Render Unto God...

 After months of enduring negative political ads and mean-spirited Facebook posts, election day has finally arrived.  As pundits struggle to sensationalize every little percentage point on the news, I sit in a quiet darkened bedroom and collect my thoughts.

Some people are so political, they feel the need to express unsolicited opinions on a daily basis whether we want to hear it or not.  For the better part of a year, my Facebook page has been cluttered with vicious one-sided political arguments.  Some posts might have a ring of truth to them while others suffer from huge gaps in logic.  “This candidate is a bigot.”  “That candidate is corrupt.”  “The country will be ruined if X or Y is elected.”  Such a constant stream of negativity seems commonplace as people move into their own little political camps where a difference of opinion is not tolerated.

We all have our own viewpoints but I rarely post anything political to my personal Facebook page.  Honestly, what good does it do?  If a person comes out swinging and has a lack of respect for the other side are they likely to change someone's mind?  I may not agree with everything my friends and acquaintances believe in but I know them well enough to understand why they hold the beliefs they do.  Many of them can't seem to muster up that same level of understanding, though.

There are those rare times when I do take issue with what other people have posted.  Maybe I felt their post was too offensive or perhaps the analogy they used didn't seem accurate.  What usually happens is the person's friends swoop in like vultures to pounce.  On one occasion, someone's response to my argument was simply, “Fuck you.”  No debate.  No discussion.  Just hit below the belt and leave.  What really bothered me was the fact that my friend made no effort to rein in this rude behavior.

After sparring with more vultures on another post, I asked them, “Do you have any friends with different political beliefs?”  The roundabout response they gave was basically, “No.”  That's a problem.  More than a few people on Facebook have said, “If you support Candidate X then I have to unfriend you.”

It's becoming a knee-jerk nation where whole segments of the population never have to deal with anyone from the other side.  George Orwell once wrote, “The best books...are those that tell you what you know already.”  Today people use the internet to merely confirm what they already believe.  Think Candidate Y is like Hitler?  There are websites that will back up that claim.  Think Candidate Y isn't anything like Hitler?  We can find websites to defend that angle as well.

What gets lost is critical thinking.  Whenever someone hurls the word “divisive” around, I often wonder if they bother to look in the mirror.  By some strange coincidence, the people who are the most misinformed about an issue usually turn out to be the ones who disagree with you.  No need to examine your own viewpoints, however.

We have certainly rendered an obscene amount of time, money, and energy to Caesar lately but what are we rendering to God?  When the election results are in, will there be nothing but gloating and sour grapes?  You can still be a good Christian no matter who is president and part of that is treating each other with mutual respect.  The early Christians managed to persevere under the harsh realities of the Roman Empire.  What's our excuse?