Wandering the savage garden…

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Christians, please don’t vote for Trump.

I’m an American citizen. I vote. I’m also a Christian who votes.

I know a distressing number of fellow Christians who have voted for, or are willing to vote for, Donald Trump as President of the United States.

I do not understand this; to me, something’s horribly broken in their reasoning.

It’s not that Trump is not a man in need of salvation just like any other – and from all appearances, he remains in need of salvation.

See Trump believes in God, but hasn’t sought forgiveness – accepting Christ as propitiation for our sin is a pretty fundamental part of being saved, and here we have Trump directly repudiating any guilt on his part. Romans 3:23 says that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” — emphasis mine.

His denial of his own sins before God means one of two things.

  1. He doesn’t think he has sinned. The Bible says that all have sinned; he’s either elevated himself to Jesus’ stature (and therefore blasphemes) or doesn’t recognize sin for what it is, and therefore has not accepted Jesus. Not a Christian in this case.
  2. He is lying to us about his state before God. In this case, he knows he’s sinned, and he’s accepted Christ, and he’s a Christian – but he’s also lying to people about it, and is ashamed of the Gospel somehow. Would be a Christian, by my understanding, but would also be unworthy as a candidate, since he’d be misrepresenting himself and the Gospel.

But the state of his soul is not what confuses me – I’ve voted for nonchristians before, because I felt that they were the best candidates. I could point to them and say “I think Candidate Smith has the best policy for education,” or what-have-you.

Being a Christian is important to me, as a voter, but it’s not the litmus test for my vote.

The thing is, I don’t know what the litmus test is for Christians who want to vote for Trump.

Is it ethics? It can’t be – almost every candidate offered during this election season has shown better ethics than Trump, with the sole possible exception of Hillary Clinton herself. When your campaign point is reduced to catcalls and exhortations of violence and mentions of “little Marco,” you don’t have ethics on your side.

Is it policy? It can’t be – Trump’s response to questions on policy almost invariably come down to vague answers about how he will have a policy, it’ll be great, it’ll be huge, we’re going to love it.

Is it business sense? It can’t be – he’s had businesses flame out that shouldn’t have done so, and he’s been happy to proclaim his manipulation of the system for his own benefit. You can’t say “This system is broken” and be happy to abuse the system, while expecting voters to think you’re willing to change the system.

More than anything else, it’s attention – I think people think Trump has name recognition, and that’s enough.

Name recognition is not enough. Stalin has name recognition – and nobody should be willing to consider voting for Stalin.

If you’re a Christian and you’re willing to vote for Trump, I’d love to see your explanation of “why.” I’d exhort you to reconsider prayerfully – and look at the Bible’s guidelines for leaders as well as your own personal morals. Would you want your sons acting like Trump? At all? Ever? Would you want your daughters to date such a man? Would you want to be like him at all?

If not, then please – reconsider your vote. Vote for anyone else – anyone else would be better.

savage
March 16, 2016
Lifestyle
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The end of the streak

I’d been riding a twenty-two day streak in my “five hundred words a day” challenge, including some days when I found it really hard to sit down to actually write. That streak is over, unfortunately, although it’s “sort of” and “not really” and “darn it, I was doing so well.”

It’s not really over, because I actually did write more than five hundred words yesterday, and published them, too; I just didn’t publish them here, and I didn’t record that I’d published them, either. I remembered too late; I record that I’ve written my five hundred words as part of the publishing process, and since I didn’t follow the publishing process here, I didn’t record that at least I’d written enough to fulfill the challenge.

So: the streak is dead, officially, even though I actually did fulfill my writing assignment for the day (and, at word one hundred and fifty or so in this post, I’ve actually exceeded my assignment by a lot for today, too.)

In a way, this is actually a good thing. I didn’t even think about having written at least five hundred words, because it’s been pretty normal for me over these last few weeks. Sure, I didn’t fulfill my own rules concerning the assignment (publish, publish here, no editing except for inline mistakes caused by poor/rapid typing, record the publication) but that’s okay.

I’m not a slave to the assignment, I hope.

And it’s nice to think that it’s become normal enough again that publishing isn’t much of an event. I used to publish three or four things a day – shorter things, I guess (averaging around two hundred words each), five days a week, fifty plus weeks a year (I occasionally took a week off or so), but over the last few years I’ve been in a sort of resting state.

I wish I could edit that last sentence! I’d rewrite it as “I’ve been in a resting state over the last few years, after publishing multiple pieces every workday for years, with only occasional breaks.” Wait, does this count as “editing?”

I guess I felt like I’d more or less done my bit for creating content for a while, and it wasn’t really important for me to be heard, or read, all that much. So publishing light content every few months was enough to satisfy any need I had to write for public consumption. (I still write a lot for my own enjoyment, but much of it’s for internal interest only.)

So the writing challenge – which continues, by the way, for at least another few days – has been very, very useful. It’s kickstarted me back into writing regularly, and even if the writing isn’t stellar or particularly topical, at least it’s writing – you don’t ride a horse like a master on day one, you have to ride every day.

