Have you ever tried to go to the Government website and read the bills they are voting on? They're pretty much unreadable to the random citizen. So much legal talk and ridiculous loop-de-loops. How are we ever to know what in the world the laws are?
One thing I have heard mentioned that I want to look at briefly is the idea of having multiple topics in each bill. I think it becomes a big messy part of the political "us vs them" debacle. Let me try to present a scenario to simplify what I think is happening. I'm going to call the political parties simply A and B, and make up a ridiculous bill.
'A' proposes a new bill to better fund firefighters by adding a 25 cent tax to every block of cheese sold. Also in this bill is a provision for putting a clown on every street corner in NYC, and it will be paid for by a $1/day tax added to all citizens living in California. 'B' is in favor of the firefighter portion of the bill, but thinks the clown half is stupid and they can't in good conscience vote for it. B has more voters, so the bill is not passed, then A takes to the media and claims that B wants your house to burn down.
Have you seen this happen? It is a big part of the spreading of misinformation. I've even seen one party write up a bill and one or two members of that party say they won't vote for the bill because of just one or two points included in it. I just don't understand why they mix in so many unrelated things. Why can't we just have one bill about the firefighters, and a separate bill about the clowns? Then A and B could agree on passing the firefighter bill, and the clown one is less likely to pass.
I realize that bills are not this simple, any topic is going to include a lot of complicated details, but I don't understand when unrelated things show up. It becomes a game. We'll give you this point if you'll give us that one. Trading votes. Not ok. Can we make them stop? Can we make them limit each bill to one topic? How can we ensure they are voting in the best interest of the people instead of their party lines, or donor pressure?
Similarly, the topics of term limits, or pay raises, or donor money, how do we the people get the lawmakers to pass these changes that theoretically would 'hurt' them? I feel helpless to change the system that I have no faith in. States just keep electing the same people every time, nothing changes. They get better and better at playing the game and lining their own pockets.
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Saturday, February 17, 2018
Manipulated Morality
Before delving into political topics, I want to explore the idea of morality. Our personal moral code will determine most of our political stances. What determines right and wrong? Why do people change what they believe to be right and wrong?
As I've said, I grew up in church, so I was raised with a Christian view of morals. Over the years I've seen others who claim the same code suddenly shifting on certain topics. They switch sides so to speak. Did the Bible they believe in change? Is the Bible wrong? This has disturbed me, but I have begun to understand how it is happening.
A few years ago a friend asked me to watch a "documentary" called The Bible Told Me So. It was a series of stories about people who had come out as 'gay' and were then badly mistreated by their church or other Christians in their lives. They were truly awful, heartbreaking stories. Story after story pulling on the heartstrings of the viewer. At the conclusion, the film made the case for homosexuality being acceptable because these people were mistreated by the church. I found that to be faulty logic. It's like saying that if someone is abused by the police after being caught committing a crime, he's no longer guilty of the crime. That is an incorrect assessment. The crime is still a crime. (No, I'm not saying homosexuality is a crime.) They are two separate issues of wrongdoing.
I've watched as church after church publicly turn away from what the Bible says in order to be 'compassionate' or up to date with what the secular world is believing currently. I've seen stories of people leaving their church after a family member says they are gay. I get it. I wrote another blog a few years ago that looked at the idea of sin and how we seem to perceive it vs how the Bible talks about it. Click here to read I think this plays into this scenario. People often equate 'sinner' with 'bad person.' When someone you know and love says they are gay, and you know them to be a good person, it doesn't add up. The evidence is not convincing. You don't want to believe this person is now a bad person. That is all faulty reasoning. In this other blog I note that sin is often presented as an outside entity, an enemy of humanity. So what if we believed that?
