Saddleback Showdown - John McCain

A couple of weeks ago, Barak Obama and John McCain went on national television and allowed themselves to be individually examined by Pastor Rick Warren. He asked them questions about their world view, what its means to be a "born again" Christian, abortion, taxes, gay marriage, and several other great questions. I'm going to do 2 posts - one for Obama and the other for McCain. This will not comprehensively cover every important thing they talked about. I will choose just four. This post is about McCain's responses.

What about Jesus?

McCain claimed that he is a follower of Christ. He said that he is "saved and forgiven". What? I wish he had elaborated. Saved from what? Forgiven for what? How? Who? I realized that he may have assumed that everyone understood his "Christianeeze" - the jargon of Christianity. However, it doesn't take much to realize that some people mean entirely different things in using these words than what Christians have historically and Biblically meant. Mormons use those terms too, but if you study what they believe it doesn't line up the same. Instead of fully examining the question, McCain gave an emotional and heart-wrenching story of how his Christian faith connected him with a North Vietnamese prison camp guard. Grant it he was also trying to get people to connect with him not Jesus. He really wants to be elected. I think that is a problem.

Abortion?

I was amazed how direct he was about what he thinks about abortion. I agree with him, all people are entitled to human rights at the moment of conception.

Taxes?

It sounds good doesn't it. He said he wants everyone to be rich. I agree with his definition of "rich" - having what you need to be happy. I think that he's naive in thinking that there is no need for re-distribution of wealth and that there is no class warfare. The gap between people who have wealth and those who don't is growing. The middle class is disappearing. I think that he and Obama agree in trying to better the lives of people. They just disagree on how to do it. I think he's right the government has been overspending. I would have liked to hear the year and administration that allowed the money to be spent on the study of Bear DNA, but it was an effective joke. I disagree with the thought that the government should be scaled down because people cannot be trusted to love their neighbor as themselves when money is involved.

Gay Marriage?

I really liked his response to the question on the definition of what marriage is. Changing the definition of marriage is a bad idea. I did notice that he was very carefully politically. He did not openly challenge the morality of same-sex marriage so he would not alienate people, but he said that the issue should be decided by states themselves and not the federal government. It fits with his ideas of smaller, less-controlling government. The problem is that unless this country makes a decision as to whether or not we will follow God or not on the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage we are going to continue to see division and failure, if not a civil war, as a nation just like slavery divided the nation 140 years ago.

Is there Evil?

I thought the question was vague. I'm not sure what Rick Warren meant by the question...."evil" in what sense? Did he mean the evil in each one of us that can only be destroyed by the power of God? To McCain, evil equates to the Radical Islamic Fundamentalism. He blames it for producing Osama Bin Laden and the horror of September 11, 2001 and the wars on terrorism taking place today. I agree that Bin Laden must be found and brought to justice and I believe that Islamic Fundamentalism is antithetical to Christianity. It cannot be reasoned with. It cannot be ignored. It can't be reconciled. They really want to kill us. They must be stopped. The problem is that as near as I can tell our government made the terrorism possible when we supported and trained Bin Laden against the Russian in Afghanistan and then pulled out and did not fulfill promises made to the rebels. It's blow back from bad foreign policy that we are paying for now. Of course what the terrorists are doing are evil and must be stopped, but are we really any better? Ask the South American and Caribbean countries we have invaded. Ask the people in Africa and other parts of the world who were exterminated and we did nothing because they did not have oil. Ask the black folks that were lynched, oppressed, disenfranchised. Ask the Native Americans, those that survived the genocide. As a nation we are called by God to do better by people. If we don't do better how can expect the rest of the nations to do good to us?