Country First. That’s the theme of John McCain’s Republican National Convention. This is the slogan emblazoned on signs and placards waved around the convention hall with fervor and excitement and the theme scrawled upon the banner of the John McCain website (as seen above). This theme has also been used on the campaign trail leading up to the convention and stated over and over by the Republican pundits on the web and television interviews. And for a political campaign it’s a good theme… it works to rile up the base and the patriots. However, I am concerned with a segment of the population that is swallowing this theme whole, waving the signs, spreading the word and truly believes it to be truth. The segment that I am concerned with: Christians.

As a Christian, there should be no place for country at the top of your priority list - to do so is akin to idolatry. By putting “country first” where does that put Jesus? Where does that put the Kingdom of God? As citizens of the Kingdom first and joint-heirs with Christ, there should be no question that they come before country. In my own personal life I have a hard time having country in my “Top 10 List” of priorities and if it makes it into that list it’s only by default (I ran out of priorities). I would not be able to put country before Jesus, before the Kingdom, before my wife, before family, before my friends, and before anything else for that matter. The call from Jesus for the Christian as explained by Peter: We are to live as strangers in a foreign land. Country cannot be first for the Christian. It should not be first for the Christian for civil government ultimately belongs to the world, not the Kingdom.

Country first? No. Christians please start paying attention to what you are so quick to accept without question. I have no problem with who you vote for but please don’t blindly accept slogans without thought of its implications.

So, I stumbled across this today over at The Huffington Post and I couldn’t help but laugh out loud. I actually feel kinda bad for this guy trying to defend someone that is impossible to do… After this I don’t think we’ll ever hear from this guy again on the media circuit. (Poor guy couldn’t answer a simple question… but then again he doesn’t have much to work with either.)

There have only been two times in my life when I felt as if I was watching history in the making, and both times they were tragedies: the Challenger explosion and the morning of September 11th. Tonight was the first time that I saw history in the making and I knew that it was something different, something positive, something courageous and something world altering. Tonight, Barack Obama accepted the nomination of his party and became the first African-American Presidential Candidate of a major political party in the United States of America.

This is one of those times in the spectrum of history that will be one of the most significant historical moments of all time. It will be one of those moments that my children and my children’s children will read about in text books, and see replayed in their classrooms. This will be one of those moments that will live on.

I have been a life-long fan of history and with the advent of You Tube I have been able to find scores of amazing historical speeches by great men like Dr. Martin Luther King and JFK, Bobby Kennedy and FDR. Speeches that not only inspire, but captivate your imagination and motivate you to step up and step outside of yourself to achieve something beyond your wildest dreams. These men are some of my “historical heroes” for their courage and bravery to stand up against ideas that were the cultural norm of the day. Barack Obama is quickly finding himself among the ranks of these men in a historical context.

Tonight was a historical night… and I’m thankful that I was able to see positive history take place for a change. I am also thankful that John McCain did the decent and noble thing of trying not to upstage Obama on such a historical occasion with VP talk. I’m glad he decided to wait until tomorrow. It truly does speak of his decency and understanding of the historical gravity of tonight.

The rest of this political election cycle is certainly going to be exciting… and I can’t wait to see how it turns out. It’s a close one, full of completely differing ideals by both men who stand in stark contrast to one another. This is going to be interesting!

Opening night at the Democratic National Convention, author Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz, etc.) gave the closing benediction. If you were watching CNN, they didn’t televise it along with a lot of other things that happened throughout the day. But if you’re interested in hearing what he said/prayed for, here it is courtesy of CSPAN.

NOTE: The sound drops out at one point for a couple of seconds but does resume.

As I watch the coverage of the Democratic National Convention I continue to hear phrases such as “Most Liberal Senator in the Congress” (referring to Obama) and my favorite given by Rudy Guiliani “Joe Biden is the third most liberal Senator in the Congress.” I guess I never realized there was a ranking system for such things… who then is second? And how is Hillary and Pelosi or even Kennedy not among the top 3?

As I started thinking about “most liberal” vs. “moderate liberal” vs. “conservative” I wondered: “What is it that separates liberal from conservative?” What are the issues that truly make one liberal or conservative - especially if you take abortion and homosexuality off the agenda?

Are those two issues (abortion/homosexuality) truly the issues that divide liberal from conservative? I highly doubt it and am sure that there is more to it than that… but these are the only two that we ever hear about–the rest is simply rhetoric.

So, who can help me out… who can answer my question, cause I’d really like to know what truly divides us.

In this weeks Leadership Weekly email put out by Christianity Today an interesting tactic is being employed by many churches in their communities that will certainly do nothing to create a sense of goodwill or bring about any sort of partnership between the church and the communities they’re trying to reach and be a part of. Here’s the story:

It’s become known as “The Bush Doctrine.” In order to prevent another devastating terrorist attack like 9/11, President Bush announced that the United States would launch a preemptive strike against any credible threat. It doesn’t exactly jive with Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount to “turn the other cheek,” but then again the United States Government isn’t pretending to be a church.

