For the Poor

I have been listening intently to the raging debates over healthcare, and "the public option" in particular. I have only heard rare moments where anything truly meaningful was spoken. One such moment was on Ed Shultz's afternoon radio show. He asked a bold question (it never was answered well). How can the religious right be opposed to national healthcare?

Nothing gets me fired up like smashing politics and religion together, and I have to answer Ed by saying that I honestly feel like there isn't a way to be a sincere about following and trusting Jesus and at the same time denying the realities of healthcare in America. The poorest of America's people are the ones that need this reform the most. Christianity is a mission to the poor first and foremost. Jesus speaks to the poor more than any other group. Whatever a Christian does to the least she does to Christ. True religion by Jesus' standards is giving to the widows and orphans.

Now we have a chance as Christians in America to stand for something truly righteous: the means for even the poorest of people to have their medical needs met. Single mothers of four chilren working three jobs to keep things afloat will not have to fear for the healthcare needs of their children. Service industry workers, the people that do the dirty jobs so that we have every ammenity of American living, won't have to choose between financial ruin or serious chronic illness (or even death sometimes!).

What can be Christian about ignoring these things? How can we act like helping the poorest of our nation isn't near and dear to the heart and mind of God? And don't tell me that "The Church" ought to take care of it. We are The Church and we have to do something about it.

I'm going to march for healthcare on September 13th for the poor, as a follower of Jesus. How can I do any less?

God Always Knows What He's Doing. . .

Today I found out that my somewhat estranged father lost his teaching job. He made someone (or many people) angry, he did some not quite by the book things, and someone that didn't like him decided to get rid of him.

I don't know what happened, or why this happened. I don't know the meaning behind it if there is one. I do know a couple of things though: The man unequivically believes that God knows what He is doing. This is a mantra I have heard for my entire life. I'm sure that if you believe in God as a Jew does or as a Muslim does it's rather easy to say this mantra as well.

I have a serious question to that answer though: What are YOU doing? Every time that I hear someone say this tired epithet, I wonder what they will do in their assurance that God is doing "something". My dad says that he won't fight this "injustice" because it might harm other people to do so, but he's harming his youngest son by not doing so. He's letting a gauranteed spot at a fine school get ripped out from underneath my brother, who was supposed to begin his college career next week. Is that God's plan? I think it must be my father's plan to let this one go. I don't know why, and I lose respect for him by knowning that someone else's well-being is more important to him than his own son's, but I do not think that this is God's plan.

Sure, tell me God know's what he's doing. I'll buy that, even if I find it vague and dissatisfying. God does know what he's doing, but that doesn't mean it will get done if we sit on our rear ends talking about it and not helping it along.

That's my bit of prophecy for the day.

Cheers,

Patrick

Michael Card Had His Reasons

Greetings,

I want to start a journey, rather, I want to share my journey with others. I'll start by saying that I've come a long way from my boyhood dream of becoming president or a world changing voice for God. I have lost things, given things up, gained new understanding, and the canvas of my life has been washed clean and repainted again and again. Still the words of Michael Card (a great musician and greater theologian) ring true in my mind:"And so we follow God's own fool, for only the foolish can tell; Believe the unbelievable. Come be a fool as well"

I have been a fool for so long. I have pursued foolish religion, foolish politics, foolish desire. I hope to become more like the fool that Mr. Card speaks of and less the fool that American pleasantries would have me be.

Travel with me as I ponder and write about the struggles of being a Christian in a country where the church-goers attack the ideals in the mind of God and in a place where those concerned with everything but God label all those that do seek his face as imbiciles. I seek a balance between these things and I believe that Jesus of Nazereth, at the heart of his message, teaches that neither extreme can be right.

I'll speak to politics, I'll speak to religion, I'll speak to how it is to be totally angered by the ideas of God that exist while still pursuing the mind of God, and what that means if you're an American (And if I actually get to spend time in some other places, what I learn about that same thing around the world). Ask the difficult questions. Speak out against the things that anger you, and speak for the things that give you hope.

Please join this fool and teach me as we travel.

Cheers,

God's Own Fool