10. February 2012 by BruceSmith.

THE NEW BOOK IS OUT!  Life in 3D! … available at amazon.com, paperback and kindle, and at bruceleesmith.co  Get you some!

Also, I’m on Television tonight and Sunday talking politics & religion!  You can do that on TV!!  Take a look, details below:

My television interview on WLAE TV PBS Channel 32 with Jeff Crouere, “Ringside Politics”, airs tonight at 7:30 pm and Sunday night at 10:00pm…we discuss the Republican race, Obama administration, marriage, contraception, healthcare, and more. Www.bruceleesmith.co

Grace and Peace,

Bruce

www.bruceleesmith.co

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7. February 2012 by BruceSmith.

The News and Views…Who Are We in America, Where Are We Going?  Murder, Politicians, and the Kingdom of God

Last night, as the events in Syria, Iran, and other conflicted places around the globe, set the background “music” for our viewing of the C-Span video of the National Prayer Breakfast from a few days ago, my wife and I were struck by the “surreal” reality of the moment.  At the same time, as details emerged from out West, with respect to the father who murdered his sons and killed himself amidst a blaze of fire and pain, and as the Lord’s Prayer was being powerfully sung by a pre-teen at the prayer breakfast, …the juxtaposition of hope, glory, God-focused pathos and unthinkable suffering created a truly surreal moment.  Pain and glory.  Despair and hope.  Ascending and descending.  Murder and love.  Conquest and comfort.  Our world is all of these and more, is it not?  And so, our country too.

Who are we as a people?  What stirs us toward Christ-centered passion, and yet, stirs us likewise, toward venomous rage and despair?  It is, of course, a question for the ages.  Its answer, like so many things, however, has its foundation in biblical truth.  Paul, the apostle, is a figure who holds a key for us.  At once, a hero of faith, and a murderer of those bent toward faith, Paul, his character, his nature, shows us how vile we may become apart from our God-ordained relationship with the Creator, and his reality demonstrates just how thrilling life can be when focused upon all God made us and called us to be in Him.  Every living being, throughout history, has had and will forever have, the same potential for greatness and for despair.  Its true of you, me, politicians, and people groups.

With Paul, we must recognize, beyond ethnic lines, territorial battles, and broken relationships, that which drives us to murder, racial hatred, and vengeance, is bred into the human race due to our fallen nature.  It is only, and singularly, through a regenerative relationship with Jesus Himself, that we have hope of all we were meant to be.  The dichotomy demonstrates the divide between God and His people until and unless we turn to Him for meaning and direction.  False religiosity will never suffice.  Only God leads men like Wilberforce and Bonhoeffer to sacrifice for a cause bigger than themselves and risk it all.  Only God can soothe our pain and brokenness and keep rage outside the doors of our hearts when life falls apart.  Only God can bring joy and forgiveness amidst great loss and hurt and victimization.  

This life truth is not up for grabs to the greatest debater.  This is a law of the landscape of our hearts.  As Eric Metaxas, author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Spy pointed out at the prayer breakfast, religion will never heal us individually or as a country.  As in England, so to here in America, claiming the title “christian” does not make us changed internally.  Only a true passion for God and His ways will be enough to lead us toward the heroic life of faith when life is calling us to fall into the pit of evil and self-focus.

As others at the prayer breakfast waxed eloquently about the nature of our calling to help the poor, reach out to the needy, and support the weaker among us, the one glaring topic missed by some was the biblical call to view life as sacred.  The lack of protection of those unborn in our culture, the murderous rampage of selfish men, women and doctors who dismember little lives full of potential not yet sprung from the womb, stands as a grotesque monument to our bent toward selfish evil in our culture.  We can stand for all other “good” causes as people and as a political party, yet, if we deny life belongs to God, and we diminish what is sacred to some form of human “choice”, and thereby play God ourselves, we are hurling ourselves headlong into a moral, psychological, and spiritual abyss.  We are meant for more.  Make no mistake, this is our holocaust.  How many millions have we snuffed out limb by limb, ripping potential for our world out of the womb just as a prey-driven wolf goes about assuaging the call of his most primal urge in his self-interest to survive.  

Let’s call it what it is even as we love those who have themselves fallen prey to this most horrific lie.  We can, and we are called to, in fact, point people toward understanding, love, and forgiveness.  We must meet people where they are and show them the matchless grace of God who can restore any heart and heal any wounded conscience.  We must also raise the banner of truth which guides us toward sanctity and beauty.  The Church, the true Church, that body made up of God’s true followers, those that forsake fake religion and run toward full-on relationship with God, must live the call of the Church in our personal lives and in our national journey.  Our future as individuals and a people are in the balance.

In a world where it is so tempting to abandon our standards, His standards, where our political “core” is up for grabs when the dollars and the votes are in jeopardy, we must come back to true religion.  One line moral slogans and empty promises of “greatness” or “change” will never serve as leadership for a nation with so many huge challenges.  A shifting political agenda will not serve us as we seek to build a more perfect union.  Our leaders and potential future leaders cannot hope to serve either nation or God should they deem it a viable option to pick and choose those issues they will stand for.  What is God about?  What does He stand for?  Its not limited to the sanctity of life, but it certainly, and fundamentally, includes such.  And let us be reminded, standing and pointing fingers across the isle, and self-promotion of our “otherness”, is neither a biblical or helpful strategy of lasting transformation politically or personally.  One does not boast themselves into leadership, not true leadership anyway.  

As we hold ourselves to a higher standard, as we guard our own hearts from the evil that lurks within, we must call our aspiring political and social leaders to reach for more than rhetoric and votes.  It is not enough to be smarter, smarter than the rest.  It is not enough to speak with soothing eloquence.  It is not enough to run off intellectually weak promises and slogans as we flash robotic smiles and tuck every hair into place.  We must fight, and we must have leaders who fight with intellectual, moral, and spiritual vigor if we are to see the dream of America continue to thrive.  Our core must find its grounding in the core of biblical reality, God’s truth.  We cannot leave our future to the Super Pac crowd who will do anything, say anything, and push any agenda that will get a vote.  We may buy the Presidency, yet, we will never buy transformative leadership.  Moreover, we will never buy the Kingdom of God.  It is this, the Kingdom of God, made visible in our culture and national experiment, that we must have above and beyond anything else.  It is more vital than oil, land, ethnicity, education, healthcare, security, market success, or anything we may put in its place.  It is the only lasting reality and nation-building strategy.  It will not end because it has its beginning in the eternal God.

Drawing nearer to another election day, at a pivotal moment in our nation’s story, and that of the world in fact, may we, anew, devote ourselves to voting in the Kingdom of God.  We are aliens in this world if we are followers of Christ.  We are here for a time.  This is not our Motherland, if we are true believers.  We are awaiting the day, just as Paul awaited, when we shall migrate to that place that is bigger and beyond anything we have ever imagined.  We will meet many other travelers there from every nation and tribe.  May we live, love, and lead others toward the calling of our true home.  America is greatest when we, as a people, remember the message of that classic hymn, Amazing Grace.  It is grace which has saved us from the despots, the dictators, the plight of so many nations in the throws of despair.  And it is grace which gives us amazing purpose, and which calls us to live in the light of our true home.  The American dream, rightly viewed, is found in the dream of living in the fullness of God’s call for all human beings, speaking for those who cannot speak, loving those who have not gotten it all right, and extending grace and provision toward those in need.  If we choose that way, and as we elect men and women who will champion that cause, we shall remain a land full of grace and splendor and hope.

Who are we?  Where are we going?  …

Bruce Smith

www.bruceleesmith.co

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