Part 1: The Season I Find Myself In - back again for the first time

"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven..."

Ecclesiastes 3, The Byrds

Things cycle. Fall becomes winter which turns to spring which inevitably rolls into Summer and soon enough we're back into Fall again. To rage against that machine is, as the writer of Ecclesiastes would say... meaningless.

We prepare for and even look forward to the changing seasons. My wife loves the beach, so summer always looms hopefully on the horizon. I would rather peel my own skin than sweat, so my heart skips when fall cools and darkens the evening skies.

But the other cycles of life I accept less willingly. For instance, I am extremely energetic (generally) between 7:00 and 11:00 A.M. After lunch I tend to wax philosophical and generally fail to be good use to anyone. Still, I ignore the cycles and fail to plan my schedule accordingly.

I'm finding myself in another cycle of sorts. Before I went to college, my ambition was to study political science, go to law school and throw my hat into the political arena. I was angry, belligerent, and had it all figured out (I was 18 at the time, and every 18 year old knows everything). In college I realized that there were, in fact, things I didn't know. I met people who were very different from me, and still very intelligent and good hearted. I wrestled with issues of systemic evil... poverty, illness, even the environment. I responded in typical fashion, by totally rejecting everything I previously believed. I identified "the right" from where I come with all of my own closed mindedness, so in light of all the ways I had been wrong, surely the problem was with the ideology, not with me.

Fast forward 15 years to today. I still wrestle with questions about systemic evils. But now my perspective has changed. I work at a place that touches the poor every single day. I am part of a place that meets social evil where it lives, and addresses it head on. That's impacted my political perspective because I see the success that comes when average, ordinary, normal people like me get our hands dirty. I meet people that "the government" never could. Not only that, but I don't just hand out money, but I hear and offer hope & solutions for their real needs...

Relationships

Purpose

Hope

Government can't provide those things. On paper, socialism and government welfare type programs work. In real life, they fail miserably because the people who administer the programs (run the government) will fail and fall just like the rest of us (incidentally, that's why I'm still frustrated over the recent "Bail Out package" and think it creates more problems than it solves).

So the cycle has swung back to the right for me. The difference between me then and now is that I see those on the left differently. I believe leaders on the left genuinely want to answer the same questions I do (poverty, greed, etc). I don't think all of them (although some of them probably) are evil hearted people who want to wreck the country. The difference I think is simply in our methodology. I want to empower every person to make a difference and think the government ruins what it touches... so by all means leave the people alone!

Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's an insignificant difference. I think it's a major, game changing, generation impacting difference. I believe that taxing entrepreneurship (raising taxes on even big business) will stifle creativity and punish the American Spirit (who do you think puts the most money into the economy? The rich. It may sound unfair, but it's reality. The best thing for America is for EVERYONE to work hard and become rich). I believe "spreading the wealth around" is just about the worst idea I've ever heard, and I believe that it only fosters the entitlement mentality rampant in the welfare class. The answer isn't to give them something that they haven't earned, the answer is to give them hope that they were created for something larger and teach them that they can earn and participate.

What I can offer that government never can, is a hand up. I can stand beside someone and talk with them, and refuse to leave them when the manifest ignorance or intolerance or just plain laziness. The government can give money, but that only fosters dependence. The American dream isn't that we would forever be suckling at the teat of big government. The American dream is that we would be able to first be independent, then interdependent.

My hope for the right isn't that I believe conservative politics is the answer. I believe Christ is the answer. I believe that God working through His Church is the answer, because the Church has the ability to meet needs at every level... sustenance AND significance, life AND liberty, hope now AND a future tomorrow. When the government takes it upon itself to "meet needs" the people will stop turning to the Church, because government asks nothing of them.

Part 2 to come: Remember Phoenix - finding hope in a potential democratic landslide