Having based my recovery from alcoholism on the principle of "God as I understand Him", later into my sobriety time I returned to the Evangelical Christian theology of my familial tradition.  It was familiar and it was comforting.

This election campaigning has become much greater than Republican or Democrat.  It has become deeply personal as I learn that friends and family members with whom I have walked for many years through life's journey, who also describe themselves as Evangelical Christian, within the realm of their Christian ethics somehow can justify  supporting a man who displays none of the values I hold dear.

Am I not Christian?  Are they not Christian?  Are we all playing a game here trying to score points with God by talking the Bible, by going to church, by professing Jesus out one side of the mouth and then revealing out the other side what is truly on our hearts in the political arena?

I find myself wanting to retreat to early sobriety philosophy, "God as I understand Him."  This may be the wisest and most God-honoring choice I have made in many years.  And it frees me to embrace and celebrate without retribution from church and family the great diversity of our world's cultures: Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew, white, black, gay, straight.

Maybe that's what Martin Luther King was talking about,  "Free at last."





John Lennon was an English musician who gained worldwide fame as one of the members of the Beatles, for his subsequent solo career, and for his political activism and pacifism. On 8 December 1980, Lennon was shot by Mark David Chapman in the archway of his residence in New York City.



excerpts from Martin Luther King speech,  August 28, 1963, steps of Lincoln Memorial




