Obamanation!!

I saw a bumpersticker the other day. “Obama 08” is what it read. Nothing spectacular, nothing profound, but something stuck out to me. The elderly lady driving that car didn’t notice that I was starring, but I noticed something about her, and I assume, people in general. She has hope for something better than this world. She has the desire for a better tomorrow. Something within her longs for a bright and bold future that offers freedom, peace, and beauty. She has “the audacity of hope.” Maybe I am naïve, but then again I feel as though I perceived something quite true today. All of this ladies hopes and dreams are misplaced. She is expecting the government, particularly the Obama campaign to bring about peace, hope, beauty and freedom. She is hoping in the goodness of the few to bring about the joy for the many. I can’t help but think that her hopes in one charismatic man are quite close to the truth. For within her hopes of this one man is found a larger and more encompassing hope in the goodness of people. Her hope that people will make the right decisions, that people will be good, that people will do the right thing, is something found among many people. It is even a hope expressed in the new movie, ‘Dark Knight.’
Her hope in one man is actually bigger than I have expressed, she hope/thinks/believes that somehow the system of America will in some way be able to bring about a better world. This just seems to me to be a little off of the truth as well. She feels that the ideals of America such as freedom, capitalism, and equality are core values in securing the better tomorrow. This is all well and good, if you have no other system by which you can judge the securing of a better tomorrow. Even when there are competing systems jockeying for a better slot there is debate about which one is best. It would seem to me that America has an efficient enough system in bringing about the “best” for the people who live there, but the system and ideals of America are not exactly what I want.
I want my ideals to be the ideals of God, my system to be the only system/kingdom that offers eternal peace, my hope in people to be in the kingdom members, and my one man I trust in to be Jesus. I can’t help but think (possibly due to an overly high ecclesiology) that the freedom, peace, beauty and justice that everyone wants is total and complete when found within God’s kingdom. When the gospel (the news that Jesus is king over everything, not just a personal Lord. And that this Jesus’ people can go about proclaiming that news and bringing freedom and liberation and justice to those who obey follow him.) is spread through the community of God freedom, beauty, justice, and peace spring forth. “Christianity is all about becoming human.” At least that is what I keep hearing from Alex Giltner. But really why should I hope in some man other than Jesus, some group of people other than the church, some system of government other than the kingdom of God? I submit I should not.
Now I don’t know much about politics or campaigns, but I think that what I want to communicate is irrelevant to political campaigns. So, I see within that lady’s bumpersticker a philosophy for something deeper and that is less than satisfactory. But then again, that car might have been stolen, or that sticker been slapped on that ladies car by some crazy Obama supporter. For those who suffered through this, sorry for my inability to be clear.

I now have a shotgun!

Yes, I now own my own shotgun! It is a Benelli Nova Pump, 12 gauge, in Advantage Max 4HD camoflauge. I really like it. My job is okay. I wish i were better for my church. but my final year of undergraduate work is creeping slowly around the corner. soon i will be a college grad, it seems like it has taken long enough.