I Am Liberal

I found this blog at Liberal Idaho... the author began with "Hopefully this will ring true with many of you." Oh, yes, it DID. (Except for the part about the church... my PASTOR doesn't preach politics but many people in the church object to my beliefs and one person even requested my removal from our church... I strongly encourage others who consider themselves Christians to check out the links under "Jesus: The First Liberal".)

I am a rare breed in Idaho. I attend church every weekend. I have three kids and a dog. I work Monday through Friday at a small Internet software company. I love my wife. I have a college education and will pay for it over the next twenty years. So what's so rare about me? I have chosen to follow an ideology that is rare in my social circles and rare in our great State. I am liberal.

"I'm so glad God won this election," a friend said to me as I sat in our Sunday School room on a Sunday in the Fall of 2004. I cringed inside and thought to myself, "Oh how mistaken you are." You see, my church background is such that I was expected to vote Republican. Thankfully the church that I and my family attend does not preach politics from the pulpit, but it is assumed that everyone leans to the Right. Afterall, doesn't Jesus?

The answer is no, he doesn't, and he doesn't lean to the Left either. He cares for the plight of the disenfranchised and the causes of the needy and downtrodden. He cries out with the pain of the U.S. marine dying in a ditch and weeps the tears of the Iraqi mother clutching her dying child to her breast. His battle cry is not created in an election war room but is formed on the lips of a child as she sobs a prayer asking for someone to love her in her abusive world. He seeks to break molds, tear down walls, and destroy stereotypes. The Jesus I know sets people free - free from the dogma, the bigotry and the fear of the unknown. He leads me forward, opens my mind to new possibilities and grants me the opportunity to see others as I want them to see me - as a human being with the desire to be truly free and to be fully loved.

So you see, I am a liberal, not because of the way I vote, but because I have taken on the burden of loving, caring, and working to ensure that others can enjoy the freedom that I do.