iMurphy

I don’t get to vote for another two weeks, but I’m afraid it may be too late by then. John McCain has come out of left field to dominate the Republican field and he is not a true conservative. Barring some major pledges at CPAC, he will get nothing but my disdain. After the immigration bill McCain/Kennedy, the 1st Amendment fiasco McCain/Feingold, and the Gang of 14, how can anyone call him a true Republican? Mitt Romney is a Mormon, which I have a real problem with, but he’s financially, socially and security conservative. It might just be talk for the campaign, but the others are even talking that way.

I take Al Mohler’s advise, and prioritize the issues before I vote. So here they are according to Robert Murphy’s take on Scripture: Abortion, it’s corollaries, War, Small Government, and Immigration (just to name the top five). The three Republicans all get the first one right, the Democrats get it all wrong. Next, there are all things that should come out of a real understanding of the sanctity of life, like issues relating to stem cells. If George Bush hadn’t held his ground and withheld Federal money from embryonic stem cell research, they never would’ve found pluripotent stem cells in adult skin cells. Huckabee called this one right, and Romney had to face the whole Massachusetts legislature over this. McCain gets the War right, but we can’t skip over priorities; he’s already out by now. To separate Huck from Mitt, we have to move on to Big vs Small government: the Huck was a tax-and-spend, Bush-esque governor of Arkansas.

Outside of the list of priorities, is the concern as to whether our nominee could have a hope of battling Hillary or Obama. There gonna have a ton a cash and a ton of support. Only Mitt has that kind of cash, and anyone but McCain could united the Republicans to battle Clinton or Barack. The Democrats reveal how easy they are gonna push over McCain when they admit that he’s likable and nearly one of them. Ugh!

Elections in America are about winning a party first and independents second. McCain can’t unite his party and if he is indistinguishable from Obillary but less charismatic, then he won’t win independents either. Mitt could unite the party and win the folks in the middle, like he did in MA. Huck is just sticking it out for the glory.

We went on a date last night and saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the IMAX in Seattle. It was awesome! It made me want to go and punch Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi right in the nose! Wake up people, we are in a war bigger than the Cold War and you and Jonathan Edwards are running around saying the War on Terror doesn’t exist and 9/11 is a card Giuliani is over playing! When will you start taking people like Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden at their word (like Chamberlain should’ve taken Hitler at his), then I’ll no longer be tempted to call you Corn Fudge.  The final battle scene between Dumbledore and Voldemort was sweet.  One could really believe that these were experienced men of gargantuan, magical conflicts.  It was like the Matrix.   Oh, and I couldn’t help but think that Fred and George Weasley’s firework “W” was intended to express support for our president and his policies that have kept this country from getting attacked again!

    I hear a lot of talk from Conservative, Christian people that America is a Christian nation. After I exploded “No it isn’t!”, I remembered that during the election I heard a lot of talk about how America was a Christian nation at its founding and we need to get back to our real roots. One has only to read what Thomas Jefferson thought of Christianity to know that America was not what they claim it to’ve been. But, as always, the real heart of the debate comes back to semantics and epistemology, regarding what we mean by a “Christian Nation”. What would a Biblical definition be?

    A Christian nation is nothing more than a great big church (not a church as in a building, but a group of believers). Non-believers are not part of the church and can not be a part of a Christian state. Such was the case in ancient Israel. This notion is repugnant to our modern sensibilities because tolerance has long been heralded as the highest virtue of our times and the redeeming factor in America’s make-up. But this 18th century Enlightenment concept is not to be found in the Bible, and would therefore not be found (in the same way) in a Christian nation. The church is the earthly collection of those who profess Christ and are therefore subject to the authority of church elders, or in the case of the Christian nation, the government.

    As long as we maintain that non-believers are part of our group (aka country) then we are not talking about a Christian nation. America is a country founded on freedom, not Christianity. Pennsylvania was the role-model for the rest of the country during the writing of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As Christian subjects to this non-Christian government, we are called to submit in all things that don’t go against the Word of God. This includes things like voting. We must not be confused by Christians being elected to high positions in our secular government. This does not mean that the government has become any more or less Christian; The root of the system is firmly embedded in the ungodly soil of the Enlightenment.

    The result of these ideas is a that even ultra-conservative Christians must vote a little more “purple”. Are goal cannot be the Christianization of the federal government of America, though of course we want fellow Christians to succeed and change what can be changed. The highest possible implementation of God’s Law on earth would be an individual state that was theocratic, but it would still be part of the overall, tolerant American scene. We cannot hope to silence or outlaw those who hate Christ or wish us gone in a society that values freedom above all else. At the federal level, we must strive to elect those who will maintain our freedom at the state level to form communities where we can practice religion as we see fit. We must aim to keep the federal government as small as possible, always remembering the Civil War: we are not permitted to leave.