God has not given us a spirit of fear...

WARNING! WARNING!
What follows is a political post!

If you're tired of reading political posts, perhaps it would be best for you to move on. I will say that this isn't intended to be biased towards one side or the other, but rather a bit of a chastisement for both sides and an offer of hope to all.

I'm trying to remember when politics became about creating fears and then offering hope.
Has it always been this way?
I want to say that it hasn't, but my memory isn't really coming up with specifics of when it wasn't.
No matter...
I'm tired of it!

As I see it, most of the fear creation is based on lies or exaggerations of the truth.
In Missouri, there are ads that say that Clinton and Kandor (the democrat running for Senate) are going to take away your guns!
I remember the same kinds of ads eight years ago (and four years ago) that said Obama was going to take away our guns. (We still have them and there have been no attempts in MO to take them away.) I suppose this could just be a clever marketing strategy by weapons and ammunition manufacturers since guns sales and bullet sales went way up before the ban that never happened was to go into effect.
It is unfortunate that this ad still works and people still believe that the President has that desire and authority.
Fear and ignorance go hand-in-hand and campaigns count on the ignorance of people when they put out this kind of BS.

Last summer (and again yesterday) I heard that if Trump gets elected, liberals could stage protest riots and President Obama could declare Martial Law and NOT leave the White House!
Who comes up with this garbage and why are there people that believe it?

If Trump gets elected -- the economy is going to go into the toilet, the nation is going to go to war, we're going to have deportation forces going door to door and seizing people without proper documentation for living in the US, and the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer.

If Clinton gets elected -- the economy is going to go into the toilet, jobs will go overseas and to Mexico, the nation will be overrun by Mexicans and Muslims, Wall Street will be out of control, and the rich will get richer while the poor get poorer.

I find it a bit ironic that those that seem to be most motivated by fear are often the conservative Christians that believe that their God is sovereign an rules all. Many of them stand behind Trump (because Hillary is a baby killer) and say that God can use him to bring peace and prosperity to our country. I've heard that throughout the Bible, God used unlikely foreign kings and poor Hebrew rulers to accomplish His purposes among men.

So my question is -- If God is God and can use Trump to bring about His will, why couldn't He use Clinton to do the same?
Do you see where using that reasoning isn't necessarily your best argument?

In any case --
Democrats survived Bush.
Republicans have survived Obama.
And the US will survive which ever candidate gets elected in November.

Yes -- the toxic environments of both major parties have left us with less than desirable candidates.
And it is true that the fall out from the presidential campaigns may affect many Congressional races and I believe that is where the real power lies. Perhaps all of this will bring about some changes within the parties and there will we better communication with the people they represent -- or not.

I have to admit, there is a part of me that is a little bitter and wants to aggressively ask fellow Christians to defend their choice to support Trump and his non-Christian ways as they have asked me to defend my past choices of voting for democrats with their pro-choice platform. But the truth is there is no good reason and I'm not up for being entertained by the dance that is sure to follow.

The thing is this...
I do believe that God is still on the throne and in control.
I do believe that the citizens of the US will survive a presidency of either candidate.
I believe that there will be consequences for the choices we make and some may be difficult, but we will survive.
And I believe that we have to stop letting others play on our ignorance by being better informed and getting to know the people that we are supposed to be hating.

I don't know if any of this makes sense. It makes sense to me because I know the other stuff that is rolling around in my head and you don't. Maybe that's why we fail to understand one another -- because we don't know the experiences that give others their perspective.

Let's not be afraid of things we don't know; let's educate ourselves so that we know.
It's said that the phrase  "fear not" occurs 365 times in the Bible -- once for each day in a year.
If you are a believer, you have nothing to fear.
If you are not, we should talk.

John <><