1. There may be some people who actually put all their hope in elections. But I have never met one of these people. I have a feeling they are few and far between. They show up about as often as the Yeti.

2. Caring about politics does not mean you have put all your hope in elections. It means you care about your country which is made up of people you are supposed to care about.

3. Navigating the difficulties of faith and politics has never been easy.

4. Some people do put too much stock in elections and politicians. But this makes far more sense and is far more reasonable then Christians being entertained by The Bachelor.

5. There is some talk that would leave you thinking almost any emotional response (happiness or hurt) shows your hope is not in Jesus. That is just plain irrational. I get happy about bacon. And I hurt when we are out of bacon. Surely an emotional response about the direction of something so small as THE DIRECTION OF A COUNTRY is appropriate.

6. It is always someone else who has the warped perspective on faith and politics. It is never the one giving advice.

7. Anyone who wants to raise taxes and then vote for themselves to get a raise is a bad person.

Update: More Thoughts On Election Day

1. I have always enjoyed watching the returns on election night. And when I say “always” I mean since I was a kid, when we had an election in 4th grade and I voted for Reagan. My parents inexplicably voted for Carter that year.

2. Politics and governance are matters of social justice.

3. Can someone tell me again why I am not supposed to like Sarah Palin? Cause I do.

4. I would listen to liberal politicians more if they if wanted to lower my taxes instead of raising them.

5. I would listen to liberal pundits more if they would not be so predictable in calling every conservative politician they disagree with, “dumb.”

6. There is a lot of talk about how Christians (nearly always conservative) mix up their faith and their political convictions and the problem this presents. I’m not buying it. I have never met these people. I have met people whose faith informs how they vote and think.

7. Jonathan Edwards would be in the bulls-eye of those who criticize the mixing of faith and politics.

8. It is not necessarily a sign of faithlessness or lack of eternal perspective to be disappointed if the election does not go the way you would like. It could be the absence of faith that causes this disappointment but it could also be the presence of care for others and the pursuit of justice.

9. I think many young Christians will not identify themselves as conservative simply because they do not want to relinquish the social cache of being independently minded. In a world tyrannized by “cool,” being a conservative can make you an intellectual leper.

10. I know the last thing I am supposed  to say is something about how in the whole scheme of things this does not matter. But I don’t agree. Jobs and healthcare and taxes and abortion and marriage and laws do matter while people still live here. The “this world is not my home” argument is true but it is also true that you should care about those who still and will live here. Elections affect people and we are supposed to care about people. And yes, Jesus reigns still.

Last Night I pulled a camp chair into the front walk, which winds its way to wooden steps climbing towards the front door. An imperceptible breeze moved the Alabama air from the south. Facing in that direction I maneuvered my body in my seat so the smoke would pass behind me. I looked into the night sky. Pin pricks of starlight showcased themselves to the east over the valley below, with its lights ushering a haze of of gray from below. To the right, right over Montgomery sat the moon, a brilliant gash in the night. It hung just beyond the bare limbs of the copse which stood in front of me and between us and our neighbors to the south. The surrounding mid-October coolness of the hometown’s evening can never be got over. The sounds of bugs not yet driven away by the chill, a frog and a dog barking incessantly but mercifully in the distance fight for prominence over the slight rumble of occasional cars driving east and west on Savoy. In the valley to the west, a train whistle sounds, it’s roar across the tracks in the shadow of the bluff sounds for a few moments then disappears into the distance. Looking over the roof of our home and the wood beams which stretch into the entry and over the kitchen and outside over the back deck, the stars grew in number. Flying among them, planes at various levels, glided to destinations unknown. Time was unknown.

And all of it had the distinct feel of being and blood-bought.

When I decided to take an extended break from social media, I knew there would some lessons learned. Whenever something which is such a part of your daily life is removed, a real detox that has to take place. And in the midst of the cleansing, you see spaces, once covered by the dust of neglect, for what they are.

I am constantly running status updates and tweets through my head. Some are clever. Some are meant to be profound and some funny. It’s a totally new phenomenon. Previous to joining facebook 4 years ago, there was no such outlet and therefore no need for these brief expressions to escape.

But now? It’s constant. And I admit I do miss it all just a little. I miss reading other people’s status’ and seeing what all is going on. I miss the interaction. A little.

But now there is an alternate new “thing” I would have never expected. I knew the desire to update facebook and Twitter would be a strong one. But this new strange enjoyment has caught me by surprise.

This enjoyment is in keeping it all to myself.

So here is how it all unwinds. Something happens, either externally or internally. The habitual, reflexive need to tell it to everyone in social media wells up from within. Then I remember, “I am not doing this.” And from somewhere comes this satisfying feeling of keeping the thought to myself. Not every time, do I feel this way. But it has happened enough.

