Get out and VOTE but check your HATE at the door

How do we vote responsibly and be clear headed at the polls despite the hysterical political environment we find ourselves in?

1. Get INFORMED: Know what your politicians stand for and what actions do they plan to take. Also know the history of your politician and what they have been doing. This is said so much that some take it for granted but in today's divided world of news, you can't say you know a politician until you've understood what his opposition thinks of him/her. So go out of your way to get the other viewpoint. Neither CNN nor Fox News will tell you the whole story. 
2. Use REASON over EMOTION: It is understandable to be passionate about a cause or issue but today's media has become frenzied with click-bait and outrage. The heightened emotion can cloud the judgement. Labels as extreme as racist and rapist are thrown around without any substantiation. News shows are telling lies and half truths and putting words in peoples mouths on a regular basis. If you think the person you are voting against is a monster, chances are you have been lied to and worse, you are willing to believe the lies rather than rid your heart of the hate.
3. You get the government you DESERVE: Know what you want and be responsible for the consequences. The fact is, this is still a government of the people, so if the government is tyrannical, you and I are tyrants. If the government is oppressive, you and I are oppressors. If you vote for a liar, and the other liar wins, can you really complain about the lying?  Bottom line is that if you are a victim of voting age, you have yourself at least partially to blame.
4. RIGHTS over INTERESTS: Even though you are expected to vote your interests, you should never overstep your authority and trample someone's civil rights. Best example of this is, you may want to get the government involved in health care and may like Planned Parenthood and the things it does. However do you have the right to force every Catholic and Christian to participate in abortion by paying for it with tax dollars? Your interests, no matter how noble, do not overrule the 1st amendment protected civil right of freedom of conscience of those that believe in the right to life.

The Devil Petitions God for Claim on America

Let us suspend all disbelief for a moment and consider:  What if the devil wanted to send around a petition for all Americans to sign making a declaration choosing one of two sides, either the devil's or God's.  The devil's intent is to shove the petition in God's face showing, by overwhelming majority, that the American people are on the side of the devil.  Now sure, over enough time, haven't we all given in to the dark side and made some declaration choosing evil over good.  So the devil did not want to save up these signatures over a long time and wait for each of us to slip up.  No, he had a plan.  He would challenge each and every one of us to choose to publicly support evil or stand up for what is right and good and he do it all in the coarse of one year, an election year.

Now almost half of the way through the year the devil's plan has gone gangbusters.  Sure some of the usual suspects were in the bag early calling for violence against police, violence in the streets, and wishing death on their enemies.  And many of us started making perhaps less public but still consequential choices to try to rescue God's people in the middle East or to support those trying to kill them.

And then there has been the more devilish deceptions of getting so many people to accept and propagate lies like "hands up don't shoot" in order to promote a benefit to a select collective or "get what is long overdue."  This one sucked a lot of well meaning people by conflating vengeance with justice, confusing equal stuff with equality and insisting the ends will justify the means.

Even though this plan is being carried out in recent months, it is obvious that preparations have been going on for a long time. How long did it take our people to unlearn what the founders found self evident?  The concept of a right of conscience is so foreign to us now that out all the government employees in all 50 states only one lone clerk in one lone county in Kentucky even had an inkling that it went against her conscience to allow her name to be used to license what her faith held to be wrong.  Never mind every member of Kentucky and many other states that didn't even have a chance to loose their right of conscience to the tyranny of a majority vote but had it removed by a handful of judges.

I'm sure the devil could easily make the case that if you actively promote the killing of babies before they are born you are already in his camp.  But being the devil, he was not satisfied with any claim of ambiguity so now those in his camp agree to force every tax payer be party to abortion, regardless of faith or conscience, by insisting on government financing of Planned Parenthood.

With the party primaries the devil really stepped things up into high gear by working to remove any ambiguous choices as the race progressed until we were left with only a choice between a constitutional conservative and all forms of evil.  And now that the door seems closed on Ted Cruz the only choice to stand on the side of good is a young pro-life Libertarian by the name of Austin Peterson who understands the right of conscience and is challenging the pro-choice old guard of his party.