So what happens when a church decides to employ the Bush Doctrine by preemptively suing their local government for a zoning code the city hadn’t yet violated? This week Collin Hansen reports about the escalating tensions between churches and cities over land use. Municipalities are less welcoming to churches buying and building in their communities, because it takes land off their tax rolls. As a result, many are changing their zoning codes to severely restrict where churches may locate.

Some churches are responding with aggressive legal maneuvers of their own—including filing lawsuits before the cities even reject their land use applications. Do these strongarm tactics work? Are they right? And what is the impact on the church’s mission in the community afterward?

Here’s a full-length article in Leadership Journal about the same issue.

I must say that this is a rather destructive tactic, and one that will certainly engender more and more animosity against the church in the community. This certainly can’t be the sort of message Jesus was asking the church to convey…

I saw this last week and laughed very, very hard. Jon Stewart gets it right once again…

Energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens has created a new campaign aimed at solving the energy crisis in the United States. I’ve seen his ads on tv for the past week or so talking about a new alternative for solving our dependency on foreign oil and I finally took the time to watch the video on his website. It’s pretty interesting and although doesn’t claim to be the solution, he does claim that it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil enough to buy us some time and solve the problem down the line.

I must say I am extremely intrigued, however I’m just not quite sure how it will be completely implemented in our oil-based economy…

Just saw the video for the song No Handlebars which has had me riveted for the past couple of months since first hearing it while in Florida.

The lyrics to this song are an absolutely brilliant portrayal of the humanistic bent that our culture continues to take on. Tracy and I have had several conversations about the song, it’s lyrics and its hidden as well as overt meaning. There are strong political overtones towards President Bush and the War in Iraq, there are strong overtones towards what we as man have accomplished and continue to push for (holocaust) in our dealings with each other as we leave our child-like innocence. But what I think is most fascinating is how this song shows exactly where we begin our arrogance–childhood.

Lyrics | No Handlebars | The Flobots

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handlebars
No handlebars

Look at me, look at me
hands in the air like it’s good to be
ALIVE
and I’m a famous rapper
even when the paths’re all crookedy
I can show you how to do-si-do
I can show you how to scratch a record
I can take apart the remote control
And I can almost put it back together
I can tie a knot in a cherry stem
I can tell you about Leif Ericson
I know all the words to “De Colores”
And “I’m Proud to be an American”
Me and my friend saw a platypus
Me and my friend made a comic book
And guess how long it took
I can do anything that I want cuz, look:

I can keep rhythm with no metronome
No metronome
No metronome

I can see your face on the telephone
On the telephone
On the telephone

Look at me
Look at me
Just called to say that it’s good to be
ALIVE
In such a small world
All curled up with a book to read
I can make money open up a thrift store
I can make a living off a magazine
I can design an engine sixty four
Miles to a gallon of gasoline
I can make new antibiotics
I can make computers survive aquatic conditions
I know how to run a business
And I can make you wanna buy a product
Movers shakers and producers
Me and my friends understand the future
I see the strings that control the systems
I can do anything with no assistance
I can lead a nation with a microphone
With a microphone
With a microphone
I can split the atoms of a molecule
Of a molecule
Of a molecule

Look at me
Look at me
Driving and I won’t stop
And it feels so good to be
Alive and on top
My reach is global
My tower secure
My cause is noble
My power is pure
I can hand out a million vaccinations
Or let’em all die in exasperation
Have’em all grilled leavin lacerations
Have’em all killed by assassination
I can make anybody go to prison
Just because I don’t like’em and
I can do anything with no permission
I have it all under my command
I can guide a missile by satellite
By satellite
By satellite
and I can hit a target through a telescope
Through a telescope
Through a telescope
and I can end the planet in a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust
In a holocaust

I can ride my bike with no handlebars
No handle bars
No handlebars

Victor LeBeau, a retailing analyst who helped shape our economy after WWII said:

Our enormously productive economy…demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…. We need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.

(ht: the story of stuff)

This quote certainly shed an enormous amount of light on this video by Radiohead “All I Need”

There are a ton of spiritual and moral implications surrounding this, and although I’m not sure exactly how it all fleshes out it is certainly something I am thinking though and questioning on a bigger scale.

(All of this thought was sparked by the Radiohead video and furthered by watching the video with Annie Leonard The Story of Stuff)

Yesterday I posted the “Yes we can!” music video, and of course there’s always a rebuttal from the other campaign which comes in the form of the “No we can’t!” Music Video featuring John McCain. However, I liked this one better… it’s so creative!