Mark Driscoll made the two following posts a few days ago:
Beware of anyone who talks a lot about God but not Jesus as the only God. Beware of anyone whose commitment is to country above Kingdom. Beware of anyone who talks of morality but not redemption thru the cross.
If you really love your country you will preach the gospel of repentance to everyone – the sinners on the the left and the right. You will labor for the well being of the church & the transformation of the culture by the gospel & not by mere morality.
I love it! Driscoll normally avoids politics on either side but I thought this jab was appropriate. My guess – he probably heard one too many Christians talking about the Glenn Beck rally as a great thing and couldn’t take it anymore.
Now, I have been staying away from politics for quite awhile now, and I noticed some people were almost annoyed with me for it. Sorry – it was a much needed break and I was honestly tired of it all. However, I have to break my silence and agree with Mark Driscoll on the rally and also the Tea Party movement in general.
I just do not get the Tea Party movement. Sorry…I am a fairly strong social conservative; I am a definite fiscal conservative, and with foreign policy I am still very much a neo-con; however, for some reason I just cannot relate with this new wave of conservatives. Perhaps it is the absence (or silence) of the anti-war movement that has made me a much less vocal conservative? Maybe it is the recession and the new challenges we are facing? Maybe I just don’t want to call myself and others “patriots” (lame). Sorry – just being honest Comrade.
Actually, I think I know what it is. They speak so strongly against things – policies, legislation, taxes, reform, etc – yet they do not seem to have any good ideas to contribute. They spoke loudly against health care reform; however, they did not really give any concrete ideas on how they would fix the problem. They complain about taxes, but they do not give detail on what specifically they would cut from the budget and how they would raise additional revenue once there were no further budget items to cut. I could go on and on, but my biggest complaint about conservatives right now is that they are not putting forth good, concrete ideas and only complaining – which is what the liberals did for eight years and it infuriated me just as much.
If the economy was as great it was in the 90′s, health insurance was affordable, and everything was going well in government – then maybe I would understand the side that rails against reform. However, now is not a good time to fight change and argue for the status quo. If you have better ideas for change, that is completely different, but you can’t tell me you like the way things are right now or even how they were in 2008.
The only common ground I can find with the Tea Party people is immigration, the common enemy of environmental wackos, and maybe foreign policy. Other than that, I think I may need to start making friends with the Libertarians if the Tea Party starts becoming the main conservative movement. At least they are a little more fun to be around. I mean, they want to legalize everything, so the have to have a good party. 
Actually, even better – I could join Driscoll and other Christians who care more about God’s Kingdom than country or political movements and parties. I figure I have a lot of personal transformation that still needs to take place, and transformation of the culture around me is not going happen by rallying against things and calling myself a patriot.
ARGH! NOOOO! An actual logical right winged American. Too many right winged blogs are spewing Glenn Beck style nonsense. They all sound like they have been employed by insurance companies, and told not to think for themselves.
This blog was refreshing.
Are you for real, or are you just some paid liberal hack? No ideas or alternatives offered to the current federal lunacy?? For healthcare, conservatives offered the excellent idea of opening up the insurance industry to interstate competition. They’ve discussed caps on malpractice lawsuits. These negative people that you loathe so much are saying “no” right now because that’s what good parents have to do sometimes! You want to spend money you don’t have? “No.” You want to take away people’s choices for healthcare coverage and make it more expensive for all existing policy owners? “No.” You want to burden generations to come with a level of debt they will never crawl out from under and make them utterly dependent on the government for any type of help or need? “No.” You want to ship abortion abroad and expand embryonic stem cell research? You want to push cap and trade and make life in general more expensive for everyone without any substantial proof of the benefit? You want to usurp the authority of parents in making decisions for their children? You want to add government positions who answer to no one but the president? You want to expand financial aid to largely irresponsible homebuyers? You want to expand unemployment when you don’t have any surplus to pull from? It’s really easy to say, “No.” If you want alternatives and real options offered, spend some time researching Congressman Paul Ryan from Wisconsin. He’s the poster boy for responsible change at the federal level.
I’m one of Mark Driscoll’s biggest fans, and I do appreciate his word of caution. It’s good to have that moment of pause. However, Jesus wasn’t political, and the Tea Party is. I appreciate the separation… especially since it’s pretty obvious that a lot of the Tea Party people have a Christian foundation. I prefer Jesus motivating the actions of these people over hearing these people wax on about Christ while maybe not knowing Him in their hearts…
Opening up interstate competition for insurance (pooling) and capping malpractice are ideas I support, but they are barely a complete solution and would not fix the healthcare mess. Sorry, but the problem is nowhere near that simple.
While I do not like the doomsday liberals who go on endlessly about the spiraling cost of healthcare, we do have a serious problem. I am a small business owner and my health ins premiums are over $1k per month, which is almost as much as my mortgage. I do not want price control, but there are many tax and policy changes that could be made to make it more affordable for the middle class.
Again, I see no concrete ideas from conservatives these days – only blind opposition to anything proposed by Obama. If the Tea Party had complete solutions to bring to the table, I think they would be respected and listened to, but simple, trite ideas from bumper stickers are not going to work.