Normally I would not “mix business with politics”, but for this post I am setting life insurance aside and using this forum to make my case for what I believe is the most important decision this country is facing concerning our future.
Let me preface this by saying that I have been voting for 35 years now. There haven’t been a lot of really great choices at the presidential level, but I’ve always voted my heart and my gut and done the best I could. I have never felt compelled to get involved in a campaign. I have never donated to a campaign (unless you count my portion of the matching federal campaign fund). I have just voted and lived with the consequences. That changed this year.
I have given a lot back to our country and the communities that I have lived in over the years, donating time and money for charity, good causes, disaster relief and so on. But I have never considered a step so bold as to answer Kennedy’s query in 1961, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country”. America has come a long way since then. Unfortunately it has come a long way in the wrong direction.
People don’t reach out and help their neighbors the way they used to. People don’t get involved with their community like they used to. Adults don’t give their time to help our youth become responsible young adults the way they used to. Our country has become self centered both from an individual and a global perspective. This is not the country that I grew up in as a child.
Barack Obama isn’t the answer to our country’s problems, but I believe he is the leader that can most quickly help us all to find the answers. Barack Obama can’t fix overnight what this country, politicians and citizens alike, have gone about messing up for the last 40 years, but I believe he is the leader who can help us all to get a grip and turn in the right direction. Barack Obama isn’t exciting because he is a good orator or because he will be the first black president, but I believe he is exciting because he is the first presidential candidate since Kennedy that has recognized that the power should come from the bottom up and it is the job of the president to encourage that energy and funnel it in positive directions.
Barack Obama, unlike so many choices of the past, is not the lesser of two evils as I’ve heard so often. The evil is the direction of the country and I believe that Barack Obama is the right person at the right time to help this nation confront that enemy and win.
Much will be made through this election about whether Barack Obama has the experience to be the president. Let’s be real. The only people that can submit a resume sufficient to qualify themselves to hired as the president, would be a former president (and most of them wouldn’t get hired again). There will be challenges just like and unlike any president has ever seen and the most we can hope for is that we have someone at the helm that is willing the face those challenges and use his God given good sense on our behalf, and I believe that Barack Obama is the right person at the right time.
Bottom line. I believe our nation is about to turn a historic corner. My prayer is that our nation will come together and embrace this opportunity and fight for this breath of fresh air that we are being offered. It is not by blind faith that I support Barack Obama, but by my true faith that God answers prayers.
My 20 years of experience give me the knowledge and leverage to find reasonably-priced life insurance for people who have been declined or are paying more than they need to.
During the primary, I supported a man named Mike Huckabee for President. A true man of faith, and courage and conviction. It is with sadness that I watched this man not be embraced by the nation. It was his “original” and “sincere” message of hope that I embraced, but more than that, it was his political ideologies that lead me to embrace him as the candidate of hope. Now I am lost because so many people talk about hope and change, but Mike Huckabee was the only one to talk about how this change should happen.
I sorrowfully look at the kind of change that Barack Obama would bring, and realize that even he doesn’t know. If we have the hope of life for all, than he is a lost cause. If we have the hope of self conviction, than he is a lost cause. If we have the hope of our faith, than Barack Obama needs to find out what “true” faith is. The message of bitterness about our past is not the same as hope for the future. Being bitter about other individuals rights and beliefs is not hope. So I am sad that this nation is looking to a man not of vision, but of emptiness. His rhetoric is lost and fumbled. It makes me sad, because it isn’t the truth.
I’m not saying that the alternative is a lot better. I’m not saying that John McCain is someone we can fully embrace. My beliefs place me within this select group that believes that everyone should be allowed to have life. That the money is ours to do with what we “choose” and that a Godly person will choose to be charitable and leave his judgment up to God and not his government. That we should be stewards of the environment when it is scientifically viable. That we should be defenders of the faith, and that that faith should be true and not hallow and empty. I have a lot of beliefs, but more than anything I cannot vote for someone who claims to be a christian, but that it is only Christ’s teaching of love that we should be concerned with and not the cleansing of our souls with His blood. I don’t trust the man, and so I continue to pray that God’s will be done, and I continue to hope that His will is for John McCain to overcome the man of lawlessness, that lives with the hope of disparity and doesn’t seek to preserve life. More and more as I grow in years, I think about how lost this battle is, and how the only way we can truly overcome is for the return of our Savior….and that is Jesus Christ, not for a false savior to come along with a “vision” of hope.
