In the days and weeks and now months since the US presidential election, I have sought to support who I believe won the election and have met with much support and resistance. It’s not my desire to be real involved in “politics” as they have been understood, yet I’ve thought a lot about why Donald J Trump has become such a hot topic for the past five years. He’s not exactly a shiny penny, so why all the fuss? He’s also not someone Jesus would have probably pointed our attention to prior to the last five years but instead probably would have hit him pretty hard with the eye of the camel and rich and sexually immoral stuff… Jesus however repeatedly did the unexpected and said the controversial. Jesus constantly overturned the tables in one way or another, including slamming our over-elevation of man-made traditions and under-valuing of God’s direct and explicit commands.

Interestingly, Donald Trump has come to be the gold standard globally for not going with the flow and not elevating the American Idols of our day. I believe God has given him a platform people are angry about, yet the amount of break-through for religious liberty and rights for the unborn … hard to question.

Studying Public Policy fifteen years ago now as my focus in college, I never thought I’d see a day I wanted to get my head and heart back into this stuff. Honestly, the more I studied it and then got involved for my internships, the more I felt that influencing culture and diving deep into day-to-day life was the main way to influence for the glory of God. I felt our system was a good system but that it was plugged up pretty badly with ungodly motives and people had become career politicians and idolized man’s traditions over the commands of Heaven.

Shockingly, this messy dude with terrible grammar and loud, obnoxious tendencies has been able to shake things up enough that I see a clearer path to influencing not just by living life and communicating about life but by getting more involved in some form of journalism… not according to man’s traditions but instead just as a raw communicator of the Gospel and of related truths…

Ravi Zacharias taught me a principle I’ll never forget. Everything ultimately works into and out from the central and awe-inspiring reality of the Gospel of Jesus Christ… Because I know this to be true, I intend to use this platform of my blog to write honest commentary from a place of prayerful meditation and involvement in very personal and very public aspects of life. I want to live life all out for the glory of Jesus Christ as I’ve sought to do, and yet along the way constantly see the sacred and secular clash and smash and engage with one another. The life of following Jesus is clean and clear and beautiful in one respect… God’s truths are beautiful and pristine and real and raw and not complex. However, the hard part is the wrestle of life, the engagement of these truths into the mud of day to day life. I think of how unattractive for instance mud is, but then I think of how God has come down into our mud and entered our world and engaged with us with all of our disease and sorrow and sin and unsavory aspects.

May we do the same. May we look to Jesus and then go and do likewise. May every aspect of our being be flavored by godly love and reckless grace. The grace Jesus modeled is so offensive turn after turn. Jesus NEVER acted with an eye on the leaders of the day. Instead He walked out what He and the Father has planned with the Spirit quickening every step.

Jesus spoke with such boldness and constantly offended the ears of the leaders of the day because they had come to overly elevate their traditions.

God, give us the eternal perspective of Jesus to such a degree that we are of some earthly good! I believe in You and choose to follow You regardless of the opinions of culture and public figures. Eyes on You!