Midterm elections tomorrow.
Most people are predicting the Democrats gaining control of the House (they need at least 15 seats), and some are also optimistic about a gain in the Senate (Dems need at least 6 seats).
That's all well and exciting, but I'm mostly pumped about the fact that after tomorrow, people will begin to announce their intentions to run for the Presidency in 2008.
I read Barack Obama's memoir, Dreams from My Father, this past summer, and I was shocked at how honest he was. Granted, he wrote it in 1994, a full 10 years before he was elected to the Senate. However, in subscribing to his podcast recently and almost finishing The Audacity of Hope, his second book, I am fully on the Obama bandwagon. In fact, I feel like I'm driving it because I'm so pumped.
I know he's young... I know he's inexperienced... but he's such a breath of fresh air. He seeing listening to both side as important and champions the art of compromise. Some people are suggesting that doing those things will make him appear weak, but I think the average American (if there is such a thing) won't see it that way. And I in fact, think it's genious. Everyone whose taken an entry-level political science course knows that to win, you must run against the predecessor. By actually taking others' opinions and intelligence into account, and perhaps considering them fully, Barack is not necessarily changing his own positions, but he is respecting the art of a democracy. And he's also posing himself to run as a candidate that is nearly the opposite of what we're used to in the Bush White House.
His father is Kenyan. His mother is from Kansas. He grew up in Hawaii and spent a couple years in India when his mother remarried.
And when I see him speak in campaigning for Democratic candidates, whether live on C-SPAN or on YouTube, when I read what he has written, and when I listen to his podcast... I cry because of the hope that he has for America. I cry because his ideas and policies are thoughtful, and I believe prayerfully considered. I cry because this is a candidate that I could actually be excited about.
I know it's premature... but if he runs and is given a chance by winning the Democratic primaries...
I think it's meant to be that my first semester teaching history may be a turning point in American history, where we first elect a Black president and start to see real, positive change in all of our lives.
Monday, November 6, 2006
Sunday, November 5, 2006
leave no doubt, i want the whole world to know just what i'm all about...
Why would you ever be a Christian, because people inevitably lump you into the same category with people like Pat Robertson and Bush?"
This is some paraphrase of an essentially rhetorical question that a kid at TIP scholars weekend threw out there during the class I was TA-ing on the 2006 midterm elections. The students were involved in group discussions on different House races, and the question probably wasn't meant to be heard... at least not to anyone outside of the group.
I hate the fact that those are the only greatly publicized pictures of Christians that a 15 year old kid can come up with when explaining why he's a Deist.
People have a great desire to be loved, to feel love, and to love one another. That can sometimes be hard to see with all of the brokenness and anger around us... While I understand that it's that conviction that makes someone pro-life, it can be that same conviction, interpreted in a different way, that makes calls someone to support stem cell research.
Christianity, and how people interpret it, is extremely complex. Some people do in fact assume certain things to be true when you call yourself a Christian. Unfortunately, one of those things isn't necessarily that you are trying to imitate a the life of Christ, or at least understand his teachings and his call to a greater purpose to love and care for all people.
For all people. For people who aren't so different from yourself. For people whose sins are not unlike my sins and whose struggles are not unlike my struggles. And none of us are deserving of the grace that God extends to us through Christ, but God extends it to all of us, just the same, no matter what we've done. We all need the love and grace of God because we are all of this secular world, not above it in a position to judge the people in it.
Barack Obama discusses the historically black church's impact on his life by describing that it, "rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation... It understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world."
The emotions of love and personal responsibility to all people can be incredibly powerful, and I don't think that as Christians we've really known how to fully tap into that. I need to be more convicted of that... so that people who have not known God can still feel the effects of God's love.
And perhaps to challenge the perceptions that being a Christian is likened to Pat Robertson
This is some paraphrase of an essentially rhetorical question that a kid at TIP scholars weekend threw out there during the class I was TA-ing on the 2006 midterm elections. The students were involved in group discussions on different House races, and the question probably wasn't meant to be heard... at least not to anyone outside of the group.
I hate the fact that those are the only greatly publicized pictures of Christians that a 15 year old kid can come up with when explaining why he's a Deist.
People have a great desire to be loved, to feel love, and to love one another. That can sometimes be hard to see with all of the brokenness and anger around us... While I understand that it's that conviction that makes someone pro-life, it can be that same conviction, interpreted in a different way, that makes calls someone to support stem cell research.
Christianity, and how people interpret it, is extremely complex. Some people do in fact assume certain things to be true when you call yourself a Christian. Unfortunately, one of those things isn't necessarily that you are trying to imitate a the life of Christ, or at least understand his teachings and his call to a greater purpose to love and care for all people.
For all people. For people who aren't so different from yourself. For people whose sins are not unlike my sins and whose struggles are not unlike my struggles. And none of us are deserving of the grace that God extends to us through Christ, but God extends it to all of us, just the same, no matter what we've done. We all need the love and grace of God because we are all of this secular world, not above it in a position to judge the people in it.
Barack Obama discusses the historically black church's impact on his life by describing that it, "rarely had the luxury of separating individual salvation from collective salvation... It understood in an intimate way the biblical call to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and challenge powers and principalities. In the history of these struggles, I was able to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death; rather, it was an active, palpable agent in the world."
The emotions of love and personal responsibility to all people can be incredibly powerful, and I don't think that as Christians we've really known how to fully tap into that. I need to be more convicted of that... so that people who have not known God can still feel the effects of God's love.
And perhaps to challenge the perceptions that being a Christian is likened to Pat Robertson
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