Whether you loved or hated the outcome, the election is over.  It's over, finished, done.

Now that the "easy" part is over, I am asking myself, "So now how do I vote?" 

How do I cast my lifestyle ballot?  What do I need to live?  What should I spend my God's money on?  What should I give up or give away or give myself to?  How do I do my part to help solve the systemic problems that lead to abortion, poverty, hatred, war, and death.

Because of the campaigning these feel like American issues, but they really stretch out and are magnified on the global stage.  You think we have healthcare problems?  You're right, but let's take a field trip to rural India or China or Mexico, shall we.  Poverty?  Yes, it needs to be eradicated here.  And then there's this continent to the right of us called Africa that might need a hand with that one, too.  Let's not allow our affluence to contribute to our psychopathic myopia.  What "right" does anyone really have to decide where they are born?

Or what about terrorism?  Are we safe?  Do we live in a safe world?  I don't think so.  There have been over 1 million Iraqi casualties since the U.S. invaded in 2003.  What's the exchange rate on human lives by country?  If 2,426 U.S. citizens died on 9/11, somebody help me…I'm not too good at math.  And how many Iraqi citizens is a fair amount to kill in order to bag one Saddam or one Osama?   Maybe 2 million lives is a low estimate to make a sale like that, but I'll go no higher than 3.  (That doesn't even get into the ridiculous statistics regarding U.S. war veterans high suicide rates.) 

The counter-argument is that apprehending Saddam also saved millions of lives.  Maybe.  I'm not too convinced we're omninscient enough to know that for sure.  (Did you know the U.S. helped train Saddam in his early military career?  We gave guns to Osama and helped him out, too.  We train the terrorists who later attack us and then act shocked about it.  Check out the book Jesus For President if you want to know where I'm getting most of these facts from.)   I just don't get the "science" involved in this war on terror I guess.

When more than a million people are killed by a foreign regime, do you think that makes for less terrorists or does it creates more terrorists?  The problem I see is that we Americans think we KNOW the answers for ourselves and the rest of the world.  But we don't even KNOW the rest of the world.  How many Muslim neighbors have you invited over for a picnic?  I've had dinner with real-life Muslims from other countries and I can't imagine killing them or their kids–regardless of our religious differences.  But we turn a blind eye to it when it's done under the auspices of "defending our country against terrorism".  When it's somebody else's job to do the killing we wash our hands of it.  (BTW, I'm more than willing to have a picnic with family of 9/11 victims, too.  Don't get me wrong.  I guess I just say:  death + death, still equals death.  It's a no-win strategy.)

I'm not saying we can't fight back.  We should fight back.  But the methods we're using aren't working very well in my opinion.  Bullets and bombs are not very creative and I am fearful beyond words at the thought of standing before my Creator some day and saying, "Sorry, God, this is all we had to work with.  I'm sure you understand…It was a WAR on terror." 

As far as I can tell self-sacrificial LOVE is the only remedy or lasting solution that ever makes a difference in people's lives.  If our politics can't work from that premise in creative, holistic, systemic ways then it's our politics that are jacked up and need to be changed.

But that's enough grand-standing from me.  I know I am an expatriate (this word does not imply un-patriotic) and historically a dissident in terms of my political views, but I just think that we have to admit that all cultures are broken.  I do VALUE that I am able to say this freely.  But having freedom of speech and many other valued freedoms does not give the U.S. some form of immunity against the criticism that it is a broken culture.  We're terrible sinners and idolaters just like our global neighbors.  Maybe if we came down from our moral high ground we'd  be on a level to see our global neighbors eye-to-eye.  We'd start to understand them a little better (and probably ourselves as well) and we could come up with some more creative solutions to our vast differences.

Just an idea.

So to sum all of this up, politics is only a small part of the BIG answer.  Voting and aligning oneself with certain important issues or parties can only go so far, but individuals making LOVING decisions with their lives (holistic again) in vast interlocking communities can literally change the world.  Can it annihilate sin, selfishness, and death?  No.  But we, the body of Christ, can help usher in the kingdom of God way better than any candidate or country.  Until He returns in power.

We, the citizens of heaven…let's be.