Thursday, October 30, 2008

4ish days and counting....

Please read this article:
http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3293

Let me just say once more that I am pro-life, and generally a social conservative. So this has been a very difficult election for me. I have wrestled with this. A lot. We have tough moral decisions to make. I do not believe that everything is relative. I do believe in good and evil and that spiritual forces are at work all around us. I have limited understanding. We don't live in a black and white world. Often, issues are gray, for various reasons (read the post below). I think I have decided that voting for Obama would serve the greatest number of people, realistically. If I could specifically vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, I would, but that is a question for the Supreme Court IF a case ever goes to trial and IF the justices overturn it. But health care, peacemaking, combating racism and sexism, and helping not just the upper and middle classes but the poor (no matter what your opinion of how they got there) can happen RIGHT NOW. It's not ok for so many of our most important systems to be this broken.

This is a good article too: http://www.ryanbolger.com/?p=170

In case you didn't read the first article, here's a good passage from it:

"It is not easy to make an imperfect decision. It just doesn’t feel right to say to the state, “Please kill less”… as it still holds an imperative “Please kill.” However, ideals can keep us from working for “better.” We make imperfect decisions all the time. For instance, you may try to avoid the large corporate Home Depot and shop at the local hardware store but then find out that the hardware store owner beats his wife, thus further complicating things. We always need to make informed decisions, though we may not endorse things that are imperfect manifestations of kingdom values.

One way for people of so-called “privilege” to act in solidarity with the poor and marginalized is to ask folks in poverty who we should vote for. Another experiment for white folks in this election might be asking people of color who have suffered so much historically whether we should vote or who we should vote for — and to honor their struggle by submitting our voices with theirs.

One way to look at voting is that it is damage control -– not so much voting for something as it is voting against something worse. We must do everything we can to reduce the destruction done by the principalities and powers, and voting may be one way to do that. Being an agent of God’s kingdom, transformation means calling out the best that the state can do, and not expecting it to be our savior."

2 comments:

joel said...

dude. i totally agree with the things you have posted so far.

maybe we should get to know each other better.

-the guy who sleeps in your bed.

(am i the only person who thinks the "words" that you have to type in to post are hilarious? they're always letter combinations that almost sound like real words. the one i will type to post this comment is "gronizel". awesome.)

Kelsi said...

dude,

i agree with the guy who sleeps in your bed. you rock!

my word was "rangs" now how can i use that in a sentence teacher?