Oh, did I skim over the other choices in these primaries as "all forms of evil?"  Well please allow me to expound without naming names while we examine the declarations some have made.

• Vengeance:  "He'll stick it to them." "Time to get them back."
• Destruction:  "The party(s) needs to be destroyed."
• Anger:  "They deserve what's coming to them."
• Greed:  (Seeking spoils) "What's in it for me?" "Whoever promises me the most." 
• Tyranny:  "If they don't like it, tough." "We'll just make them."
• Envy:  "How much money do they need?"  When you spread your wealth it's charity, when you spread someone else's it's theft.
• Lover of Lies:  "They all lie, what's the difference?" "Okay it's not true but..." "What difference, at this point, does it make?" "He has to tell them what they want to hear"
• Deception:  Unfounded accusations such as "Lying Ted" Most deception is based in projection so deceivers reveal themselves to anyone that doesn't want to be lied to, (see Lovers of Lies.)
• Indifference:  "There is nothing I can do," "I won't play their game," or "My vote doesn't matter." The opposite of love is not hate but indifference. Do you care enough about your fellow man to take a stand?  
• Hate & Intolerance:  "I blame those people." This one is hard to explain because intolerant people don't know they are intolerant.  If we don't blame ourself 1st and foremost, chances are we have hate & intolerance issues.
• Fear:  "I have to vote against _______ or else ..." "They just want to force us to..." Most common today is the fear of religious people or fear of religion. Also the fear of descent which leads to the suppression of voices and opinion.
• Enslavement:  "We have to vote with the party or we will loose ________" This is also what socialism does. It places all of the freedom and choices in the government's hands and thous enslaves and historically kills thousands of millions of people.
• Entitlement:  "We should get free college." "Who is going to pay off my loans?" "It's time to get ours."

Come November we will have one last chance to choose sides.  We can use all the tactics, strategies, compromises, predictions, bargaining, deal making, and game playing devised by man or we can choose to do what is right and leave it in the hands of God.

Theory of Everything, subtitle: Scientists don't believe in Atheists.

Science and God are not in opposition.  In fact, if anyone dismisses the existence of God than that person is surly no scientist. A scientist would consider God to at least be an unproven theory.

To dismiss the existence of God one must first define God. Once you have defined God, if done so in a way that you are able to dismiss God as untrue, you can then dismiss only that definition of God. That says nothing for any other definition of God.

If you want to state that God of the Bible does not exist you must first become an expert on the Bible and be able to fully understand and explain every principle and resolve every conflict you find therein. A feat I am am sure none have fully accomplished and few have even claimed.

No, if you believe that God does not exist, then it is just that, a belief.  It is your faith, a foolhardy one, but a faith none the less. So as someone with such a baseless faith, how hypocritical of you to judge other people of faith.

Let's say you don't know if God exists but insist that no one else can know whether or not God exists. To put it another way; you believe that all religion is man-made hoax or a convenient crutch.  Here again it is a belief of yours about the beliefs of others and rather hubris of you to think you can know the mind of another.

So if you think about it, we all have beliefs, but you can also consider them personal scientific theories that we are engaged in proving or disproving to ourselves.  Put these beliefs or theories all together and they make up our own theory of everything.  Whether conscientiously or not, we are all have a theory of everything that we are continuously fine tuning.

Considering this in public discourse, as scientists, we would be wise to tolerate and listen to all theories if only for the benefit of gathering more information.

Find Hope

Hope is not found in looking away.  The urge is to ignore the current atrocities, like genocide of possibly millions of Christians and others by ISIS leaving an equal amount of refugees in their wake and our own government forcing each of us to be party to the kill & dismemberment of unborn babies and sale of the body parts.  Likewise there is no hope in distracting ourselves with frivolous issues to be outraged about.  

CeciltheLion
Hope is neither found in empty rhetoric or the pointing of blame or even in righteous indignation and public outrage. Hope is never found in hate.

Very little hope is found in saying over and over that something must be done even when finding a few people who agree.

However, HOPE IS NOT LOST!