Our emotions can be used to deceive us, to pull us away from our previously held moral code. Having a loved one become involved in a sin, something we believe to be wrong, can cause us to question what we think. That was the whole point of the documentary I watched. "Look at how hard life has been for these people. How can you tell them they're bad people? " The Bible talks about us being "slaves to sin." Would you call a slave a bad person? No, you wouldn't. So why do we let the devil convince us that sinners are bad people? They are not bad, they are being attacked and destroyed. That is the picture I get from the Bible. Sin destroys us and those around us. The enemy of our souls has been deceiving us into accepting slavery and celebrating it. I say no more! Sin is not our friend! Sin must be called sin, truth must reign over emotion. If we believe the Bible is the Word of God, we have to choose to believe it over our ever shifting emotions and experiences. Maybe our Creator knows best how we are to function. He wrote the owner's manual.
How about other areas of life. It is still generally accepted that you shouldn't cheat on your spouse. But it happens all the time. Attraction steps in and offers up a temptation. Society has been shifting away from solid morality and toward emotional leading. Therefore, if I'm attracted to someone, I should be totally fine to go after them, even if I'm already married. I'm pretty sure that most people are not going to be ok with that. Your spouse is going to be hurt. Some people are attracted to children apparently, yet we expect them to control that attraction or go to jail. Sin is sin because it hurts people. When you let emotion override morality, people get hurt.
Sometimes our kids can push us to the limit. Sometimes we want to strangle them. Sometimes a relentlessly crying baby makes us want to shake them and scream at them to stop! Those are emotions that are very real, but hopefully we have a moral foundation that stops us from hurting our child. Some people cross that line. Some people feel even justified that they abuse their kids or spouse. On the crime tv shows I watch, often the murderer gives a reason for killing the person that in their mind is completely ok. This is a dangerous road to walk. When emotions lead, we get into trouble and someone gets hurt.
The particular sins that an individual is tempted with seem to come with a lot of evidence and convincing arguments (lies) to get a person to step into the jail cell. Hey girl, you dress like a boy, you like sports, you've never had a boyfriend, maybe you're a lesbian.... I heard that one in high school. There was more to it than that, but the "evidence" I was being presented with seemed true. But... I knew what the Bible said. I knew this "evidence" couldn't be true. At the time I didn't have much understanding of the tactics of the devil, so this war for truth raged on for many years. It was almost 15 years later when I finally gained the tools to understand and fight this lie off. I needed to hear what God thought, I needed to be given another explanation for what I was seeing and feeling. I did finally get that freedom! Jesus has shown me truth that negated all the "evidence" that Satan had been throwing at me to keep me in prison. His illusion of truth crumbled in the face of real Truth.
I've seen it over and over in my life. Emotions, attractions, temptations... they all seem right and correct and truthful at first, but when I choose to remember what the Bible says about those topics, I have to look for another explanation. I have to choose what God says over what my emotions are saying. The enemy of our souls is prowling around looking for someone to devour. He is a liar. He has been growing his deception skills for a very long time, so it isn't surprising that his lies are convincing. This is why it is so important to know the Word of God. He created us, He loves us, and He laid out a way to live that will cause no harm to us or to others. Will we believe Him? Or will we believe our ever shifting emotions? The devil is a manipulator, but if we choose to stand on God's Word, believing He is right in spite of our current emotions and the pile of evidence, we will be set free. The Truth will set you free! I know this, because I have experienced it. The mountain of evidence melted in the light of The Truth of Jesus Christ.
"I freed a thousand slaves. I could've freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
-- attributed to Harriet Tubman, but evidence is lacking
Regardless of its authenticity, I believe this quote rings true. The deceiver has enslaved people without them even realizing they are slaves. When we choose to believe emotion or anything else over the Word of God, our morals begin to slip. Political circles use emotion driven narratives to convince us of their point of view. I was listening to Ben Shapiro recently as he discussed how television has been used for years to manipulate how we think. They have constantly pushed the moral boundaries, slowly boiling us into complacency. The way he put it, they give us characters that we like more than our own families, then they have them act in ways we wouldn't approve of, but since we like that character, we start to shift what we approve of. That is exactly my point. When we love someone, we don't want to label them as bad. I would like to point out that we all have both good and bad in us.
