Bobby Griffith

I’m finally getting a thesis typed very soon. hahahaha

One of the coolest dogs I’ve met, died today at the age of 15. His name was Dish and he was a brilliant and talented English Setter, who hunted birds all across the US. I’m gonna miss that old guy, who was retired from bird hunting a few years back.

Does not have more bars in more places. Their service in SW PA is terrible.

Over the past week or so, I’ve been reading quite a bit of Cold War historiography. One thing I’ve found striking, and a possible parallel with how many churches and Christians behave, is the notion that adding rules to create safety creates a more dangerous situation.

From what I’ve read, US policy makers “added,” if you will, more and more burdens on politicians and citizens during the Cold War era, for the purpose of creating a safer nation, but at the same time, people were burdened by an even greater sense of danger.

In the church this works out in several ways. Ministers and lay people have their hobby horse, so they create a rule to safeguard whatever their particular conviction is, regardless of the truth of the matter. It looks different in whatever situation it may be, but it leads to the same result. In the end, you have a christian who thinks their more spiritual because of their added rules and morality, when they are slaved to them and if, God forbid, they break one of their extra rules, they are convicted by themselves, by the rule, not by God, though they feel it.

So much for no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Rom 8:1).

This is one thing I do not care to discuss publicly simply because I tire of politics. It’s not that I do not enjoy politics, it’s just overdone. Still, as someone who researches the intersection of American Christianity and politics in the Revolutionary period and the 20th Century, I do have some observations to offer.

#1 Candidates need to stop quoting Scripture in their speeches. It comes across as silly, patronizing, forced and out of context.

#2 Christians should be involved in the political process, but Christian ministers/leaders should stay away from marrying themselves to a particular party. Christian ministers do their best when we speak prophetically from Scripture. The most familiar (to me) example I can offer is the New Divinity Movement between 1776-1800, who spoke vehemently against slavery, even to Second Continental Congress (Samuel Hopkins) without pledging allegiance to party. That does not mean we, as ministers, do not vote, but our first allegiance is to a King and the Kingdom.

#3 Jesus did not die fighting social injustice. He fought sin and death, fulfilled the Law of God and secured redemption for his people. He would not be a Democrat. He would not be a Republican. His kingdom is not of any cultural system of which we can conceive.