Somehow...somewhere along the line....Christianity became both a target and a weapon for man made "politics". Savvy politicians are quick on the uptake in exploiting this as well. Until I heeded my actual call from Christ, I had been all over the map both politically and religiously in my life, which in retrospect makes a good deal of sense to me, because I didn't have the anchoring truth of Jesus Christ as the focal point of my life. I have actually been a far left political affiliate, at the peak of my Buddhist years where I didn't wish to ruffle the feathers of anybody or anything. I wouldn't even step on a spider. All war was wrong. I believed that the solutions to world problems were in the hands of human beings, so I was naturally drawn to the utopian thinking of Socialism. I would march with anybody or anything that was against the oppressive state. I had become a political leftist, and it was because I was without truth. Well, in my late 40's as I was undergoing a profound conversion, and answering the call of Jesus Christ to the truth, i sincerely died to my old self. When I see a video of myself in our home movies, I don't recognize me as being me. Not just the way I look, but mostly the things coming from my mouth. Who was that guy? What happened to my mind?
I am an orthodox, Roman-Catholic Christian man. Having died to the world in baptism, I have become a new creation. By making Christ the center of my life, I have lost my traditional American sense of politics. The left/right/conservative/liberal sense or lens through which to view things. When this happened, one of the things I began noticing as elections started coming around was that both of the major political parties in the United States were playing me for a fool. They both know that the largest voting block in the country is religious people. It's a religious country. So they each target certain values and ethics, and emphasize those to the voting public, and then either exaggerate OR de-emphasize the importance of issues that they know we filter through a Christian lens, in order to stir up animosity between persons, and make the modernist culture everything that satan could ever hope for it to be.
Neither party has left room for the actual Christian who loves the Lord God, with all his heart, all his mind, and all his strength, and loves his neighbor as himself. Neither want the Church to do what the Church does well, (faith, morals, charity, medicine, and education), and let government do what government does well, (national defense, common currency, and an international post office).
So where does that leave me when voting comes around? Good question. I have become a pariah to everyone I know politically. I can't get my Republican or Democrat friends to see that it's not really appropriate to identify with their parties, but that I love them all as people, just fine.
Just as a personal choice, (but there are probably many other ways to do it....this is just mine) is that I've let all the rhetoric of both parties become so much background noise. I've picked one issue, which isn't even a specifically Christian one. It is a sentence from our American Creed (The Declaration of Independence). The RIGHT of all persons to LIFE, LIBERTY, and the pursuit of HAPPINESS. Of those, the most fundamental is the right to life. Because if a person isn't born. If they're prevented or slaughtered before they get a chance to have a chair at the table, then we are a failed nation. An experiment which sadly died on the vine in the 1960's when powerful political lobbies snatched the most fundamental right of mankind from our grasp. Our American grasp. The only government to have ever founded itself on a creed.
So when I look at the field of candidates for any political office, the first thing I try to find out is their stance on contraception, abortion, and defense of marriage. (They all go hand in hand). The one who is closest to believing, and being the most willing to work towards the right of human beings to exist is who I vote for. I try to stay away from voting for anyone who would have happily prevented cooperating with God even to the point on my coming to being on this earth.
So yes, I'm a one issue voter. It's hopefully not permanent. If life once again becomes a the fundamental right of all Americans, then I can move on and see what they want to do about illegal immigration, a stronger dollar, a failing medical system, and big government. It's not that I don't care about any other issues. I truly do. We just have to have a benchmark. The same person who will strongly stand up for a persons right to BE in the first place, is also going to be more respectful of the wants and needs of that person as they grow into members of the society. If they get life right, there's a strong likelihood that they'll get other things right, because their fundamental motivations are sound.
As to your other observation.......I agree, it's very difficult to be Christan (and mean it), and be popular with a good number of people. That's not on us. That's on them. We have love for all. They have love only for those with whom they agree. who sanction their proclivities, perhaps, or are luke warm about their eugenics or overt acts aimed at the destruction of tradition of any kind. They love only the "tolerant" which to them means to sit and twittle ones thumbs. Keep our mouth shut, and let modernist and post-modernist culture just wash over us like some soothing balm. Just read the Gospels. Jesus made waves. He decried the culture. He loved everyone all the same, but he most definitely took a stand on sin. Sinners He loved. Sins He hated. And He didn't sit around all mealy mouthed and lukewarm about it either. He spoke truth. He IS truth. It is all He can be. He can't deceive. Only satan can deceive, and lull us to sleep in our sins.
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Revelation 3:14
And to the angel of the church at Laodicea write thus: A message to thee from the Truth, the faithful and unerring witness, the source from which Gods creation began: 15 I know of thy doings, and find thee neither cold nor hot; cold or hot, I would thou wert one or the other. 16 Being what thou art, lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, thou wilt make me vomit thee out of my mouth. 17 I am rich, thou sayest, I have come into my own; nothing, now, is wanting to me. And all the while, if thou didst but know it, it is thou who art wretched, thou who art to be pitied. Thou art a beggar, blind and naked; 18 and my counsel to thee is, to come and buy from me what thou needest; gold, proved in the fire, to make thee rich, and white garments, to clothe thee, and cover up the nakedness which dishonours thee; rub salve, too, upon thy eyes, to restore them sight. 19 It is those I love that I correct and chasten; kindle thy generosity, and repent. 20 See where I stand at the door, knocking; if anyone listens to my voice and opens the door, I will come in to visit him, and take my supper with him, and he shall sup with me. 21 Who wins the victory? I will let him share my throne with me; I too have won the victory, and now I sit sharing my Fathers throne. 22 Listen, you that have ears, to the message the Spirit has for the churches.