I wondered if it was hoarding, the first time I took notice of the joy I was feeling. But no, it feels more like taking care of something precious. Actually this has the ring of – now don’t anyone get their feelings hurt – of throwing my pearls before swine.

It’s not that my friends on facebook and my followers on twitter are “swine” in the negative sense of the word. They just cannot appreciate the value some these thoughts have for me. Thoughts which social media have told me should be shared with anyone and everyone at all times. Before the social media revolution, this idea of our thoughts being as valuable as pearls, would have made sense.

But now? It’s constant. And contrary to the urge to post something, which is dark and constricting, keeping it all to myself has the feel of being open and airy.  OK, I know that sounds bizarre. But I cannot put it in words. Perhaps I should have just kept that last part to myself.

I’m still pretty mad about the way Matt Damon treated Minnie Driver in Good Will Hunting. My wife was down at the family farm with the kids and I was home by myself. So I watched it this past weekend. Don’t tell my wife but I kinda have a crush on Minnie Driver in that movie. Did have a crush. Well, do. So I’m mad at Matt Damon.

A couple of hours previous to watching this movie for at least the third time, I signed off of facebook and Twitter for an indefinite period. I wanted a little time away. And this decision was with me constantly while I was watching the film because the temptation to tweet the great lines were legion. And then I noticed something in the film I had not noticed before.

The scene that draws everyone in to the story is the chalkboard scene. When Will does the problem on the chalkboard out in the hall of the math building, it is obvious someone of genius does it, though at first no one knows who it is. There are no thoughts of a student faking it by using the internet. Why? It was 1997. So, we are talking pre-wikipedia or anything of the sort. Sure, there were internet sites in 1997 but they had blue backgrounds with yellow and red writing.

Today most people would just assume whoever solved the problem got help from the internet. The plethora of information would have rendered us more than a little cynical about the beauty of someone like Will’s genius. We would simply assume his information was borrowed and not really his own. And we would do this because so much of our information is.

We either know too much or we know too little. Maybe both. But while the math professor knew that there was someone who could authentically prove the theorem, we now wonder at the possibility of authenticity at all. The prodigious abilities of Will Hunting stood in stark relief to the meager resources at his disposal, proving his authenticity. I wonder if we have the opposite problem. I wonder if we have resources so very instantly at our fingertips…in our pockets, abilities are no longer really needed and the wonder of greatness is never really seen.

We have no need any longer to sit and wonder. There are no long drives to the library to see if they have a book that might help us think through issues in a particular discipline of study.  There is no scanning of the shelves while the quiet of the room full of books begs us to continue on our quest for an answer. And once we find that book, there are no time periods of looking for the information, possibly writing it down and taking it in as we do. Now we hit ‘enter’ and we ‘cut and paste’ and think we have done something.

We have more information but we do not know it.

Admittedly, I actually got nostalgic for that once upon a time when the internet did not dominate our life. It was a moment. An “aorist” kind of moment. The kind of moment with continuing effects stretching into and doing violence to other moments, changing them. I thought for a moment about how my kids will never know a time without the internet and therefore never really understand what it is. I argued with myself for a moment. And all my arguments for the net’s necessity rung hollow across the landscape of history. The tinny arguments could only reach back to a period not long ago, say….around 1997.

Imagine a mom leaving to run errands for the day. She leaves instructions for her teenage children while she is away. She tells them, “Clean the house. Pick up your clothes. Do the dishes. Clean the windows. Dust. Feed the dog. Clean up your rooms. Straighten the den. Make sure the house is spic and span when I return home. I do not want to return to a dirty house.” The teens respond positively to the instructions.  The mom returns at the end of the day and is astonished when she walks in the house. The house is not clean. She asks her children what they did all day. The following is their response:

“We fed the dog in obedience to what you commanded. And not only did we feed the dog but we read books on how to feed the dog better and what the dog’s food should be. And then we trained our youngest siblings how to feed the dog. The importance of feeding the dog was not lost on us. So we then went door to door and talked with others about the need to feed dogs everywhere. We let them know that they could not be good children if they did not feed the dog. Then we came back and fed the dog again. So the dog is fed.”

Shocked, the mother is almost speechless and is unsure of how to reply. “What…? How…? Did you not hear me? Yes, I asked you to feed the dog. But did you not hear my repeated requests…commands for you to CLEAN THE HOUSE? All of my instructions would be summed in the command for you to clean the house. I said it explicitly. And I said it repeatedly. And I told you what that would look like. How could you ignore this and only feed the dog and make the day about the dog? I told you to feed the dog once and you did it. I told you over and over and over to clean and you didn’t. How is this possible?”