But lastly I would say that I hope everyone understands it is their right to stand for what they believe in, and vote for their beliefs not matter what they are. I respect that Barack Obama has made it this far, and I understand why people are so in love with this guy. I admire his leadership and his skills as an orator, but I will not vote for him and i will continue to hope that others won’t either.
Mr Wolfe,
Thank you for the comments. I too am an evangelical Christian and found Mike Huckabee to be someone I could trust as President, purely from a religious stand.
But, history is well, historical. That is not our option at this point.
As a Chrisitan I have tussled with the whole issue of sin when it comes to picking candidates I will vote for. The truth is that the Bible teaches us that sin is sin, and one is not greater than another. Somewhere along the line, politically, someone decided that the sin of abortion is greater than the sin of greed or any number of other choices. That is an emotional and not a biblical argument.
My choice is to vote for a candidate that has the God given ability to move people, to get this nation off of its’ collective rear end and inspire us to be involved. God’s perfect will has to be the end result. We will vote. He will decide.
Hey Uncle Ed!
I agree that greed can be a sin, but it isn’t about which sin is worse….it’s that we who have a voice have to speak for those who don’t. When they can’t defend themselves, and defend their right to life, it is our responsibility to do it for them. This is the greatest difference between myself and most republicans. I’d be a democrat if it weren’t for spiritual compromise. How can I feel ok about putting someone in authority that would allow a mass genocide to happen? I’m not exactly for or against the iraq war, but more infants die in one day….ONE DAY, than all of the great men and women who have chosen to defend our nation and serve in this time of war have in 5 years.
Barack Obama thinks that an infant that survives an abortion attempt and is born alive, should still be killed. He is the only member of the United States Senate to feel that way. It is my moral and religious obligation to do what I can to end this man’s run from a constitional aspect. If this man wins, it will be because God allowed it, not because God preferred it. Abraham Lincoln once said, “I care not if the Lord is on our side. I just hope that we are on the Lord’s side”. Abortion is murder, and God is against murder.
Which is worse, to rob a man or to kill him? It’s not that the one sin is actually worse than the other as a sin, it’s that the one sin robs a man of his opportunity to have an effect on things around him, to make a difference, or even to serve God. So we pray that the man at the top of the food chain remembers the ones at the bottom who are hurting and starving and need help. Do we think we can force someone into helping another? it’s a moral conviction that teaches us to serve others, not a government that forces it upon us. What good is a work if its intention is not genuine? Truthfully, no good at all.
“8 Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.
9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. 10 According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. 11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 12 Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13 each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. 14 If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. 15 If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
16 Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? 17 If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.”-1 Corinthians 3:8-17
If Barack Obama wins, he will be MY PRESIDENT. But until that day comes, I will fight him and keep fighting him. I have no doubt that this election will be more in God’s hands, should He receive it, than in our hands. I know it will serve a purpose, but my hope is that the purpose be more of promising good, than allowing evil.
So with much love, I say thank you for the BLOG. It’s great that we can come together in this society and discuss these differences of opinion.
Well…it’s now a year later. Obama is president and I don’t see much change….except change for the worse. None of our enemies now love us and in fact they’re taking advantage of our weakness, the national debt is going through the roof, unemployment is nearing 10%, the fight is on to let government take over health care anddestroy private insurance, the nation is divided even worse than a year ago, Afghanistan is falling apart and Americans are getting killed in record numbers there, the White House can’t decide what they want and they seem to take no leadership on anything except the leadership in calling average American names, the admiinistration is filled with tax cheats, self avowed communists and any number of radical thinkers, the AG wants to make criminals of our CIA agents while BHO wants to let the terrorists into this country instead of keeping them in Gitmo where they belong….yeah….things are much better.
I respect your opinions on insurance and find them helpful….but I hope your off the Obama kool aide by now.