Political attitude ponderments...

I have my own pet soapbox issues and politics isn't one of them, but there are a few things on my mind that I wanted to expand upon. And while I realize that probably no one but no one reads my blog, I decided to go for it anyway. I considered posting a note on Facebook, but I didn't want to leave the impression that I was ranting in the faces of some friends out there with whom I don't exactly see eye to eye, so here - in the nice safe general forum of my blog - is the place I chose to verbalize.

I don't pretend to understand all the issues surrounding the recent election. I wouldn't dare say that I'm smart when it comes to political stuff, but I am happy to say that I feel more informed in these areas than I have ever in my life. Up to recently, I was unfortunately fairly apathetic when it came to politics because it just all seemed so big and vague and like none of it really affected me in the long run.

I guess this is a pretty common outlook for a lot of young people. Sure there are a lot of college kids who are all fired up and rockin' the vote and all that stuff, but there seems to be an alarmingly large number of kids out there who want to take the "I don't care" stance. Similarly (and this isn't just among young people, unfortunately), there seem to be a lot of people who want to say, "Well, none of this stuff is really that important because God's in control and we just need to trust Him... so I'm just not gonna worry about it anymore."

Don't get me wrong... I agree 110% that God IS in control and that doing His will and serving Him are the most important things in life, but that doesn't excuse us from caring about other things that we surely must face in our day-to-day lives. God isn't and never has been a puppet master and He didn't put us here to say, "Oh well, God will handle it." He expects us to know and to trust that He will care for His own and He doesn't want us to be afraid, but it is utterly foolish to just go along la-dee-dah blindly through the world we were sent to tell about Jesus uninformed and ignorant. If these things couldn't directly affect how we do serve God, then maybe we wouldn't have to care so much.

God gave us (and continues to give us, thankfully) the rights and freedoms we enjoy not to take for granted but to USE. We have freedom of speech to share with others the things that are right - whether it be things of a purely spiritual nature or things having to do with the right and wrong ways to live in this world and, yes, even conduct business and deal with governmental issues.

The fact that so many young people seem to have such a flip attitude when it comes to how they handle their rights is nothing but an ugly show of the selfishness that has infiltrated every part of our lives, and most frighteningly, our churches. How easy it is to think that I'll get up tomorrow and still be blessed with the same freedoms I have today and still be under the protection of our great God and this wonderful country.

I used to be able to go along happily in the "I don't care" group... and it certainly would have been easier to remain there. But then I got married, I started being directly affected by things like taxes and health insurance, and then (and perhaps the thing that opened my eyes the most) I had a child of my own. And I found that I couldn't not care anymore.

I know it's hard for some people to consider the real world if they haven't truly entered it yet, and maybe I should slack off and let them enjoy their ignorance for a while, but I really think they should consider some things about the future before they so firmly state that they don't care:

How would it be to have the government in your face every day telling you what you can and cannot do? Coming into YOUR home and dictating every facet of your life - from how many children you can have to whether or not you can ask God to bless your food before you eat it.

How would you like it if the few honest reports you can get in the media were taken away and you knew you were being fed absolutely nothing but lies?

How would it be to have to go to bed every night wondering if your family was going to be torn apart? How about having to wonder whether you were going to be able to step out your front door without getting blown away. What about having to watch your child be massacred because of something YOU believe and refuse to say otherwise.

I'm not saying that any of this stuff is going to happen and I don't want anybody to get the impression that I'm one of these crazies who think that Obama is a terrorist or anything along those lines. I'm not saying that because of the outcome of the election that these things are more likely. None of us know what the future holds and that fact would hold true no matter who was sitting in the White House.

None of this is to say that we should become so wrapped up in politics that we lose sight of God. I believe that we should instead be looking at these things and other issues that affect our temporal lives here BECAUSE of God and through the precepts we learn in His Word. The Bible does say that we are to be IN the world but not OF the world. We have to live here and we have to know HOW to live here, so we have to care to some extent.

So, all I'm saying is that there are a lot of good reasons to care. There are a lot of good reasons to not take our freedoms for granted. And while God IS in control and He so mercifully holds the end of all things in His hands, that doesn't excuse us from using the brains He gave us and it certainly doesn't give us permission to be so reckless as to say "I don't care" about that things that certainly do affect us (as well as future generations) so explicitly.