On Tuesday voters head to the polls in important elections for state and national offices. Races for the Texas State Board of Education are especially important this year. For the past four years, a powerful faction of political and religious extremists on the state board has turned nearly every critical debate on curriculum standards and textbooks into a “culture war” battleground. Those divisive and destructive battles have put politics ahead of the education of millions of Texas schoolchildren.
The Texas Freedom Network Education Fund’s 2010 Voter Guide will help you learn more about the candidates and their positions on critical education issues. Check our Voter Guide here — then get out and vote!
It’s election night folks. Candidates whose chief sin is to have a Jesus heart are going to get stomped on tonight from sea to shining sea. Loving your neighbor as yourself has gone out of style in the United States. The Christian fundamentalists, Christian Neo-Fundamentalists, and conservative evangelicals have ensured it. Their pastors have raised up false, crooked, and heretical theologies to make that “Christian love” a thing to be puked upon.
They had a poll for all of the angry people on Yahoo today. A full 66 percent of Americans want to repeal health care reform. In a nation that calls itself mostly Christian, you know that many of that 66 percent at least consider themselves to be Christian. It could not be otherwise mathematically. I read some of the several thousand comments of those who had voted. Cold, callous, and heartless they were. Summed up in a nutshell: “If they do not have enough money or insurance to pay the doctor, then they must not go.” If your daughter is burning up with fever and about to croak, and you have no money or insurance, she had better just go ahead and die—and decrease the surplus population (Thank you Boz). After all, most of them are poor white trash anyway (and worst of all black or Latino trash) They just get what they deserve for their lack of personal responsibility in this life. This sort of horror appears to be the way many Christians define “righteousness” these days. After all, in this brave new world of legalistic theology, righteousness is defined primarily by the things you DO NOT DO. You know. “I do not drink wine; therefore, I am righteous.”
Before you start watching the fair and balanced election returns come in on Fox News tonight, I would like to introduce you to some old Christian theology. It goes back about 2000 years to a 33-year old man who traveled around ancient Judea speaking wisdom and sharing wine at the dinner table with his fellow men—a lot of them men you would feel the need to “separate yourselves from” to avoid having your lily-white robes blemished and made unclean. His name was Jesus, and he really never heard of your current theology—because quite frankly—it had not been invented yet. He believed that people are more important than money. More importantly, he believed that the ultimate measure of our piety is not a recounting of things WE DO NOT DO—but rather—how we treat the least of those among us. Therefore, while you are sitting in front of the T.V. gloating about your election victory tonight, I want the following two items to be on the back burner of your minds at all times:
1) Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores. It happened that the beggar died, and that he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried. In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom. He cried and said, “Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue! For I am in anguish in this flame.”
But Abraham said, “Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things. But now here he is comforted and you are in anguish. Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that none may cross over from there to us.”
He said, “I ask you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house; for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, so they won’t also come into this place of torment.”
But Abraham said to him, “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.”
He said, “No, father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.”
He said to him, “If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rises from the dead.”
(Luke 16:19–31).
2) When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it NOT TO ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25: 31-41).
Funny thing about that Jesus guy. He had a way of turning things inside out—like this election victory tonight. That which seems like a victory is really a defeat. Better wise up boys. The clock is ticking.
It looks like Rene Nunez will lose. Charlie Garza will not be good for El Paso. TFN, with this loss how will we look on the SBOE in terms of Dems vs Rep?