Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Whether Obama Wins Or Loses, The American People Need To Be Criticized

I still expect McCain to win, but the chance that he'll lose is higher than I expected earlier this year. If he loses, he and his campaign will be criticized for their mistakes, and that's appropriate. But the criticism probably will be out of proportion. The party most guilty for the election results, the people who voted for Obama, most likely won't be criticized nearly as much as they ought to be. And even if Obama loses, the fact that so many people supported him in the polls and on election day is remarkable and inexcusable. Criticism of those people, criticism on a large scale and for a long period of time, is warranted, regardless of whether Obama wins. We don't have to wait for election day to know whether a large percentage of Americans are so undiscerning as to support Obama. The polls have already proven it.

It's common among conservatives to refer to the wisdom of the American people. When an election is drawing near, conservatives will often comment that they trust the American people, even if the polls are currently favoring a candidate who isn't a conservative. When Americans contribute money to disaster relief in foreign nations or do something else that's virtuous, we hear about the goodness of the American people. Supporters of third parties often suggest that the American people are waiting for the right candidate to come along, one who represents them, then they'll vote in large numbers for that third-party candidate. Supporters of conservative third parties, for example, often suggest that the American people in general are conservatives at heart, but that the two major parties aren't representing them.

Sometimes such comments are accurate, depending on the context. On some issues, most Americans are right. But the majority is often wrong. The same Americans who give money to charity also pay for their daughter to get an abortion, spend several hours a week at pornographic web sites, or can't name the four gospels. Remember, the same Pharisees who murdered Jesus were monotheists and gave money to charity.

I don't think the American people need their ego stroked. They get more than enough of that from advertisers, politicians, etc.

Here's what I think is going on with this election. Among those likely to vote, a large minority is liberal and committed to Obama, and a large minority is conservative and committed to McCain. Another large minority is less knowledgeable of the issues, can and sometimes does keep going back and forth between the two candidates, and is currently favoring Obama. The primary reason why that third group supports Obama most likely is laziness. The current president is a Republican. They're dissatisfied with the economy and some other things, to the point of wanting some sort of significant change. They haven't thought through the issues enough to logically hold George Bush responsible for such problems. But blaming Bush is a simple solution, and it's a solution the Democrats, the media, and other segments of society are encouraging. Bush is a Republican. McCain is a Republican also. Therefore, we should vote for Obama. I think that sort of easy, lazy approach toward the election, in which little effort is put into researching and thinking through the issues, is the primary explanation for what's going on. That sort of laziness has benefited Republicans in the past, but it's benefiting a Democrat this year. Sometimes that laziness leads people to vote correctly, despite the fact that they arrived at the correct vote by the wrong means. But other times the laziness leads people to vote wrongly.

People often refer to how a large percentage of the population is dependent on the government (welfare, etc.), and I think that's a factor as well. The more dependent you are on the government, the more likely you are to vote for a Democrat. Much the same can be said about the sexually immoral. Misery loves company, and so do sinners (Romans 1:32). The teenager who spends several hours a week at pornographic web sites and is having sex with his girlfriend probably is going to tend to vote Democrat once he's old enough to vote. And the Republican businessman who gets involved in an adulterous relationship, and is unrepentant about it, probably is going to become increasingly sympathetic to the claims of the homosexual community and other politically active groups with a sexually immoral agenda. In an interview with Christianity Today, the New Testament scholar N.T. Wright made the following assessment of many of the modern critics of the Christian view of Jesus:

"'Probably they learned to disbelieve in the miracles of Jesus at the same time they first had sex. For them this stuff is part of liberation. To say maybe the conservative position is right is really to undermine their lives.' I asked Wright whether that would describe a younger generation of scholars. 'Oh, no,' he said, laughing; 'they have sex much earlier.'"

Robert Funk, a deceased Biblical scholar and founder of the Jesus Seminar, said that one of his reasons for wanting to "reinvent Christianity" was to have a Christianity that would support "protected recreational sex among consenting adults" (U.S. News & World Report, August 4, 1997, p. 55).

I think that sex plays a large role in Biblical scholarship. I also think it plays a large role in how Americans vote. For example, abortion is commonly used as birth control, and one party is much more likely to keep legal abortion available.