Ben Shapiro video - the long explanation
Doing one bad thing does not make us a bad person. But if we shift our view to see that sin is slavery or a prison, when we see someone we love acting in a way that we deem to be wrong, we can compassionately do our best to help them see what they're doing is hurting them or us. That's what Love does. We're being told that love accepts everyone for who they are and everything they do right now, but in reality, Love guides us to become the best version of ourselves. Yes, He loves us as we are, but He also loves us too much to leave us as we are.
So looping this all back around to my upcoming focus on politics, I've been thinking about how the culture shapers use emotion to shift how we think. I think it is important to be aware of this manipulation. We must know what our personal moral codes are and practice standing firm in the face of emotional manipulation. We need to base our beliefs on fact, not emotion. I like to think about things before I'm in the situation where I'll need to respond. Like they told us in youth group... decide how far you will go on a date before you are in the back seat making out. Once those emotions get stirred up, it's too late to decide what you believe in.
As I've said, I grew up in church, so I was raised with a Christian view of morals. Over the years I've seen others who claim the same code suddenly shifting on certain topics. They switch sides so to speak. Did the Bible they believe in change? Is the Bible wrong? This has disturbed me, but I have begun to understand how it is happening.
A few years ago a friend asked me to watch a "documentary" called The Bible Told Me So. It was a series of stories about people who had come out as 'gay' and were then badly mistreated by their church or other Christians in their lives. They were truly awful, heartbreaking stories. Story after story pulling on the heartstrings of the viewer. At the conclusion, the film made the case for homosexuality being acceptable because these people were mistreated by the church. I found that to be faulty logic. It's like saying that if someone is abused by the police after being caught committing a crime, he's no longer guilty of the crime. That is an incorrect assessment. The crime is still a crime. (No, I'm not saying homosexuality is a crime.) They are two separate issues of wrongdoing.
I've watched as church after church publicly turn away from what the Bible says in order to be 'compassionate' or up to date with what the secular world is believing currently. I've seen stories of people leaving their church after a family member says they are gay. I get it. I wrote another blog a few years ago that looked at the idea of sin and how we seem to perceive it vs how the Bible talks about it. Click here to read I think this plays into this scenario. People often equate 'sinner' with 'bad person.' When someone you know and love says they are gay, and you know them to be a good person, it doesn't add up. The evidence is not convincing. You don't want to believe this person is now a bad person. That is all faulty reasoning. In this other blog I note that sin is often presented as an outside entity, an enemy of humanity. So what if we believed that?
Our emotions can be used to deceive us, to pull us away from our previously held moral code. Having a loved one become involved in a sin, something we believe to be wrong, can cause us to question what we think. That was the whole point of the documentary I watched. "Look at how hard life has been for these people. How can you tell them they're bad people? " The Bible talks about us being "slaves to sin." Would you call a slave a bad person? No, you wouldn't. So why do we let the devil convince us that sinners are bad people? They are not bad, they are being attacked and destroyed. That is the picture I get from the Bible. Sin destroys us and those around us. The enemy of our souls has been deceiving us into accepting slavery and celebrating it. I say no more! Sin is not our friend! Sin must be called sin, truth must reign over emotion. If we believe the Bible is the Word of God, we have to choose to believe it over our ever shifting emotions and experiences. Maybe our Creator knows best how we are to function. He wrote the owner's manual.
How about other areas of life. It is still generally accepted that you shouldn't cheat on your spouse. But it happens all the time. Attraction steps in and offers up a temptation. Society has been shifting away from solid morality and toward emotional leading. Therefore, if I'm attracted to someone, I should be totally fine to go after them, even if I'm already married. I'm pretty sure that most people are not going to be ok with that. Your spouse is going to be hurt. Some people are attracted to children apparently, yet we expect them to control that attraction or go to jail. Sin is sin because it hurts people. When you let emotion override morality, people get hurt.
