-God Is Purple-

So yesterday Chief Supreme Court Justice John Roberts administered the Presidential Oath of Office to the new President of the United States, President Barack Obama II.  Whether or not you are satisfied with the results of last November's election, you cannot deny the historical significance the event.  We've heard it over and over again; how terrific it is that finally, after over 230 years, a minority was able to win the majority of both the popular and electoral college votes and ascend to the highest office in the land.  Personally, I think God was pretty proud of us too.

I have been very deliberate about not making any of my blogs political commentary.  I am learning that politics and political priorities are personal.  I know that there is a HUGE segment of evangelical Christians that are convinced that God is a republican based on two issues: abortion and gay marriage.  Personally, I think that in a world of 6 billion people, God has bigger fish to fry than whether or not a nation of 300 million people, (roughly one-half of one percent of the global population), think it's OK for a homosexual couple to be "married" according to the nation's standards.  But I digress.  I am learning that a person's political priorities are mostly determined by how God has wired them as an individual.

God has given each of us a different set of gifts and inclinations.  He does this through various channels.  The Holy Spirit, hereditary traits, influences He places in our life, and internal burdens are a few.  That is why I have such a difficult time understanding a Republican Christian criticizing another Christian for voting for a Democrat, or vice versa.  Our political motives are a fruit of spiritual motives and therefore subject to ebb and flow across the Church as a whole. What I mean is that God places burdens in and individual.  So, naturally, that individual will prioritize his or her political views around that burden.  If God has given them a burden for the sanctity of human life in the womb, then they are more likely to place abortion prevention at the top of their list and vote Republican.  But the same God might give another person a burden for feeding the poor.  That person is much more likely to place social reforms at the top of their political agenda and vote Democrat.  And you know what?  They're both right.  Because God isn't red of blue... He's purple.

As Christians, our goal is not to become people that are all carbon copies of one another.  Our goal is to become the individual that God has created us to be.  I love the way way Rob Bell says it in his book, Velvet Elvis.  He says, "Your job is the relentless pursuit of who God made YOU to be and everything else is sin." (emphasis mine).  God wired us with different burdens and priorities for a reason.  Any single objective taken to an extreme, even a good objective like evangelism, can be detrimental to God's plan.  The Crusades and the Inquisition are good examples.  So by giving individual Christians different gifts and burdens God is essentially providing us will a system of spiritual checks and balances.

I don't know where any of you stand when it comes to political opinions and I'm not about to use this blog to vomit out mine.  I am simply trying to express that a person's political views, especially a Christian's, is simply an fruit of the the kind of person God wired them to be.  Believe it or not, the United States is not the Kingdom of God that Jesus was talking about so neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have cart blanch on being "God's party."  It's good to have political views.  It's good to believe passionately in those views.  They are an outpouring of the things that God has placed in your heart.  But yours are no more or less important than someone else's.  One again, our differing opinions are God's system of spiritual checks and balances.  It's good that we have both Democratic and Republican leaders.  It's good that a single party doesn't control the office of the presidency.

Which brings me back to yesterday and why I think God was proud of our .05% of the global population.  We put a minority, a black man, in out most prestigious office for the first time.  I think God was proud of us because we are getting closer to seeing people the way He does.  Not as black, white, male, female, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, fat, skinny or any other label.  We are finally beginning to show signs of seeing a person as simply a human being and understanding the potential that comes with that label alone.  I think think God is proud of us because we are finally beginning to see people the way He does.  I mean, we have a very, very long way to go.  But we're finally past the starting line.  I hope we can keep running.