The Baltimore Sun picked up a quote from Martyholman.com this week when reporter Andrew Ratner featured President Obama and the Pope, and how they have each utilized the internet to share their message with the people they represent. The article in the Sun is here. The post that Ratner quotes from is here.
2,000 years ago, a young carpenter from a po-dunk town of Israel rose to the ranks of the known and stirred up the established religions of the day by claiming to be God and throwing out ideals like many of the ancient prophets did – Justice, hope, and peace (amongst other universal ideas). Jesus is risen!
700 years ago, A guy by the name of William Wallace (if you believe the movie) cried out for the ideals of freedom for every individual against an established feudalistic order of the day that was hell bent on keeping the land owners, land owners, and the peasants, peasants.
100 years ago, two men were born, one in the north and one in the south, who believed that things were not right, but they could be. So these men fought for equality, hope, and the American dream, both rising to national prominence, and both were shot for these ideals they were propogating. Martin Luther King, Jr. died at a hotel on March 29, 1968 and Ronald Reagan survived an assasination attempt on March 30, 1981 (coincidentally hours before my sister, Brooke, was born). Reagan went on to finish out 8 more years as the president of the United States.
I use these examples, not to call our new president (as of this January) any type of savior or freedom fighter or even a uniter – He’s not a savior and hasn’t been around long enough to fight for freedom or unite anyone. But I want to continue to propagate a different message that I believe every politician, pastor, and leader should hold on to beyond this election week.
When given the choice between cynicism and hope – we will ultimately choose hope.
When given the choice between hate and love – we will ultimately choose love.
When given the choice between injustice and justice – we will ultimately choose justice.
When things aren’t going well, the temptation is to start playing the cynic and attack the opposition, but the irony is that time and after time after time the person or people who accentuate their ideals ultimately win, over those who attack the opposition. Could it be that God created the world this way?
I know there are a lot of arguments (even good ones) against this thought process. But the examples for ideals far outweigh the examples of playing the cynic. Just look at the opposites of the aforementioned examples. They are famous too: The Pharisees, King “Longshanks”, George Wallace, and Walter Mondale.
7:45 pm – Carie and I are doing some work. I flip on Fox News for election coverage. Oh come on, for years I’ve been watching the other bias.
8:00 pm – Steve Bramlett called and said he was coming over. Kentucky and West Virginia go to McCain. Obama gets his first state: Vermont
8:15 pm – Steve Bramlett shows up. I feed him, although Carie made the meal. Yummmmm Chicken pot pie. Obama has a lot of the eastern states and New England states. Not a shock.
8:30 pm – McCain gets Alabama and Arkansas, but Obama gets a big prize: Pennsylvania. Thats gonna leave a mark.Looks like John Kerry is going to win the senator race here in Mass.
8:40 pm – McCain win Georgia. Bramlett says Obama win could be good for America. He also wants me to mention he is not for Obama though. Okay. bramlett is not for Obama. Carie is almost done with her work.
8:42 pm – Incumbent republican senator for Georgia wins.
8:43 pm – Brit Hume stutters a lot. I’m pretty sure Massachusetts went to Obama. I CANT BELIEVE IT!
8:48 pm – Bramlett just commented on a gas can commercial with country folk music being the “stupidest commercial ever.” I say its much better than the prostate commercial immediately afterwards. Now Bramletts calling his woman, cilla. She’s my facebook friend.
8:54 pm – while Carie gets up to look for a book to read and Bramlett continues to come over to our house and ignore us, talking to his girlfriend, I change the channel and see the Celtics are winning 14-13. Go Green!
8:57 pm – Talking heads on all the networks are so irritating. Should I change the channel to John Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
9:00 pm – results from several states come out now. Wyoming, New mexico, Minnesota, Michigan, Rhode Island and Michigan goes to Obama. A few states go to McCain like North Dakota and Kansas, but it looks pretty bad for McCain.
9:04 pm – skipping over to lifechurch.tv for a few. Be right back.
9:07 pm – Having church at lifechurch.tv. Sweet worship! Nice to know no matter what happens tonight, I serve a God bigger than all the hype and chaos of politics.
9:11 pm - Anybody have an idea where else I can surf while I’m ignoring the election?
9:26 pm – Bramlett just said that Craig Groeschel’s voice sounds like a candy bar. WHAT?!
9:30 pm -Craig Groeschel “Pracitcal atheism – a belief in God with no real fear of Him.”
9:32 pm – McCain wins Louisiana! Too late.
9:39 pm – I’m all about the underdog, but this race is over. Congrats President Obama.
9:40pm – Steve Bramlett, Carie, and myself, all say good night! Thanks for joining us.
Are you happy or miserable about the outcome?
Is to be uneducated. Got this from Tim Stevens at Leadingsmart.com,
Tim found the info the info here.
