Can’t Get Away from Sarah

It seems that even if I wanted to get away from the talk about Gov. Sarah Palin, I wouldn’t be able to escape it.

Today was my church’s 50th anniversary.  For the celebration we invited the first pastor to come and share the message, we had a slideshow and a luncheon.

After the message, we had a luncheon downstairs, and the interim pastor we had between the previous pastor and the current one sat down with us to eat.  We’d formed a special bond since I was the Chairman of the Pulpit Committee and we had him over to our house to eat lunch with us on occasion.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to turn to Gov. Palin and what I thought of her.  It’s not that I don’t admire what the woman’s done, but man has she made the environment in this election even more electric.

The discussion surrounding her candidacy is amazing.  I could try to write more of my thoughts out (and I do have a couple ideas for posts here and throughout the network, but let me share some links and my takes—for a lot of these do better than I can at expressing an opinion.

Palin’s Church

One of the biggest attacks on Palin that I’ve seen has to do with the church she attended at one point in time.  Reading At least Palin knows the difference between “Sh%^ and Shinola” you see that the charges that Palin heard her pastor preach a bunch of things that most Christians don’t believe¹ are full of hot air—since Palin left the church before these statements were made or may have been part of the reason that she left.

Palin’s Effect on Women

Obama certainly believes that Palin will have an effect on the women vote.  He’s out dispatching “female surrogates” to different areas to try to appeal to the ladies.

One of my thoughts through all of this has been that you know how good a decision you have made is by the reaction of your opponent.  From the junk that they were coming up with (outright fabrications) to this new response, I say McCain made a pretty good choice.

Women in the Public Square

It’s hard to think through all the questions swirling around Gov. Palin’s candidacy for the Christian.  But it is a great opportunity to express the belief that childbearing years are just a part of a woman’s (and a man’s) life.  The problem for a lot of Christians as that we can tend to look at a single time in a life as the constant role for a person, when roles can change.

For women, there is a life after bearing and raising children, and that’s a perfect time for seeking out God’s use of your life in ways that you could never imagine—or that were never possible while giving your life in service to your children.

From the Other Side

It’s interesting that it took someone that opposes Republicans to make this point:

And when liberals and progressives pounce on rumors like this one about Trig’s “true” parentage — whether or not it is true, which I’m pretty sure it’s not — or rumors about Republican politicians’ sexuality (in the absence of crimes committed) we are conceding that conservatives are right, and personal choices do qualify or disqualify one for certain aspects of participation in public life and this democracy. We are accepting their terms, their definitions of appropriate private behavior, and attempting to use those definitions to defeat their candidates. And once we do that, even if we do “take down” Sarah Palin or whatever Republican candidate in order to protect gay rights or reproductive rights or educational rights, then we’ve lost on those issues anyway because we’ve conceded that the underpinnings to the Republican positions on those issues is valid.

You see, this blogger gets it.  And I hope that the double standard has been obvious to you though this whole process.

The party with standards is being held to those standards.  The party that claims no such standards holds themselves to no standards.  The problem is the claims of the standard-less are hollow.  They just have other standards, or choose to overlook certain things.

Thus, when these people that have no problem with a liar in the Oval Office because “it was just about sex” turn around and highlight Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, they show their own hypocrisy.  If it were truly a non-story, then they wouldn’t care.

But they do—or at least they think you do, and therefore they want to bring it up.

The point is, when the going gets tough, that’s when we find out what people really believe.  That’s when we discover what their real opinion is on things.  It’s not a pretty picture.

More Palin later…

1. Kalnins has preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted into heaven; and preached that the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq were part of a world war over Christianity—as quoted from the Huffington Post [↩]