And that’s what this has been, and what it remains. It’s a lot of fun.

savage
February 17, 2016
Lifestyle
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Making it matter

Today’s writing prompt is to avoid adverbs. I think I can do that – but what I want to write about is a little darker.

I want my writing to matter. I don’t want my writing to be pretty, or fun to read – I want it to matter, with italics and everything.

There are a lot of challenges for that.

For one thing, finding a topic that matters isn’t trivial. In the grand scheme, the Sunday School answer of “Jesus” comes into play; the one thing that really matters, more than correct metaphysics or epistemology or theology or anything else, is whether the reader is saved or not; I can’t save the reader (duh) but what I can try to do is glorify the Name of God, and if I do that with consistency and honor, then maybe God can use that as a way to shine His light on the reader’s soul.

Truth: I edited that sentence to remove the adverbs.

That’s God’s to do, not mine. I can try, and the trying is what matters – but God has to do the work. (That’s a good thing: He’s a lot better at being Him than we are.)

Another barrier for making my writing matter is the removal of myself. One of the things that’s really been difficult for me in the five hundred words challenge is the use of “I” and “me.” I originally started this site as a site for exposition, not as a “Christian blog” and certainly not my blog.

I already have a blog, after all (and I maintain a number of other sites as well), so adding another stream of content to manage, without a distinct focus, is unwise.

But I needed a place to write from a Christian viewpoint (inappropriate for my other sites, including my personal blog) and given that Christ is pretty relevant to my daily life, a daily challenge for writing would have to incorporate Christian views. Otherwise the edict to avoid editing would have to be avoided (to remove Christian markers from the content) — and a lot of what I’ve written about uses Christianity pretty heavily (or so I would hope.)

But I still write as if I am writing, and my writing is hallmarked by the removal of me from a lot of content. I’m uncomfortable writing “I” and “me.” It causes a focus on me that I’m not comfortable with, and which isn’t relevant, and exposes my inner thoughts.

Not only are my inner thoughts mine and not yours, I think they’re likely to be confusing (and confused) – and might actually cause more harm than good, either to me, to my readers, or to those about whom I am writing.

Lastly, making my writing matter is difficult (I hope I don’t have a challenge ahead that mandates I avoid the use of gerunds) because when it comes down to it, I would rather communicate “real” things to the person to whom they’re addressed, and writing is indirect. Writing for a general audience is tough… and it descends to self-indulgent puffery.

Which is how I see a lot of my writing for the challenge.

savage
February 15, 2016
Lifestyle
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Fear, from a writing prompt

Today’s topic is “fear.” It’s another writing prompt day, because it’s Valentine’s Day in the United States and I have other things about which to be.

Reading the closing part of that last sentence makes me grimace.

Fear… I’m supposed to write about my fear, and what I plan to do about it.

My fear is about being seen.

I’m attention-averse, for a lot of reasons. I’m a fairly intense introvert, for one thing; I can’t prevent myself from writing (although I might not preserve what I write, which is one of the things the five hundred words challenge is changing for me), but I hardly ever want to talk to people. My interactions are always layered, with probably the worst layers being instant-messaging apps.

I find I’m most comfortable being asynchronous characters on someone’s screen somewhere.

I hide my emotions, which would surprise people who know me moderately well. They see pockets of emotion, often over silly things, and think that’s the depth at which I live.

I grimaced a lot less over that last sentence.

The truth, however, is that I do hide my emotion. I choose to show emotion in specific ways, because I don’t want to be seen as an automaton. I’m not a robot, after all; my emotions are actually intense and very deep (and very strong), and I’m rather mercurial, internally. My showing of emotion would not only be unnatural for me (as an introvert) but scary for the people around me, I think.

They’d prefer the stiff upper lip. They’d want the occasionally silly robot man. They’d want the creepy observer, instead of the angry idealist who cajoles them to be better, who expresses his frustration at inefficiency and doubt and sloth.

It’s crippling and angering for me to be this way. Yes, I make myself angry by being something that I think makes me more palatable for the people around me.

Why? Because it forces me into the same patterns I resent in other people. I hold myself back, I become lazy, because not being lazy on my own terms means I never, ever, ever stop.

I’d get a lot done. And the people around me would feel isolated and judged. (I have experience being me; it’s true, and it’s happened.)

So I shift down in my own life, and I slow down, and I watch the sands of my life’s hourglass fall, and fall, and fall, all as a service to the self-images of others.

And I’m afraid to change it, because it’s a delicate balance that I preserve between who I am and the life I’m in. I love the people around me, intensely. I don’t want to upset the balances of their lives, if they are happy.

What’s worse than being afraid to change it is the lack of knowledge of how to change it. How do I open my heart and life in such a way that the people around me aren’t swept away by the fury and energy I shutter away?

I don’t know. I may never know.

If I had a prayer about fear, it would be this: that God would show me a way that I could see would be safe for those around me, for me to be myself, without filters and restraint. And that I’d still be loved through it all.

savage
February 14, 2016
Lifestyle
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