Who is to blame?

I've been avoiding Facebook a bit lately.  The vitriol and venom that drips from the pages seems to saturate the very fabric of my skin, leaving me want to bathe in something harsher than water to remove it's stain.  I see people who on a normal day would have nothing bad to say about anyone smearing a man or woman they do not personally know and spouting diatribes filled with semi-factual statements to ram their point home.  Every skeleton in every closet seems to have been shaken out into the streets to run rampant with a life of their own.  Even the names of the candidates have been twisted into pithy sayings or to draw even more ire on the persons stance on this issue or that.   I can't help but wonder, how did we get to the point where these are the two most qualified men and women to run for President in our country in the mainstream parties?

It's our own fault.   We've created a world in which we not only expect politicians to be people who dance around the truth but we support and laud men and women as 'good' even after their actions show otherwise.   The top selling books now are soft core pornography scripts and then we demand that the candidates rather not use that sort of language.   We avoid the hot button issues and sweep horrendous crimes under the rug by simply labeling them with softer language:  choice, freedom, love.   We listen as politicians declare that 'religions will simply have to change' under their watch and still claim that we are a country that demands toleration...

What we demand rather is toleration of those who agree with us.   It's that age old battle that began with two young men, one a shepherd offering of his flock, the other a farm of his field... then ended with a rock and spilled blood.   It is again, our own fault.   We have allowed society to erode around us into the state it is now existing in.. one in which people drive up and down the streets of our cities shooting one another and anyone in the way... where the police are now being portrayed as untrustworthy, and anyone who gets shot is innocent and a victim.... where sexuality is all that is on the television and the music is filled with messages of drug, sex, and hedonism...

So how do we then vote?   How do we reverse this course?  How do we decide which candidate is the lesser of two evils?  I don't have those answers... what I do have is this:  These are human beings.   They are created in the image of God...  Too many Christians that I see are refusing to offer dignity to them.  They are smearing their name in the name of politics, making fun of them, constantly speaking of them in ways that we should never speak of another human with... Can you look into Trumps eyes and see Jesus there?  The image of God looking back at you, even if he is not living up to that image?   What about Hillary?  I've heard both of them ask recently for forgiveness for their past errors.. and seen hundreds refuse to give that forgiveness... but what does God say about such things?

His servant and yours,
Brian