Brooks on Obama and the Left and Right

I am not super political, I am not a passionate Republican or Democrat, and I find the constant arguing and debating a bit sad and embarrassing.

There are things I really disagree with the President on, and things he has done I am really supportive of, and that was the same with our previous President too.

I know being a Christian, a Christian minister on top of that, people assume I would be a strong right wing conservative, well you know what happens when you assume...

David Brooks, op-ed writer for the NY Times hits this on the head.

In a sensible country, people would see Obama as a president trying to define a modern brand of moderate progressivism. In a sensible country, Obama would be able to clearly define this project without fear of offending the people he needs to get legislation passed. But we don’t live in that country. We live in a country in which many people live in information cocoons in which they only talk to members of their own party and read blogs of their own sect. They come away with perceptions fundamentally at odds with reality, fundamentally misunderstanding the man in the Oval Office.

Click Here for the whole column

Has Conservatism Become An Idol?

Before I get any deeper, I want to say I am not political, I do not talk about my political views or leanings. I do not watch C-Span, Fox News, MSNBC and consider myself neither to be a red state or a blue state person. I love Jesus, He is my King and He is my message,hope and life. So to quote Mark Driscoll, "I vote for Jesus!"

With that said, Jon McIntosh, has started a new website and ministry called ReThink Mission. In it he talks about cultural engagement, church planting and gospel centric living. Recently he blogged about how Conservative politics has in many circles (especially the Bible Belt) become synonymous with the Gospel.

I could not agree more with Jon's cautions and exhortation to not confuse a political position with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So often today Jesus is not a stumbling block, because the "moral majority" has already tripped up and angered people.

If you have ever used the words "Jesus" and "Republican" in the same sentence please read Jon's cautions, as well as a 2nd clarification post he offers.

Below is a excerpt of his post:

When political conservatism is confused for Christianity:
1. It creates false assurance: many who are not Christians wrongly assume that they are simply because of their conservative vote.

2. It makes enemies out of friends: Christians forget that “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood” and make enemies out of anyone who disagrees with their political ideology.

3. It becomes a barrier to mission: political liberals who are not Christians are given the idea that to embrace the gospel of Jesus means to become a conservative. Naturally they pass on this. But the wrong “gospel” has been presented to them – thus many haven’t even rejected the gospel at all, only a highly politicized version of it.

4. The wrong gospel is passed to the next generation: In training our children to be good conservatives instead of grace-filled believers, we help harden their hearts to the gospel. I grew up in a church that did a better job teaching me to be a political conservative than a lover of Jesus Christ. That was a church that was easy to leave.

Read the rest here..

Also read his clarification to some of his original points here.

David Brooks on Sonia Sotomayor

New York Times Columnist has an interesting piece on what it took Sonia Sotomayor to now be on the verge of Supreme Court Confirmation.

It is also a look at her story while unique and inspiring is becoming more of a way of life for us all.

Here is an excerpt:

This isn’t the old story of a career woman trying to balance work and family. This is the story of pressures that affect men as well as women (men are just more likely to make fools of themselves in response, as the news of the last few years indicates). It’s the story of people in a meritocracy that gets more purified and competitive by the year, with the time demands growing more and more insistent.

These profiles give an authentic glimpse of a style of life that hasn’t yet been captured by a novel or a movie — the subtle blend of high-achiever successes, trade-offs and deep commitments to others. In the profiles, you see the intoxicating lure of work, which provides an organizing purpose and identity. You see the web of mentor-mentee relationships — the courtship between the young and the middle-aged, and then the tensions as the mentees break off on their own. You see the strains of a multicultural establishment, in which people try to preserve their ethnic heritage as they ascend into the ranks of the elite. You see the way people not only choose a profession, it chooses them. It changes them in a way they probably didn’t anticipate at first.

Click Here for Rest from New York Times

David Brooks on Cheney, Obama and Bush

I am not very political, in fact I get uneasy when Christians get really up in arms about any issue and work to politicize it. I know there are flaws in that thinking, somewhat, so I am working them out. In that I am hesitant to listen to any preacher who is a staunch Republican or Democrat.

David Brooks's very insightful comments below is why we need to be able to look under the rhetoric of conservatives and liberals.

Here is how he opened his opinion section in the NY Times:

President Obama and Dick Cheney conspired on Thursday to propagate a myth. The myth is that we lived through an eight-year period of Bush-Cheney anti-terror policy and now we have entered a very different period called the Obama-Biden anti-terror policy. As both Obama and Cheney understand, this is a completely bogus distortion of history.

Read the rest of these insightful comments here.

Funny, and Sad Cause It is True

Props: DeYoung

Gay Marriage-A Compromise?

What do you think about this proposal and the comments by Misty Irons over at "More Musings on Christianity, Homosexuality and the Bible"?

Check out this op-ed piece in Sunday's NY Times co-authored by David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch, two people who have sharply disagreed about gay civil marriage in the past. Here is their proposed compromise:

Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

So the federal government would recognize civil same-sex unions, but would only recognize state level civil unions on the condition that religious conscience protections are in place. In other words, only if religious organizations get to retain the right to discriminate against civil same-sex unions will such unions be recognized at the state level by the U.S. government.

What I like about this idea is that it makes a rigorous respect for religious freedom the condition for granting gays and lesbians their legal rights, so that the freedoms and protections of both groups are tied together. Furthermore, if there were significant gay support for such a proposal, it would undercut the religious right's claim that the sole political agenda of the majority of gays is to trash the rights

Before dismissing this, or jumping on the Prop. 8 bandwagon, let me encourage you to go check out Misty's Blog, she has some really great insights and wisdom when it comes to loving, understanding and engaging homosexuals.