“God help us.”

I’m part of a little Bible Study that meets downtown. And this past week’s study was the finishing up of a study called The Gospel-Centered Life. The subject was conflict. To be honest, I was already in a crappy mood. There was no way this was going to help.

The basic gist of the study was our need to deal with conflict in a way that protects the integrity of the gospel and demonstrates the gospel’s power to heal broken relationships. And there are two ways people deal with conflict wrongly. These two ways are demonstrated by two different types of people: attackers and withdrawers. We either attack people to make ourselves feel better by wining arguments or we withdraw so we do not have to deal with the messiness of conflict resolution.

As our teacher read the descriptions of these two people who deal with conflict in a way that is out of step with the gospel, I became a little uncomfortable. But I knew. I knew the material had me pegged. My day just got worse. Even in the midst of my blackguard heart being exposed in a room full of young people half my age, I wanted to defend myself and make myself look good in front of everyone with a stellar argument detailing why this discussion was not worth our time. Stupid study.

“Hello, my name is Matt and I am an attacker.”

It took about 2.3 seconds for me to find myself in this description. I did not want to be this person. But I saw myself clearly. I could feel that deep down soul anxiety that all attackers feel and must deal with by attacking. And I knew it for what it was: insecurity.

My brother Jeff once called me insecure long before I had a clue what the word meant. He was a college student at the time, so he knew everything. But he was right. I was. I am. I attack people and ideas because it gives me the sense of being right and therefore provides with a rightness/righteousness before God and people. Mainly people. When all the time I have the righteousness of Christ credited to me and I am accepted and beloved. When I forget this or ignore it as is often the case, I make moves in order to establish some kind of alternate righteousness. I have mad attack-mode skills.

Afterwards we always trek over to Buffalo Wild Wings. We were sitting around and before I had the first bite of those glorious bites of culinary genius, I had gone into attack mode three times. As I drove home, I thought,

“I need to just shut up, eat my Mango Habanero Wings and be quiet.”

“No, that’s just withdrawing! Don’t do that.”

“Crap, how am I even a pastor?”

Talking to yourself is weird enough. But when it’s attacker Matt versus withdrawer Matt, it can get ugly.

But I knew what I needed. I needed security in something outside of myself. I needed…need the security of what God has done for me in Christ so I won’t feel the need to attack and I need the security of what God has done for me in Christ after I have attacked.

So, all in all it was a crappy day. But one for which I’m thankful.

I suppose I never thought about it till I saw Notting Hill. I never really thought twice about the feelings of celebrities. They were conversational footballs to be kicked around and thrown and caught.

I never thought about the fact they were people. Real people with hearts that break. Heads that swim in the confusion of life’s difficulties. Lives that deal with pain, sickness and death. They have parents, who they love and are grieved when their children are mocked for the world’s insecurity. Sisters in the shadows. Brothers serving overseas. I never thought about how they must look in the mirror and see themselves as less beautiful than we do, wishing we would like them for who they are and not the parts they play. And ironically, wanting to be liked because of what they do, because it is what they must do.

I never thought about how they must feel, knowing we talk about their marriages and divorces with less than the gravity and care we show towards the parts they play on the screen. I never thought that the laughs we effuse at their expense were callous and unkind. It was as if such concerns were off limits. When was the last time a parent said, “You should not talk about her that way” and they were talking about someone who is famous.

The most common thing coming out of my mouth while reading or watching a news story on the newest escapades of the jet set stars and starlets is, “What an idiot.” And while this makes me feel better, something tells me it isn’t what should be coming out of my mouth. Or my heart, for that matter.

Why do we feel that we should be pursuing our enemies with love and yet ridiculing the famous? Why is it  we can feel so bad for so many sins and not really be all that bothered by the way we talk about celebrities? Maybe we think they have such a wealthy deposit of money and attention, our debt of kindness is not worth mentioning. Maybe we think their sinful behavior deserves the jabs, gossip and laughter heaped on them? Maybe we think, “That’s what you get for being famous!”And perhaps we really think we are better than they are.

I wonder if our image-driven celebrity culture has made it all but impossible to see celebrities as those who are made in the image of God. The bright lights blind us to this reality.

My best friend Jonathan is smart. When we were growing up he would help me with my homework even though he was 3 years behind me in school. And when I say ‘help’ I mean ‘practically do it.’ And then we would go outside and I would own him in basketball. He was short and I was tall for my age. And yes, it made me feel better.

You can read my introduction over at the Gospel Coalition Blog.