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A Mirror Darkly?

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After working the voting precinct last week, I’m still processing. But one thing that’s coming up over and over again, is how much people around me espouse a God who looks like them. Acts like them. Believes what they believe.

Not that they believe what God believes. Their God believes what they do. Their God has opinions on weaknesses, in particular, that don’t align with the New Testament Jesus. You only have to read the New Testament once to understand, God has been redesigned. And to my, well, frightened eyes, he sounds in their mouths like an angry white guy.

This freaks me out, because at first it made me feel superior; I was on the right side of God! Our God is an Awesome God, a Mighty God, a God we seek to know. To Know God and make God known -I am doing it correctly!

And then I started to drill down in my own life, what I believed about God, what God wanted from me, what I was meant to be doing…..

….and it sure looked a lot like what I wanted to do. Like what made me comfortable. Like what benefited me. Like everyone else should think like me, understand God with the depth that I do.

My God is ethnocentric? Help us, Jesus. God in the hands of angry sinners is a terrible thing to contemplate.

So these days my prayer is, Jesus, help me interpret what I’m seeing in front of me the way you want me to. You gave us all personalities, you say in the Bible that some are hands and some are ears (and that means at least one of us has to be the liver). So okay, we have to be who you formed us to be and we see the world through the eyes you gave us.

But dear Jesus, please don’t let me reform you into who I decided I needed you to be, rather than who you are. That’s going to be way more important soon. This is going to get ugly. Don’t let me believe in the angry white guy God, and please don’t let me redesign God into a tree hugger who thinks everyone could benefit from a warm chocolate chip cookie, either. I’m listening, carefully, and with a lot more humility now. Help, please. Thank you.

Divide and Rule – – –

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Jack gets in almost in time for his Wednesday guest post – –

It seems that all over the world populist politicians have discovered the thing that others did in the 1930s or earlier.

But on Tuesday Wendy and I discovered something else –

We volunteered to hand out Democrat flyers and sample voting forms to folk as they arrived to vote at the local High School here in town. We started at 3pm and were due to continue until 7pm when the vote would close.

We arrived and were given our package of stuff and began welcoming folk as they approached. Another couple of folk were doing the same thing off to the side of us, for the Republicans – –

It was cold, miserable and raining. We shared umbrellas with our Republican compadres and chatted. Like most small towns in the US there’s a mix of ‘old families’ and newcomers. We discovered that the older guy was about to retire as a power line maintenance middle manager and move to North Carolina. His colleague was a first-time volunteer who had recently moved from California. In short order we shared a lot about each other as we continued to hand out our stuff. We didn’t talk about politics and it seemed there was no need to.

As people arrived and walked up towards us it was a mixed bag about being able to tell which way they might vote; they were young and old and some were even first time voters. Some of those wearing Trump hats or tee shirts joked with us, but only a few guys (and they were all guys) were threatening, and our new friends moved them on.

But then just 30 minutes before the polls closed along came someone else. Not a voter but a very serious Trump enthusiast. She had a loud voice which meant I discovered that she, like me, is 82 years old. Turning her back on us she took control of the  Republican team and just in case they didn’t understand explained that we, and all our kind, were the spawn of Satan. She continued to explain to no-one except us that God, Jesus and Trump were in combination the saviors of America. Finally the mean one went to her car to get something and Wendy asked the older man if he really believed she (Wendy) couldn’t be a Christian and a Democrat.

Yes, he did.

Bur we wish our friends well in their new lives and we’re glad we helped each other to survive those cold, wet and miserable 4 hours.

Democracy in action.