I will be happy when tomorrow arrives and the 2 year election cycle ends. Because I live in Virginia, a swing state, I receive quite a few calls from Joe the Plumber. Sometimes he is from Mannasas, Virgina and sometimes he is from Fairfax, Virginia. Sometimes he tells me to vote Republican, sometimes he tells me to vote Democrat. Joe the Plumber is everywhere, even on this blog. I read the Washington Post daily and will be greatly relieved when the paper refocuses on something other than the election. When I was a kid, I was oblivious to election news, but my children have no such luck. They come home from school and tell me all the inaccurate things said by their classmates about the candidates. I then go into great detail to explain why most information is a distortion of the truth. Josiah made one attempt to explain to a classmate that something they were saying was inaccurate. He soon discovered that most people prefer to believe what they want to believe, whether it is true or not. Even Zeke, at 4 years old, has not escaped. He came upstairs the other day and told me “Barrack Obama”. I asked him how he knew that name. “He’s a Mii on Check Me Out,” he said. Sure enough, I went downstairs to look at Barrack Obama and Sarah Palin on the Wii’s Check Me Out channel. When the election effects the Wii and the World Series, it’s a bit excessive.
I am not opposed to people passionately supporting their candidates and I wish every one would vote. However, there are those who claim Jesus Christ as Savior, who forget, in the midst of their passionate arguments for their candidate, that it is how they show Christ to the world that is most important. If in proclaiming a candidate or defaming his opponent, we display no humility, we are a poor witness of Christ. When we are not Christ like in all we do and say, when we show no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self control, we bring no honor to His name. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of propecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, it is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”