And the American voter lives in a society that's been largely secularized and trivialized, in addition to being more sexualized than in the past. David Wells, in his book God In The Wasteland (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1995), writes:

"It is one of the defining marks of Our Time that God is now weightless. I do not mean by this that he is ethereal but rather that he has become unimportant. He rests upon the world so inconsequentially as not to be noticeable. He has lost his saliency for human life. Those who assure the pollsters of their belief in God's existence may nonetheless consider him less interesting than television, his commands less authoritative than their appetites for affluence and influence, his judgment no more awe-inspiring than the evening news, and his truth less compelling than the advertisers' sweet fog of flattery and lies. That is weightlessness. It is a condition we have assigned him after having nudged him out to the periphery of our secularized life....Weightlessness tells us nothing about God but everything about ourselves, about our condition, about our psychological disposition to exclude God from our reality." (pp. 88, 90)

John Piper comments:

"Where is God in your daily newspaper or in your talk radio show or the network TV programming or Time and Newsweek or the theater or the public school classroom? God is the most important reality in the universe. But he is almost totally ignored. And if not, he is as likely belittled as reverenced....Disregard for God is the greatest evil in the West today. It is as though an ant on his anthill should disbelieve in the earth." (A Godward Life, Book Two [Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 1999], p. 19)

I don't think Obama represents where the American people are at the moment. Neither does McCain. Most Americans are less liberal than Obama and less conservative than McCain. But if we don't want them to go even further in Obama's direction, we need to spend less time criticizing conservatives like McCain for not winning and more time criticizing the American people for voting the wrong way.

10 comments:

  1. And the American voter lives in a society that's been largely secularized and trivialized, in addition to being more sexualized than in the past.

    Irony alert here.

    Question: Which ticket has a candidate whose 17 y/o daughter is pregnant out of wedlock.

    Hint: Starts with M/P.

    Is it your position that Democrats and liberals went up to Alaska and made her get inseminated with Levi's seed?

    ReplyDelete
  2. So the best you can do is to go after a candidate's child? Pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Once again, Evan doesn't let logic get in the way of his "thought process". He goes straight for the ad hominem and the tu quoque.

    Questions:

    1. Does Sarah Palin hold the position that what her daughter did was not a sin? If so, show me a citation reference. If not, are you blaming Gov. Palin for her daughter's sin?

    2. Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin are getting married and will raise the child (in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, one hopes). What would Obama/Biden's answer to the problem be?

    a. Abort the child
    b. Let the two of them shack up and raise the child out of wedlock
    c. Kick Levi to the curb and let Bristol be a single mom at the age of 17. With government assistance.
    d. Have Bristol declare that she's really a lesbian and then go to Mass., Conn., or Cali. and "marry" some other lesbian, and "adopt" the kid.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Evan,

    No, the point is that it's possible for people to rationalize their support for Obama and what he stands for, his values and policies and so on, fundamentally, because of their sin (e.g., pornography, sexual immorality).

    In a similar vein, take John Loftus, for example, whose atheism is at root due to his adultery.

    patrick

    ReplyDelete
  5. And of course I have to point out that contrary to IRONY, what Evan brings up actually substantiates Jason's point.

    ReplyDelete
  6. FWIW, I've been saying for some time that regardless of who wins this election, the media loses. They've exposed themselves for the whining subjective biased reporters they are. There is no objectivity in the media.

    Since they're so poll-driven and show the president's approval rating always around 30% and Congress's around 17%, I'd be interested in having them do a poll on the media's approval rating. I think they'd make even Congress look popular.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "Pregnant girl...therefore Christians want to sexualise society!.....QED"

    Evan

    ReplyDelete
  8. "Whether Obama Wins Or Loses, The American People Need To Be Criticized"

    Absolutely right. In addition I would add the following as a much overdue self-critique:

    Whether Obama Wins or Loses, the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and all the various Protestant churches and denominations need to be criticized as well for allowing a good portion of their body to lose its Salt and Light in a fallen world.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Evan wrote:

    "Is it your position that Democrats and liberals went up to Alaska and made her get inseminated with Levi's seed?"

    You'll have to explain the alleged significance of the sexual immorality of the daughter of a Republican vice presidential candidate. In the portion of my post that you quoted, I was referring to American society, which includes Republicans and their relatives. I said nothing that would suggest that only Democratic candidates have children who have been sexually immoral. I don't know what Bristol Palin's beliefs and party affiliations were at the time of her sexual immorality (some of the members of her immediate family weren't Republicans in the past), and she's one member of a society consisting of hundreds of millions of people. What does her example prove?

    But we can be grateful that she's not Barack Obama's daughter. He'd call the pregnancy a "punishment". He would want legal abortion easily available to his daughter. He would want infanticide legally available if the "punishment" child were to survive the attempted abortion. Because of the efforts of people like her father, she would be surrounded by the counsel of pro-choice organizations like the ones that have supported her father's campaign. And once the "punishment" child got to the age when he'd attend public schools, assuming he survived the abortion and infanticide his grandfather worked to keep legal, he could get a sex education that would trivialize the sexual immorality that his mother engaged in. Thanks to his grandfather and some of the organizations that supported his grandfather's campaign, his public school education would help prepare him to repeat his mother's mistakes.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's humorous to witness you assert that immorality leads to becoming affiliated with the democratic party, when so many top republican leaders have been exposed as sodomite/homosexual pedophiles. Oh and don't forget George Bush and Jeff Gannon...I guess we can at least say Gannon was a man and not a pre-pubescent boy as is usual with these Republican faggots.

    ReplyDelete