A Clarification

I am so thrilled that a simple status update sparked such an interesting dialogue on my Facebook page. One young lady e-mailed me with some confusion about my congratulations to Barack Obama. Here's my response which might be helpful in clarifying.

Barack Obama won a hard-fought election, so I think our nation should congratulate him just as we would have if John McCain would have won. Congratulations have nothing to do with agreeing with someone or even meaning that one supported him. Agree with him or not, he won, he is to be congratulated. The race is over, so it's time to set personal differences aside and work on getting America on the right track. What he needs now is our support (not necissarily of his ideas, I might add) and prayer.

We can and should voice our concerns about his philosophies and policies if they violate God's Word or our convictions. However, the spirit in which this is done is SO IMPORTANT! Someone I know well was making some very hateful and mean-spirited comments. I spoke up and told this young man that I was offended and thought his comments were grievous to God. How can we say we follow a Jesus of love and spew filth and hatred out of our mouths. Jesus was very clear that He was about a revolution of love. I Corinthians 13 says we can do all the right things, and I'll add, think we believe all the right things, but if we have not love, our beliefs and actions are meaningless. What does such hatred add to anything? Right things must be done the right way.