Bush for being a social luddite and an economic big-spender; but the constant harping and name calling of the emails gives me sympathy for the poor guy. Lessening the Bush irritation factor is bad news for every Democrat on the ballot.

I have been supporting the Democratic candidate for governor (Jay Nixon) over the Republican (Kenny Hulshoff), mostly because I detest ear-marks. Hulshoff is the Missouri king of ear-marks. My support for Nixon might be strengthened if the Democrats tell me what the candidate does right. It is diminished by blaming Hulshoff for things beyond his control. Really now, surely he did something wrong in the eyes of the Democrats. Blaming him for automotive job losses is grasping at straws. All I can figure is that they think Hushoff’s ear-marks were inadequate to save the automotive jobs. If there is something different, I wish they would mention it.

So, Democrats, send your vitriol at your own risk. Republicans, too. The party that irritates me least will get my vote.

John McCain's Veep Pick – Political Wife or Daughter?

Chris Matthews has been trying to make the argument that John McCain is establishing Sarah Palin as a political wife. Supposedly, the Republican ticket is trying to compete in the Bill & Hillary Clinton style of two presidents for the price of one. Well Matthews is close, but not quite on target. Instead of Palin being the political wife, she is John McCain’s political daughter.

Nurturing daughters in the ways of the business world started several years ago. The “take our daughters to work” day was one of the first visible signs. Though the feminist establishment may have intended that mothers take their girls to work, it really succeeded with men. A lot of guys brought them to the office. Men seemed to want to pass on a legacy of work outside the home to our maturing daughters.

We soccer dads feel the same way. Our daughters deserve top notch support from schools, government and families. We coach their teams, cheer at their games and lobby government at all levels for strong emphasis on women’s sports.

Now comes John McCain and Sarah Palin. He's a generation (or two) older. He's the candidate for president – the person who will take on the responsibilities of the highest office in America and lead the strongest military on the face of the earth. He’s the one who walks onto stage first and speaks last. The one with gravitas. But he steps to the side and listens carefully when Palin speaks. And he positively beams when she succeeds in making telling points. This isn’t the action of a husband; just watch Bill Clinton in the background of one of his wife’s speeches, mugging for the camera and trying to compete with her for attention. It’s more like Donald Trump inviting Ivanka Trump onto his television show. McCain looks for all the world like the proud father of a political prodigy.

Antidisenstablishmentlibertarianism

The parsing of the title term is left to you, dear reader. If it makes a certain amount of sense, that is purely accidental. It was coined in an attempt to describe the fallacy of terms. The following rant was a response to my daughter who envisions herself as a twenty-first century libertarian (no link yet, but maybe soon).

I think it’s time for some examination of the word libertarian. There are ever so many political dichotomies: Republican/Democrat; liberal/conservative; free market/socialism; and collectivist/individualist. (Geezer alert: my saw is that there are two kinds of people, those who think there are two kinds of people and them what don’t.) A libertarian is a person who comes down way on the side of individualist. Individualist means that each person should totally provide for themselves and leave other people the hell alone. We haven’t really seen true individualists since the days of the mountain (ahem) man. Even then, the mountain man needed the fellowship and economic support of other people. Today we are a totally enmeshed society. We can’t even use a word like niggardly without looking over our shoulders to see who is being offended. A pure individualist is extremely unlikely, and anyone who claims libertarianism looks mostly like a pure kook.

So then, how can a person communicate that she favors personal responsibility? And how can we tell the government to keep out of our pants? Like most folks, we use the term libertarian without bothering to distinguish our libertarian goals from the ideals of the extremist libertarian moonbats. I’d like an alternate term. Social-libertarian would explain that we have libertarian longings while still wanting to coexist with other people; but the word social may be too easily confused with socialism. I used to like Republican-libertarian, but the Republican party for the past ten years has been competing with the Democrats to see who can least support individualism. So too the word conservative used to mean that you are in favor of balanced budgets and less spending, but now it means that you want the government to regulate your reproductive organs; thus conservative-libertarian is a total oxymoron.

Certain Christians make great examples of the problems of trying to explain stuff using terms. If you ask them, they are totally in favor of providing for themselves and not taking government charity. Yet at the same time, they are generous to a fault of making others dependent on their generosity. I know of no term that can adequately describe this.

A true libertarian could never seek to persuade others of the rightness of her beliefs. Therefore, my treasured daughter cannot be a true libertarian, QED. (I'm merely being droll, esteemed logicians.)

Anyway, my point is that claiming to be a libertarian twenty-something may conceal more than reveal. Sometimes we throw around the word libertarian so the demolicans and republicrats will leave us alone. That advantage aside, maybe we should simply use the word independent.