Unconditional Love by Miz Pink

I know it’s very common for people to talk trash bout the big guy upstairs (um, God, that is, not the big fat man in the apartment above you who plays the music too loud) because they wonder how he could be a God of love and ever dream of punishing us.

I look at my swelling tummy and get ready for Mini Pink #3 to arrive, and I am filled with love. But I also know that he or she will get a ration of crap from me to go along with that love. I will lecture, correct, chastise and maybe even ridicule at times. I won’t feel good about it most of the time but also I will free it is right most of the time. And it will be because if I seem harsh from the kid’s point of view it’s only in order to keep that kid safe and raise it right.

I’ve been through this twice before and I still have to pull out attitudes and responses and punishments that I’d rather not with Mini Pink #1 and Mini Pink #2. I still have to watch helplessly at times while I let them make certain mistakes, not matter how painful, because I know they will learn from those mistakes.

I love them unconditionally. I would swallow crushed glass for their sakes or put mself between them and a bullet. I would kill anyone who tried to hurt them. I am an alpha bitch wolf and a she-bear. I don’t play. I won’t play. If one of my children should turn out to be a serial killer I will still love that kid. There is nothing that can separate one of my children from my heart.

But that doesn’t mean I give them a cake-walk and it don’t mean that I give them all that they want. It means I make the decisions I need to make and love them enough to do what needs to be done even if it makes me look like a jerk.

I expect no less of God. I never doubt that he loves me even when i don’t like what he does in terms of rules or disasters he lets go unchecked. Because that’s life and in the cosmic scheme and the universal perspective, there isn’t anything we go through here that matches what God has waiting for us if we don’t run out on him and go off to the nasty guy who tells us sweet things just to keep us on the wrong path. God loves us more than we appreciate and more than we can ever know.

Even with all I would do for my two kids and the third one on the way, I’ll never match God’s love.

(And yes, you can bet yer sweet biffy…whatever that means…that I will be posting a lot of pregger/kid themed things between now and when I give birth this fall and probably for a while thereafter too. Sue me)

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Election 2008: The Stakes – Christian Values

Yeah, yeah, I know. I just posted one of these Election 2008 items just yesterday. But since I’m still waiting on Miz Pink to post her Saturday post, and since I’ve gotten a bit worked up by the blind devotion to Sarah Palin that I’m seeing at some of the Christian blogs I frequent, I’m here again.

As I noted before, I try not to get too much into politics around here. But with this year’s presidential election and all that has been done wrong in the country for the past eight years, this is a pivotal time and we need to clear the air about some things.

See also:

Sept. 7 Post – Election 2008: The Stakes – Experience

Sept. 12 Post – Election 2008: The Stakes – Our Troops

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The headline for this post should probably have been “traditional conservative Christian values” and not simply “Christian values,” but I only have so much room up there. This is at least one area in which I will admit that a Barack Obama-Joe Biden win would be “bad.” It would move the conservative evangelicals backward politically speaking. Also, some baseline Christian value issues that crop up across various Chrisitian lines, like gay marriage, abortion and stem cell research—things many working class and conservative middle class and upper class Christians hate—will get support.

So what?

I don’t mean that to be dismissive of Christian values. I have Christian values. Many of them conservative, though I’m sure some of the Christians who visit here might not believe that from what I talk about and how I present things. But last I checked, we don’t have a theocracy here. Our government is not about religion. In fact, we say that we support religious freedom and freedom of expression, so having a government that is willing to cram Christian doctrine down our throats legislatively, as George W. Bush has done, as some politicians before him have done, and as I think a McCain-Palin presidency would do (along with the help of ultra-conservative justices that they would no doubt be in a position to put on the Supreme Court).

This is a representative democracy and as such, I am not ever going to vote for a candidate based on religious views or because he or she will uphold Christian values. This is a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Wiccans and so many, many more. To uphold Christian values as the standard is just plain wrong.

Christian values are something to be handled in our churches and our families, not on the national or even local political stage. Yet many people who support McCain now are doing so fervently because a very conservative Christian is now running with him, and she is a person whom many Americans relate to because she is an “Average Joe” (though why we would want an average Joe in charge of the entire nation potentially is beyond me). There are actually some Christians out there who are praying not only that McCain and Palin will be elected but that God will bring McCain home soon thereafter so that Palin can step up to the plate.

My dad is Catholic from all the way back, and devotedly so, and he hates abortion. But you know what, he is a working class man who realizes that by and large, the Democrats are the ones who have supported the needs of the working class more than the Republicans. We were talking politics and he noted that he hates the level of support the Dems put behind the pro-choice camp, to the extent they almost look like they support abortion (being pro-choice and pro-abortion really are two different things, by the way, and my dad realizes it and you should to if you don’t already). But he also told me that he is not going to vote against his own interests and the interests of the nation and vote an angry, confused man and an inexperienced, extremist woman into office. Making a decision about the presidency based on one or even a handful of religious issues is wrong, he told me.

And he’s right. It’s the financial, foreign relations, social, labor and infrasctructure issues that will define how economically viable and internationally relevant we will remain.

Countries that are run by religious leaders tend to be the ones that spawn terrorists, and the ones that we often most fear. Why would be want to emulate them by voting with our Bibles?