Two close friends with opposing viewpoints who I read regularly chimed in today with some excellent writing on the Presidential election. Please check their stuff out if you’re interested in this topic. They are ruthlessly devoted to their ideals, and I respect the way they present them.
In alphabetical order:
Here we go. This thing is about to get good.
My Hero during the MTV Awards – Jordin Sparks
A few weeks ago I taped the Espy awards (the ESPN awards for sports) and watched it in its entirety. Justin Timberlake hosted the show, and throughout the whole thing showed class, made fun of people in good taste, and along with Will Farrell made me laugh my head off. It was honestly fun too watch and made me want to tune in next year.
Fast Forward to this last weekend, when I once again taped another awards ceremony from MTV, the Video Music Awards, where MTV gave us the supposed best of this last years videos. What we actually got as viewers was a pile of crap, and more reason to believe that MTV actually believes the next generation is a bunch of sex-crazed animals who don’t think for themselves. This was not true of my generation, and this is not true of this one.
Russell Brand, a British lad, hosted this years ceremony and the best thing he said all night was, “I know you have no clue who I am…” It’s true, and I wouldn’t care if I ever saw him again. He used and abused his platform to do things like, oh, talk the whole time about sex and masturbation (a concept which seems to be an obsession with him), made fun of the Jonas Brothers who have a promise to remain virgins until marriage, and disrespect President Bush (and about 50% of our country) and tell everyone watching to vote for Obama.
As readers of my site know, I have a very neutral opinion on politics, and I will be voting, but this plea from a person who doesn’t live here was as ludicrous as a pastor who decides they have the right to disrespect president Clinton from the pulpit. Except that this was on a much larger scale.
But it shouldn’t surprise me I guess, for a quick view of who Russell Brand is and what he has done on wikipedia was quite enlightening and sheds light on the kind of people MTV believes should be influencing us.
After all was said and done, towards the end of the show, Jordin Sparks tooks the stage with John Legend to present an award and made a hero of herself for going inpromptu on MTV and saying:
I’ll close this post that could actually be a lot longer with one more comment. The interesting thing about MTV over the last 20 years is that they are no longer the underdog. They have a substantial audience and people view their television station (though their numbers are quickly fading as they are becoming more irrelevant in this day and age) as a part of popular culture. The new underdogs are those who will take a stand to do what they think the right thing for them to do is. For the Jonas Brothers and for Jordin Sparks, the right thing is to stay pure, because they have felt led to make not only a statement with words, but a statement with their entire lives. This is a statement of character that is foreign to people like Brand, who say a lot, and do very little to make our world any better.
This is, oddly enough, one of the reasons he curses our president.
Don MIller prays at the DNC
Ilove the web 2.0!
This morning I was catching up on my blogs (I had about 120 I had to scroll through), and I found something very profound. And this time, it wasn’t in Seth Godin’s blog. If you haven’t read his blog, and you’re into Marketing even on a marginal level, go and read it right now. Everything he writes is profound.
Anyway, back to my point. This morning I was reading the blog of my new friend (of the last year or so) Eric. Eric is a web developer amongst other things and has taught me a lot through the mediums of conversations and blogging about web 2.0. One of the things Eric is truly passionate about is politics. Eric likes democrats.
In his latest post, Eric gives a fairly even-handed review of his thoughts on McCain’s choice for running mate, and connects to the site of my best friend from high school (this has been several years by the way) Clay, who runs the site, “Reluctant Republicans”. Clay is also truly passionate about politics.
Clay likes republicans.
As a friend of both of them, I can appreciate their thoughts on this subject and read each and every post on the subject fairly thoroughly. But the point of this post is once again connection.
At no point in my life has Clay and Eric ever even been in the same state at the same time that I know, except for maybe this summer when Clay and his family took a vacation to NYC, but here they are, even in a subtle way, connecting their thoughts so that viewers on their blogs can see where they are both coming from. Not to mention they both have impacted my life in several ways,
I come from the end of an age where hearing from someone who differed from you was betrayal, and now its the best way to come to a conclusion. So thank you to my friends who offer two different sides of a very important subject these days. Also thank you to Don Miller, author of “Blue Like Jazz”, for this post in his new blog.
And thank you to you…for reading and sharing your thoughts.
“Hey B, I’ll bet you $100 that I will win West Virginia.”
“Well John, only if you let me guess who’s going to win Massachusetts.”
“You’re on.”
My best friend in high school, Clay, is really into politics, like many of my friends are. Clay has recently started a new web site, from a right wing perspective, that I would like to advertise for. Now, before I give you the link, I need to say that these are not my thoughts, though I agree with Clay on many things, just as I agree with Jeff and Eric on many things from the opposite viewpoint, which pretty much leaves me as an independant-type person, where I like to be left alone in my own little corner. But Clay is an amazing friend who shares my love for Christ, and so I humbly give you the link to his brand spanking new site, which is opening just to time for the fireworks in November.
If you were watching fireworks, who would you rather be watching them with,
John McCain or Barack Obama?
