Telling Ourselves The Truth

First and foremost, my prayer for you is that you are enjoying a blessed celebration of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s birth.  Way more important than politics.

Picking up from yesterday, it’s vital we go into the new year and the new administration committed to the truth.  It is easy to wave off with a resigned sigh how telling the truth in politics places you in unfortunately rare company, therefore is borderline futility.  While this attitude is understandable, it is also not permissible.  Declining to be anything but truthful regardless of the reception?  Never an option.

Regardless of whether we like it, the fact is we’re not doing the job in terms of effectively communicating our message to the general public.  Granted, we enter the fray at a disadvantage.  Traditional media is not our friend.  While we can crow all we want over declining ad revenue at the New York Times, it and the CNNs of this world remain the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room.  It is therefore mandatory, should we desire to make any inroads as far as winning over hearts and minds, that we be as Steve Jobs puts it “insanely great.”  And right now this isn’t happening.

The South Park Republican shtick of being crass, crude and conservative doesn’t cut it.  Neither does trying to make ripping on the media a career when you’re pulling 99 44/100% of your material from the same media.  Demonizing your opponents, be they liberal politicians or bloggers, generates a lot of heat but shines no light.  These approaches don’t cut it.  They don’t cut it, because if they did cut it we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in, said position consisting primarily of pointing fingers at each other trying to assign blame for the minority status we’re in.

So what will work?

While there aren’t all that many Victor David Hansons among us, a more intelligent approach to how we present ourselves and our positions is more than a little advisable.  The ranting raving outraged histrionics act has long since worn out its welcome.  Instead of knee jerk reactions, we should be on our knees praying for wisdom with which to refute arguments against what and why we believe.  The calm measured response and the logically laid out proposal go much farther as far as persuading others to at least consider our words than all the vein-popping venom we can spit at the opposition.

It would also help tremendously if we were more open about our faith.  As mentioned above, we need to be articulating not only what we believe politically, but why.  The whole Gospel — the need for repentance, the availability of salvation, the joy of life in Christ, the call to serve — should be part of our daily vocabulary.  We also need to live out that about which we speak out.  The posing and preening “look at me — SQUEE!” attitude needs to be permanently dismissed pronto.  We must stop turning the blogosphere into an excuse for the latest chapter of the mutual admiration society.  What have we done that’s genuinely worth admiring?  Self-serving isn’t service.  We need to get over ourselves by abandoning class distinction and embracing each other regardless of social or site visit standing.

We need to adopt the four tenets of the blogging evangel:

• The ability to broadcast ones opinion neither elevates nor validates said opinion;
• Blog from and for the heart, not the bank account;
• Answer your e-mail every time all the time;
• Never become what you profess to oppose.

If we do these things, we’re doing the right things for the right reasons.

The world, although it would never admit as much, needs us.  Christ needs us to do His work and spread His word.  To sum it up, we need to git’r done.  So let’s do this thing.  Starting now.