Mike Heath -- Why I've Had It

WHY I'VE HAD IT

By Mike Heath

June 11, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

I�m sorry. Some Christians will immediately tell me I shouldn�t get angry, that I should love my enemies, and that I must choose to �love.�

Well, I agree Christianity teaches me to love my enemies. I don�t, however, believe that this teaching means we shut up about sin, or stop defending virtue.

It amazes me that the �love your enemies� mantra is trotted out whenever a Christian declares in simple terms a love for modesty, virtue, marriage, and purity. It is never trotted out against movie moguls who use wiz bang technology to pervert our children and grandchildren in the megaplexes. Movie moguls aren�t told to �love their enemies.� Even Christians sit back in the plush theatre seats and applaud while movie makers vaporize, pummel, sodomize and torture their enemies.

That wasn�t what I was going to write about this week. Sorry.

A month ago I unenrolled from the Republican Party. I want to tell you why.

I didn�t grow up in a political family. I grew up in an average American middle class family. I was taught to trust American institutions. I entered adulthood after being thoroughly indoctrinated by the public schools I attended. Church was boring and meaningless and I, as a Christian of European descent was responsible for all that was wrong in the world. All would be right with the world if my maleness decreased, while Betty Friedan�s �femininity� increased.

I got saved in my late teens. Jesus made me feel better about things. Out of sincere gratitude for His free gift of salvation I read my Bible, underlined it, and decided to begin formal studies. I read Francis Schaeffer and others who suggested that Christianity was good for more than just contextualizing a wedding and funeral. The religion was made for more than sanctifying my private life, I concluded. Christianity was made of real stuff. That made me feel really good about getting saved.

I got married and had to get a job to pay the bills. As I grew older, things of the mind became more important, and feelings became less important. Money was real important to keep my wife and three growing sons fed, clothed, and housed.

Through my twenties and thirties I struggled with the tension that existed between earning the paycheck - keeping the boss or bosses happy - and staying true to my commitment to Jesus Christ.

The two realities danced together through those two decades. I chose to dance in the Republican ballroom because the other ballroom was a moral orgy instead of an ordered dance with rules.

Or so I thought. As it turns out, I wasn�t dancing in a beautifully ornamented ballroom gilded by artists with Christian sensibilities. I was, instead, dancing in a �big tent� that was decorated to look like Captain Von Trapp�s in Austria.

I�ve unenrolled because I�m looking for the Sound of Music, and all I can hear in modern American politics today is the pavement-cracking noise of a thousand pounding subwoofers. It confuses me.

I want Jesus Christ, and His ideas of what is good, noble, true and right.

Neither party is reflecting His command to tell the truth and to love our neighbor. Both political parties are merely interested in money and power. I�m bored. And I�ve had it.

The parties bore me. Macy�s really ticks me off.

To honor sodomy this week they displayed two �male� mannequins in the window of Macy�s in Boston. I place �male� in quotes because the mannequins had breasts. When I saw the picture in the email I was repulsed. I thought, �This is insanity.�

I know exactly what they are doing. And that is why I am mad.

They are placing a question in the mind of impressionable people. They are suggesting that the �sexual orientation� vision for mankind is actually more moral than maleness and femaleness.

I can understand why this would happen. Since money is all that matters now, it is only natural that some priests in Boston would molest boys, and retailers would become our priests.

Look for confessionals to be installed at the back of Wal Mart before long.

Maybe you�re willing to shop there for your religion. I�m not. And I�m not willing to see my sons be forced to raise their children in schools that promote this insanity, or stand by idly while it happens. I�m also not willing to support churches that keep the mute button on the parts of the gospel that the world says is politically incorrect.

Look. Christians either condemn sex outside of marriage, and work for laws that do the same, or we stop pretending on Sunday mornings. Christianity is either good for every part of our lives, or it isn�t real. If it isn�t, let�s just close the church doors and join the happy shoppers at Wal Mart every Sunday morning.

Anyway, that�s why I�m ticked off.

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Michael completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in religion/philosophy at Roberts Wesleyan College in 1985. In 1989 he became Executive Director at The Christian Civic League of Maine.

In 1992 Michael was the Republican nominee for Maine's House of Representatives in District 85. He's participated in dozens of candidate and issue campaigns since 1990.

Mike speaks each week all over Maine in churches, civic groups and on college campuses. Mike is often quoted in Maine's daily newspapers and frequently offers the League's perspective on national, statewide and local radio and television news programs. He produces a daily two minute radio commentary program called "Faith Matters in Maine." It airs statewide and can be heard online at www.celmaine.org

In addition to having been published in many of Maine's newspapers, Heath maintains a popular blog called www.mikeheath.net. He makes his home in South China with Paulie (www.paulieheath.com), his wife of 23 years.

E-mail:�mike@cclmaine.org

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I�m also not willing to support churches that keep the mute button on the parts of the gospel that the world says is politically incorrect.