Poor, Prisoner, Blind, and Oppressed Lives Matter

I was reading Luke chapter four the other day and I came across Jesus words when he quoted Isaiah while referring to himself. 

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.   

Without going to deep, the general message is that in addition to Jesus coming for all who call upon His name, He was also about bringing justice to those who were oppressed.  So to use the now well-known slogan, the lives of those people He was speaking about mattered.  I think when we look at black history and the current condition for many in the black community we can also agree with the slogan “black lives matter”, because blacks have been and continue in some ways to be oppressed.  In that sense I really do believe that Jesus would agree with the sentiment coming from the Black Lives Matter movement.

But………………. There’s always a “but” isn’t there.  In the gospel of John Jesus is referred to as coming full of truth and grace.  I can’t help but wonder where truth has been in all of this.  Jesus was about healing the whole person.  That means spiritually too.  He would forgive sins and He would tell people to go and sin no more.  I’m wondering how many of us need to face up to the truth of our sins on this issue.  On one side how many need to face up to the fact that they would rather ignore unfair treatment of another race because it doesn’t really affect them?  Or that while the majority of police officers are doing an awesome job, there are indeed some bad apples, who at the very least are too violent and too quick to pull their gun and at the worst are racially motivated to act in such a way.  On the other side it seems like we are still waiting for a civil rights leader to honestly address the one thing that contributes most to young black men getting in trouble with the law in the first place; the absence of fathers in their lives.  That’s a moral issue for many but it’s especially so in the black community.  It’s also what leads to a far more serious problem which is young black men killing other young black men at an alarming rate.  I think these are all things that make Jesus weep; because again, black lives do matter.

I guess I’m just doing a lot of wondering for this blog entry.  Wondering when folks on both sides will start facing up to some difficult truths.  I think that’s when the real healing will begin.  

Should A Christian Vote for Donald Trump?

I was visiting one of our church shut-ins the other day. He’s one of my favorite people.  A special and Godly 95 year old man who scoots around just fine without the help of a cane or walker and is still quite bright.  We talk about a lot of things but at one point when our conversation started to come to a lull I figured I would venture into some new territory.  So I asked him if he’s been following politics this year and if he had caught any of the debates.  The next words out of his mouth were “boy that guy sure is a blowhard!”  This was the harshest thing I’ve ever heard him say about anyone.  The funny thing is Donald Trump’s name had not been mentioned yet and it didn’t need to be for me to know exactly who he was talking about.  I’m quite sure as you read this you knew exactly who he was talking about as well.

Now this is my blog and not the church pulpit so I’m willing to talk at least a little politics when it seems appropriate and now seems to be an appropriate time.  As a pastor I would never tell anyone who I think they should vote for, but for at least this year I think I’ve become comfortable with the idea of telling you who not to vote for.  Needless to say, this if just a personal opinion, but here it goes.  If you are a Christian (someone who chooses to follow Jesus and His teachings) please don’t vote for Donald Trump.  Perhaps that’s putting the cart before the horse because many of you may not have the opportunity to.  If you are a registered Democrat you can’t vote in the Republican primary and my strong feeling is he won’t win the nomination and no one will have a chance to vote for him as our next president anyway.  So to re-word my premise; if  you take your Christian faith seriously, and you have the chance to vote for the Donald, please don’t.

I base this request on one qualification I do my best to look for in any candidate running for any office.  That is, is he or she Christ-like?  Obviously none of us are perfect and measure up to Jesus in that sense but I think we can look at candidates and tell which ones are trying to be Christ-like, and for that matter which ones even have a clue about what it might mean to be Christ-like.  On that front Trump has no clue.  We often think of Jesus as modeling servant-leadership.  Trump on the other hand is considered by most as an ego-maniacal narcissistic manipulative leader.  Jesus truly cared about the least of these and the poor and the oppressed.  Based on his blanket generalizations of immigrants and his childish name calling it would seem that Trump cares very little about the least of these.  I say that believing there are other candidates who may have a tough on immigration stance but the still care about immigrants.  I just don’t think Trump is one of them.  Jesus taught dignity for all people.  All we have to do is look at how Trump has treated women and the things he has said about them both in personal relationships and from afar to know he fails the “treat others with dignity test" miserably. 

I could go on but I think you get the idea.  I don’t necessarily expect any of you who may be planning to vote for Trump to follow my advice, but I sure feel better having got it off my chest.