Hi Betty, my comments about Ebola were in response to your above italicized comment at #75 and not in relation to eschatology. In response to "no place to come back to", I thought perhaps you might be thinking of ebola, but whether you did or not, it did make me think of it as a real possible vehicle for "no place to come back to" to be realized.
So, even though my intent was not eschatological, your thoughts about those who vote their conservative Christian principles are on point. I do think they might see Obama allowing ebola into the country to fit with their notion that Obama is an unusual, indirect judgment of God on this country. In other words, God allows the country to suffer the consequences of its own decisions.
I can understand the "stay-at-homes" or the people who wasted their ballots on impossible choices in the last election only on the basis that they were convinced, they believed, that God elected Barack Obama as His instrument of devastating affliction on the American people in compensation for their egregious sinfulness....Thus the Ebola piece fits right into this picture: It is a divinely-imposed scourge of human, even specifically American, perfidy and sinfulness.
On their behalf, I would take issue with your comment about their "wast(ing) their ballots". It is a wonder that "not voting for those who violate their most deeply held beliefs" would lead to a "judgment of consequences" on this nation. It is a wonder that their numbers are great enough that they decided that election. They would consider it a wonder that they would be castigated for not voting for any candidate who violates their most deeply held religious beliefs. They would wonder how anyone could not understand why they did what they did.
My own hope is that the republicans don't do a repeat on this same thing. If they do, they will again lose the votes of these conservative Christians. "When will they ever learn....when will they ev-er learn."
Galatians 6:7 - Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
I totally agree with “lesser of evil” calculations in politics when the lesser of evil candidate is essentially a decent man. After 8 years of Clinton, Bush was a breath of fresh air and I am so thankful he was president on 911. He was and is a decent man and a believer who aspires to do the right thing.
With some people it gets to be a judgment call at some point. I swore for two years before McCain declared for president that I would never vote for him, since I consider him to be one of the most faithless and untrustworthy individuals in politics. But in the end I did.
His behavior in politics continues to be an embarrassment.
After watching the romniacs savage Palin and the Tea Party folk for years, and watching Romney himself go AWOL all during the fight of the century over O’s assaults on the constitution (Palin led the defenders from her little Facebook page while Romney sat out and focus-grouped his supposed principles) I swore I would never vote for the guy. But in the end I did.
The Romniacs and McCainiacs like to blame the rest of us for the fact that their candidate lost. Doesn’t work on me, since despite my misgivings I did vote for them. But we did warn that McCain wouldn’t be able to inspire the base (you can’t go around attacking Christians and conservatives and then expect them to be too enthused about you). And we warned the same thing about Romney (all the worst attacks on Palin and the tea folk, when they came from Repubs, turned out to be from romniacs). You can’t expect conservatives to back someone who doesn’t back them. Romney himself seems like a decent fellow personally, but the romniacs are some of the most unlovely people in politics. And I was always struck by the fact that Romney does not fight, and does not lead. He prepares his resume and waits for the call.
The Repubs have the chance right now to make their case but they seem to have lost faith in their own principles, and lost the will and ability to defend them. Their strategy for the last couple of decades seem to be to hide their supposed principles and hope people will vote for them accidently, instead of explaining them and persuading people.
So now the party seems determined to run someone who is soft on immigration and soft on abortion and marriage. I keep saying, run an open-borders guy for president and you’ll split this party. They aren’t going to listen, of course, and if they lose they’ll blame conservatives again.
Run someone who is soft on abortion and marriage, again, and they will split this party. Blame conservatives if it makes them feel better, but with tears in my eyes, they have been warned. Don’t do it.
The Holy Scriptures tell us that "the salt of the earth," the "saving remnant," is very small in number. Yet the Lord desires that they shall have disproportionate influence and effect, given their number.
At least, that is my reading on the matter at hand.
Complicating this problem is the fact that what ails America most right now is a cultural division. I'd define this division as between those people who love God and His Word, and those who outright despise him, who erect an "alternative reality" that, from their diminished and quite possibly psychotic point of view, would constitute an "improvement" of what God wrought in the Beginning, for a purpose more congenial to their own ideological sense of "human perfection and happiness, to be achieved by human (expert!) means."
Fundamentally, the root of the present American sociopolitical disorder is cultural. There are no political answers or "fixes" for what are inherently cultural problems. Which is probably why we have such an electoral mess on our hands.
The culture has to be "fixed" first. And, in a Christian nation, who better to do that than Christians?
The cultural divide can be drawn as the seemingly irreconcilable separation of faith and reason. In the current intellectual climate Faith is suspect at best, foolish, superstitious at worst. While Reason is the trusted and true, the very "scientific method."
Which any student of history knows is total bunk from the get-go. The ageless work of Christianity has been to reconcile faith AND reason, as two needful partners for the progress of the human intellect as such — not to mention the salvation of souls.
And I might add, all the best work ever achieved by the natural sciences has been premised on this same insight....
The folks who stayed home on election day 2012 are not "bad" people. I recognize they were acting consistently with their own sense of deep conscience, and commitment to God their Father as they understand their relation to Him.
However, it is still true (to my way of thinking anyway) that "Rome burns" because they refuse to engage in the ever-messy political "sausage-making."
We do not live in a "perfect" world. It seems to me our job as God's children — ourselves imperfect — is to try to mitigate the evil we find in our daily, ordinary lives as much as we possibly can. I call this sort of thing fidelity to God our Father, and to the Logos which is the Truth of His Creation, from First to Last.
As far as the "no place to go back to" consideration is concerned, ultimately faithful Christians always have a place "to go back to," as God may call them.
Problem is, if God expects such Christians to take hold of responsibility for the sufferings of God-endowed constitutional America, which is under full-scale attack by (I daresay) Satan and his co-conspirators, and they do nothing to resist — then what happens to them???
Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for entertaining such questions as this, and for what I imagine is a deeply meditated, sagacious, principled reply which I deeply welcome.
When you boil it all down, God knows everything; and we humans, not so very much.