Sometimes our kids can push us to the limit. Sometimes we want to strangle them. Sometimes a relentlessly crying baby makes us want to shake them and scream at them to stop! Those are emotions that are very real, but hopefully we have a moral foundation that stops us from hurting our child. Some people cross that line. Some people feel even justified that they abuse their kids or spouse. On the crime tv shows I watch, often the murderer gives a reason for killing the person that in their mind is completely ok. This is a dangerous road to walk. When emotions lead, we get into trouble and someone gets hurt.
The particular sins that an individual is tempted with seem to come with a lot of evidence and convincing arguments (lies) to get a person to step into the jail cell. Hey girl, you dress like a boy, you like sports, you've never had a boyfriend, maybe you're a lesbian.... I heard that one in high school. There was more to it than that, but the "evidence" I was being presented with seemed true. But... I knew what the Bible said. I knew this "evidence" couldn't be true. At the time I didn't have much understanding of the tactics of the devil, so this war for truth raged on for many years. It was almost 15 years later when I finally gained the tools to understand and fight this lie off. I needed to hear what God thought, I needed to be given another explanation for what I was seeing and feeling. I did finally get that freedom! Jesus has shown me truth that negated all the "evidence" that Satan had been throwing at me to keep me in prison. His illusion of truth crumbled in the face of real Truth.
I've seen it over and over in my life. Emotions, attractions, temptations... they all seem right and correct and truthful at first, but when I choose to remember what the Bible says about those topics, I have to look for another explanation. I have to choose what God says over what my emotions are saying. The enemy of our souls is prowling around looking for someone to devour. He is a liar. He has been growing his deception skills for a very long time, so it isn't surprising that his lies are convincing. This is why it is so important to know the Word of God. He created us, He loves us, and He laid out a way to live that will cause no harm to us or to others. Will we believe Him? Or will we believe our ever shifting emotions? The devil is a manipulator, but if we choose to stand on God's Word, believing He is right in spite of our current emotions and the pile of evidence, we will be set free. The Truth will set you free! I know this, because I have experienced it. The mountain of evidence melted in the light of The Truth of Jesus Christ.
"I freed a thousand slaves. I could've freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
-- attributed to Harriet Tubman, but evidence is lacking
Regardless of its authenticity, I believe this quote rings true. The deceiver has enslaved people without them even realizing they are slaves. When we choose to believe emotion or anything else over the Word of God, our morals begin to slip. Political circles use emotion driven narratives to convince us of their point of view. I was listening to Ben Shapiro recently as he discussed how television has been used for years to manipulate how we think. They have constantly pushed the moral boundaries, slowly boiling us into complacency. The way he put it, they give us characters that we like more than our own families, then they have them act in ways we wouldn't approve of, but since we like that character, we start to shift what we approve of. That is exactly my point. When we love someone, we don't want to label them as bad. I would like to point out that we all have both good and bad in us.
Ben Shapiro video - the long explanation
Doing one bad thing does not make us a bad person. But if we shift our view to see that sin is slavery or a prison, when we see someone we love acting in a way that we deem to be wrong, we can compassionately do our best to help them see what they're doing is hurting them or us. That's what Love does. We're being told that love accepts everyone for who they are and everything they do right now, but in reality, Love guides us to become the best version of ourselves. Yes, He loves us as we are, but He also loves us too much to leave us as we are.
