What Went Wrong in the Presidential Election?
Many Christians are pointing fingers after the presidential election – at Christian/Catholic voters who voted third party, at lower than expected voter turn-out rates. But I know exactly whose fault it is that the United States chose a pro-abortion, pro-gay “marriage”, anti-religious freedom candidate: mine.
Did I vote for President Obama? No. So how is it my fault? Very simple: because I’m not living as the saint God created me to be.
My (Lack Of) Witness
This nation has become so confused that it mistakes lies for Truth and darkness for Light. And this happened because I who know the Truth have not fully conformed my life to it – because I have failed to effectively witness to it. On more occasions than I would ever care to admit I’ve witnessed not to love, not to forgiveness, not to hope but to hatred or indifference, to pride, to despair. When I claim to have and know God’s truth, every sin I commit makes it easier for those around me to believe that I can’t possibly be speaking His Truth.
Every time I fail to hate the sin but love the sinner, I make that much stronger a case for those who believe that Christians don’t really love. It’s precisely because I have so often failed to model true love that so many people have come to believe that loving someone is letting them do whatever they want.
Many have come to believe that I want to “impose” my religion on others because I have failed to convince them by reason, by love and by my witness that it’s Truth. Instead now our culture’s secularism is being imposed on me. But given how many times, in so many small ways, I have acted as if my religion is reducible to Sunday worship, should I be surprised the HHS mandate now relegates religion to private worship that occurs on Sundays?
The Bottom Line
As long as I witness so poorly to the Truth, it will be far too easily mistaken for lies. As long as the Light of Christ that I have within me is darkened by my sin as it pours out of me, it will be too easily mistaken for the darkness masquerading as the Light.
When asked to write an essay on what’s wrong with the world G.K. Chesterton gave a simple one-word answer: “Me.” This post is a call to you, as much as it is a reprimand of myself. Be holier! Let us beg the Lord for more grace and to be open to more of His grace. Let us spend more time in prayer, more time in worship. Let us beg Jesus to take away everything that prevents us from fully conforming our lives to Him (be it fear, pride, greed, laziness, etc.).
Let us beg The Lord to turn us into the saints He created us to be, for it is saints who will convert our nation with Christ’s love, truth and light!
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November 8, 2012 2:39 pm
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By Shane Kapler, November 8, 2012 @ 11:34 pm
Denise, I clicked on the link to this post thinking that I was going to find you being much too hard on yourself, a case of misplaced blame. Instead, I find that I am the one who had misplaced the blame. You are thinking with the mind of the saints. Thank you for crystallizing this point for me. It is the way forward.