Relationships and the Election

It is official, the national elections are still twelve days off and I am overly sick of the campaign ads, the vitriolic rhetoric coming from both sides, not to mention all the campaign posters and telephone calls I receive every single day.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe that every Christian (not to mention every able-bodied citizen) has the responsibility to understand the issues and exercise their responsibility to vote. It is our ability to form our society and influence national policy that makes our country, and our people, great. The fact that each of us has a voice give us the moral responsibility to exercise our voice.

What I am sick of is the mean spirited way that we talk about politics. I spent a great deal of last week listening to one candidate or another call each other liars, attack their motives, and generally create feelings of animosity for the ways that their campaigns run. Further, I listen to "Christian" folks talk about their candidate and portray them to be the pious saint, and then with the same mouth refer to the other candidate in the basest of manners, demonizing that person, or that party, making them out to be the greatest single problem with America today.

For those who call themselves followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to a higher standard. We are called to love all people, even those we don't agree with. We are called to be relationship builders, conduits of reconciliation rather than architects of division. We are called to exercise our voice and vote without hatred, bitterness, or enmity in our hearts.

I have been reminded today of advice given to voters by John Wesley in 1774.

"1. Vote, without fee or reward, for the person they felt most worthy, 2. To speak no evil of the person they voted against, and 3. to take care that their spirits were not sharpened against those who voted on the other side."

These are words that we who call ourselves followers of Jesus, inheritors of grace, would do well to remember and practice daily. Let us live, as much as it lies within us, at peace with all men.

Just rambling today....