So looping this all back around to my upcoming focus on politics, I've been thinking about how the culture shapers use emotion to shift how we think. I think it is important to be aware of this manipulation. We must know what our personal moral codes are and practice standing firm in the face of emotional manipulation. We need to base our beliefs on fact, not emotion. I like to think about things before I'm in the situation where I'll need to respond. Like they told us in youth group... decide how far you will go on a date before you are in the back seat making out. Once those emotions get stirred up, it's too late to decide what you believe in.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Intro
I've mostly tried to avoid politics, but recently I've started paying a little more attention. I can't do too much because it usually makes me angry. Too much fighting, not enough listening. Two sides with dramatically different worldviews, so no obvious way of coming together and agreeing on anything, so they just fight and it is ugly and getting us nowhere. I've been thinking recently about just sitting down and writing as I explore this ugly world of politics. Maybe no one will read it, maybe it's just a way for me to sort out my thoughts, who knows? I want to lay out my personal thoughts, and I would love for others to share theirs, as long as it is respectful. Civil dialogue is the only way we are going to see change.
I believe that we each form our beliefs based on our own experiences. What we are taught as children is of course very big in the beginning, but as we grow and experience more variety of experience in life, our thoughts can change. How often do we really stop and think about our beliefs? I like to talk to people who challenge me to think about what I really believe is true.
I come from a Christian worldview. It's not just a random set of unproven beliefs, it is an experience based knowledge of the goodness of God. My relationship with Jesus most definitely affects how I believe life should be lived. As a kid, I watched other people do the things I was taught were wrong, and I saw them live through the consequences of those actions. For me, this validated the Bible's set of rules. They made sense. God is a good Father, and He's trying to show us how to avoid getting hurt. As I got older, those beliefs grew even stronger. I began to see His hand in my life, bringing me blessings and answering my prayers, and how following Him led me into better and better places. Bad things do still happen, but I can almost always trace them to someone somewhere making a choice to go a different way than God's way.
I enjoy watching movies that offer up an ethical conundrum. When it doesn't seem like there is a good choice, what do you do? The most clear example is the gladiators of ancient Rome. Kill or be killed? That's a pretty horrific choice. Jesus said to turn the other cheek, so will I lay down my sword? I don't know. I don't think any of can really know what we'd do in such a crazy situation unless it happens, but I enjoy thinking about what would be the right thing to do in God's eyes. That thought process colors all of my political choices.
I have a few ideas on what way to go with this. I could tackle current topics as the arise, or I also thought about going to the official Republican and Democrat webpages and reading through their basic platform and working though the issues they stand on. I could also just randomly pick out big hot button issues to explore. Or a mix of these ideas....
I believe that we each form our beliefs based on our own experiences. What we are taught as children is of course very big in the beginning, but as we grow and experience more variety of experience in life, our thoughts can change. How often do we really stop and think about our beliefs? I like to talk to people who challenge me to think about what I really believe is true.
I come from a Christian worldview. It's not just a random set of unproven beliefs, it is an experience based knowledge of the goodness of God. My relationship with Jesus most definitely affects how I believe life should be lived. As a kid, I watched other people do the things I was taught were wrong, and I saw them live through the consequences of those actions. For me, this validated the Bible's set of rules. They made sense. God is a good Father, and He's trying to show us how to avoid getting hurt. As I got older, those beliefs grew even stronger. I began to see His hand in my life, bringing me blessings and answering my prayers, and how following Him led me into better and better places. Bad things do still happen, but I can almost always trace them to someone somewhere making a choice to go a different way than God's way.
I enjoy watching movies that offer up an ethical conundrum. When it doesn't seem like there is a good choice, what do you do? The most clear example is the gladiators of ancient Rome. Kill or be killed? That's a pretty horrific choice. Jesus said to turn the other cheek, so will I lay down my sword? I don't know. I don't think any of can really know what we'd do in such a crazy situation unless it happens, but I enjoy thinking about what would be the right thing to do in God's eyes. That thought process colors all of my political choices.
I have a few ideas on what way to go with this. I could tackle current topics as the arise, or I also thought about going to the official Republican and Democrat webpages and reading through their basic platform and working though the issues they stand on. I could also just randomly pick out big hot button issues to explore. Or a mix of these ideas....
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