Paul's Prayer and Appeal to Believers

Today, the city of Ephesus is a ruin located in Turkey.  In the First Century A.D. Ephesus was the capital of the Roman province of Asia.  It was also a major commercial center with a cosmopolitan culture.  The Apostle Paul spent considerable time in Ephesus evangelizing and discipling the body of believers.  The Letter to the Ephesians was written during one of several times that Paul was in prison, most likely in Rome. (1)

In Chapter 3, Paul tells of his calling to minister to the Gentiles and God’s plan for Gentile believers.  The chapter ends with a prayer, from which we all can receive a blessing:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.

           (Ephesians 3:14-21 NASB) (2)

The first part of Chapter 4 continues with an appeal to the reader:

Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another in love, being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:1-6 NASB) (3)

I pray that we will treat each other with patience and tolerance through the humility, gentleness and love that Christ gives us.  Peace be with you all.

(1) Falwell, Jerry, et al. Liberty Commentary on the New Testament. Thomas Nelson Inc., 1978.

(2) https://biblehub.com/nasb/ephesians/3.htm

(3) https://biblehub.com/nasb/ephesians/4.htm

Idiologues

When he was running for president in 2012, Mitt Romney reminded me of “Church Lady,” the Dana Carvey character from the TV show Saturday Night Live.  Every time someone would say something Mr. Romney did not like he would get a plastic smile on his face, and I found myself waiting for him to say, “Well, isn’t that spea-cial.”  He seldom disputed things he disagreed with.  He would just sit there with that lame smile on his face.

I did not like Mitt Romney’s record as a corporate raider.  I felt working Americans would see him as the guy who signed the pink slips.  He pointed to Romney Care as his greatest accomplishment as the Governor of Massachusetts, and as an example of how he got big things done while working with a legislature that was predominantly Democratic.  The point of this post is that our leaders must work together in the people’s best interest.  I thought, however, that Mr. Romney went too far with Romney Care.

I voted for Mitt Romney anyway.  Please, put away the rotten eggs, and spoiled vegetables.  Don’t throw them at me.  I feel bad enough already.

The truth is that my vote for Romney was really a vote against Barack Obama.  As with most of our presidential elections, I voted for the candidate I thought was the lesser of two evils.  Honestly, I would have voted for Mickey Mouse rather than Mr. Obama. I felt that way then, and I still feel that way.

Mitt Romney was a corporate weasel.  You could not tell for sure where he stood about anything.  Barack Obama, however, was a progressive, secular-humanist ideologue.  He strangled the economy with regulations, taxes, and give-away trade agreements.  He screwed up health care, and he paved the way for Iran to go nuclear.  He allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire.  He prosecuted employers and business people for their sincerely-held religious beliefs and turned political correctness into an art form.  He used the EPA like an attack dog to destroy mining, oil production, farming and ranching (to name a few).

In the interest of clarity, let’s define some terms as they are used in this post.  An ideologue is, “an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology.” Synonyms include, “crusader, fanatic, militant, partisan, true believer, and zealot.” An ideology is, “the integrated assertions, theories and aims that constitute a sociopolitical program.” *

In 2020, I hope we can avoid electing a president who is so afraid of saying something controversial that he or she will not take a stand about anything.  We need a president, senators, and congressional representatives who know what they believe and are honest with us about it.  We need leaders with a strong sense of right and wrong, and who are willing to be criticized for advocating for what they believe.

Conversely, we must try to avoid electing ideologues.  We need to break the gridlock in Washington D.C.  The people’s business is not getting done.  We do not need leaders who are afraid of finding common ground because they might alienate their “base.”  This calls for flexibility on the part of the electorate, as well.

I pray that we all can learn to move toward one another, rather than against one another.  There are things that we cannot compromise on, but there are many things we can unite around.  If we keep on doing what we are doing, we are going to pull our house down on our heads.

* https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ideologue