Hope is found by taking action and doing so out of love. Working toward a solution will set our eyes on that hope. Don't let anyone, including yourself, tell you; "there is nothing I can do." The thing about the far reaching problems facing us today is that the solution too will have to be all encompassing. Far from meaning there is nothing for you and I to do, this means there is much for us to do. This may seem overwhelming but the only thing any of us has to worry about is doing our own part.

Live the hope. There is always something you can do. What action to take is as unique as the individual who takes it. The action itself can start small but it must continue so it can build upon itself.

• The place to start for all of us is inside ourselves. Know yourself & your place in the universe. Is that too much to ask? If you think so, consider that you may already have this down if you are strong in your faith. Even still everyone could use some shoring up in this area. This is where you would find your meaning of life or at least a working theory. Take the time to know how you derive your definition of right and wrong
• Improve yourself. We must become the person we are meant to be. This is a place to start but it is also a place to never leave. Who among us can say that they could not be better than they are right now? Get all the bad things out of your life. Challenge yourself to take 30 days to rid yourself of one bad habit or to add one good one. Then when you are done do it again.
• Next build or rebuild the relationships with your family and friends. (Real ones first, then the ones online.) Forgive past transgressions and ask for nothing in return.
• Then work on your community. Find ways to get involved. Do something to make the community better for everyone even if it's picking up trash or cutting a neighbor’s lawn.
• Reach out to and do something charitable for someone or some group completely outside of your community or normal circle. If you have enemies, they are the ones I am talking about.  If you don't, try asking someone you know who they think would be your enemy ;)
• Meanwhile if you have resources, apply them in ways you know can help. http://mercuryone.org is a good place to go but if you know of another then go there or Google it. Do your own research but do it.

When to start? The best time to take action is right now.

Love like God

In God's perfect love He created each of us to fulfill a specific place in His universe. He only asks of us to fill the role we were created for, to be the friend of God in our own unique way. Others will love God in their own way.
So what are we to do if a friend or loved one does not love us in the way we need?
Love the friends you have, but do what God does, make new friends.

Humility & Confidence

Love with humility, knowing no one is lesser than yourself. Act with confidence, knowing The Creator of the universe created YOU lesser than no one.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is difficult for many but I never really thought that I ever had much of a problem with it.  Could I be wrong?

I've always considered myself very tolerant of others shortcomings knowing I had plenty myself.  Even if someone did me wrong in some way, I am rarely angry and fairly quick to forgive. I guess I do not take things personally and that is why you have to be a very close friend to ever have a chance to get me angry.

Resentment blame and bitterness are quiet smaller friends of anger. When the anger is gone, or even if you never let it in, anger will leave his little friends behind. They will sit quietly in a corner and you'll hardly know they are there. But they are there.

I've been praying to find forgiveness in someone else's heart.  But I heard a sermon from Pastor John Pollock of Freedom Life Church that made me realize I may be praying for the wrong thing.

Pastor John was speaking about John 8 when they brought in a woman caught in adultery. "... But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger." As the woman likely stood with her had held down in shame facing the ground, Pastor John conjectured what Jesus may have written. He may have written her name. He may have written "I Am Jehovah."  The conversation in the sand continued in my mind; "I am your creator and I made you beautiful. I made you to be more than this."

If you think about what it was like for that woman to not just stand before her whole community but to literally stand before her maker.  Well that's what I was thinking about and how tremendous is His grace to say to her "Then neither do I condemn you."
For Him, the offense was personal and she deserved her fate yet He held her blameless as He does me. I could relate to that woman as one who is in awe at the forgiving grace of God.

Then Pastor John said something that shook me like I was woken from a dream.  He asked if I could relate to Jesus!  If we could all follow the calling to be more like Jesus.  To forgive when it's the most personal.  To hold blameless those to whom blame is due.

That is when I caught a glimpse of what I have allowed to live quietly in the dark corners of my own life.  I cannot do anything more than ask forgiveness from others.  Once asked I needn't even be concerned.  But of those whom I would ask accountability I shall instead offer forgiveness and hold blameless.