There’s a palpable sense of frustration, anger and fear in the air all around the world today. In the USA it expresses itself through Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. England shocked the world with its Brexit.

In France, the far-right party of Marine LePen serves as a megaphone for those who are fed up with the status quo.

These feelings always exist but it seems that they are boiling rather than simmering now.

When people get mad good things can happen. In the United States MADD (“Mothers Against Drunk Driving”) was born from the anger of Candy Lightner who lost her thirteen-year old daughter when she was struck by a car piloted by a drunk driver.

MADD claims that deaths caused by drunk drivers have plummeted by 50% in the USA since its founding.

That’s good.

In Germany in the early 1930s, though, people were fed up with economic suffering and shame heaped on them from losing the First World War.  Nazis, communists and others offered solutions for angry people—and paved the way for Adolph Hitler’s rise to power.

The moral of the story is to make sure your anger leads to something better … if you can.

I don’t know how all this is going to play out, though the rage and venom from sides of the political spectrum shocks me. Media—right, left and center–constantly stirs the pot and has given non-partisan journalism a black eye.

Today’s “news” often tells you more about the political bent of the journalist than it does about what has happened.

I Hope …

Here are two things I hope fervently: I hope each of us remembers that we don’t know everything. If we win, let’s remember that we’re sharing this country with others who also love it. Let’s try to understand why others are mad.

Getting 50.001 percent of the vote doesn’t make us right. It just makes us the winner of the election. Sure, that 49.999 percent of the electorate that voted for the loser has some doofuses (That’s the plural of doofus. I hesitated between doofuses and doofi).

But, they also bring another way of looking at things and challenge us to think beyond our limited experience.

Respect the other person, even if you don’t agree with him. Honestly, it’s hard to take my own advice when I watch adults act like two-year olds. These people are going to lead the free world? Help us Lord.

I Hope For the Church

What I hope for the Church is this: That we stop acting as if everything in history depends on Hillary or Donald. Neither one of them has nail scars in their hands.

Where men live together they must decide the rules of how they live together and who will be the leaders in these associations.

It doesn’t work without rules and authority.

Christians can/must be involved in our democratic societies. We need Christian truck drivers, Christian bankers, Christian secretaries, Christian doctors, and Christian politicians.

And no, this last isn’t an oxymoron.

Our problem comes when we think our main recourse is temporal power–politics.

There is a Power who reigns over all and He is the One who decides and disposes. My gripe is that we get so passionate about politics and so tepid about prayer, so red-faced about Republicans and Democrats and so “ho-hum” about a man’s eternal destiny.

Sometimes I think we are like mad bulls reacting to the bullfighter’s red cape. And the “bullfighter” shakes his cape often, simply to antagonize us and see us charge and accomplish … not much.

Our most powerful message is Jesus and the life change He brings. Continue reading →