The Organ of Meaning

Okay. I need to post in response to the responses on my post (they’re mostly on Facebook).

I should have made it clear that my beef was mostly with people who are Christians undercutting and slandering someone else who is also. The whole socialism is a peve of mine, but not that big of a deal. I apologise if anyone feels offended by how I presented the comments about socialism, but I will not be apologising about the ones about slandering a brother in Christ. Take it as rebuke or whatever you want to call it.

To summarize: dis your brother and I’ll get pissed, but dis politics all you want I’ll just debate it with you.

I’m glad.

I have a few complaints though. I am disappointed in a whole lot of my friends.

Honestly, I don’t care at all who you voted for. I actually do completely understand why you voted for McCain, and I would not have been enormously disappointed if he would have won. I lean left and I do so because of things in my faith in Jesus Christ and many of the teachings of Scripture that move me that direction, but I absolutely understand and agree with the teachings that also agree with the McCain-Palin platform. The importance of one issue over another is something that we have to decide for ourselves and with the help of God who guides us. Yes the president-elect that I backed up with my vote has some views, and political leanings that I do not agree with, but there are also important ones that I do agree with and as I prayed and read and listened and learned I came to a place where I was absolutely certain that I was supposed to vote for Barack Obama.

Let me say these few things though:

• The AntiChrist will probably not be an American president, especially one who is a Christian and says things like “I am a Christian… I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life.”
• For those of you who claim to be a Christian, Barack Obama is a brother in Christ to tear him down publicly and to purposefully undermine defame him in the hearing of other people is, without a slight doubt, sin.
• Democracy is not something that is ordained as a political system that is more or less ordained than any other system… including socialism. It is not something that is we can claim that God inherently supports. (And, I’d like to point out that Marxism and Leninism may be founded in many of the same principals as socialism it is not the same. We have never had an actual socialist state in history.)
• The same (if not the inverse) is true about capitalism.

All of my posts on my blog also go to Facebook and I am tempted to tag people on this, but in light of what I am saying to some of my friends (and I do consider them to be friends and family in Christ) I will not, because I do believe that it would (in effect) be mocking them in public as well. I love you all, for real and my concern is not in your politics, but in your reaction to dissapointment. You (plural) are great and I think better of you than this, because you are.

I read this article on a Christian defense (not a proposal of it necessarily) of Socialism.

But let us pretend, just for a moment, that I am calling for full blown socialism. I don’t think I am, but let’s just pretend. Is that the worst thing that could happen? Would that be un-American? Unbiblical? Let’s think this through a bit. Don’t start throwing stones at me or anything, but I would like to respond to some of the most common objections I have received in regard to my current political affiliations. Come on! Just for kicks and giggles.

Take a look – at the Burnside Writers Collective (quite the socialist sounding name).