Vote With Conscience

(As appeared in the Cape May County Herald, Wednesday, October 31, 2018)

All this talk about "tribalism" tearing Americans apart, and how we need to "come together" as a nation only oversimplifies and masks the truth about our nation's present-day unrest.

It should be no surprise that such simplistically packaged sound bites, along with a barrage of hypocritical policy decisions that are severely destabilizing our democratic ideals, are coming largely from the right.

These guys are good.

Here's a political party, one of the most demonstrably morally bankrupt in the United States' 242-year history, which has given their unprecedentedly disingenuous, divisive, demagogue president a blank check to wreak havoc on the Republic, and they self-righteously suggest that it's just politics.

This growing popular sentiment that each side must have equally worthy stances or agendas is garbage. It seems to me, we Americans don't need so much of a coming together as a waking up.

Republicans and Democrats aren't suddenly coming together for warm group hugs, not without first identifying and admitting to the entrenched root of our animus.

Such feigned affection would merely be mimicking and perpetuating the exhaustive insincerity that has plagued our country in an unprecedentedly visceral way for the past three years.

Often when trying to warn about the divisive, destructive demagoguery of President Donald J. Trump, I've been dismissed as "being political."

As a Christian, certainly now more than ever, I don't consider speaking out against the blatantly un-Christ like behavior of Trump, a not so cleverly concealed wolf in sheep's clothing, as "political."

I consider it being spiritual. And, those who won't listen to legitimate concerns about a reckless, lying president, are in fact the ones "being political."

As I've been saying for some time, we need honesty. We need to break out of the bubble, find our better selves and embrace the truth.

Christians have been owned by the Republican Party for so long that their unquestioning allegiance to the party of conservatives has become an idol.

And it's time to wake up.

The former "moral majority" party has hoodwinked Christians for decades primarily on the singular issue of abortion to otherwise exploit all other "life" issues of the struggling masses.

If my fellow Christians truly want to win souls for Jesus Christ in these dark times, we're going to have to distinguish ourselves from the deceptions of President Trump.

Scripture warns us of false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing and deceivers of all manner.

Ephesians 5:6 forebodes: "Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience."

It's gotten so bad that the Republican base, including many Christians, ignores and even embraces the policies that hinder the poor, the sick and the elderly, the same folks Jesus taught us to care for.

So much is on the line, such as our environment.

The mid-terms next week are a chance to reel all that in. Vote with conscience.

The future of our Republic depends on it.