"One, we are religious. Two, we are right."

A quote from Terry Fox, former pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas.

The religious right: A buzz word that shows up most often in election years. Also the group that supposedly was one of the most important voting blocs in the 2004 election, often given credit for handing President Bush the White House for four more years.

Way to go. Obviously, that's worked out real well.

But, maybe not. I guess that depends on how you look at it. If you're thinking about the issues of gay marriage and abortion, which apparently are the two issues that will either have the angels singing or send the world straight to hell, then maybe the last 8 years weren't a complete waste.

But that's not how I look at it. What I'm looking at is a world where people are dying of hunger while others are falling off the wagon of yet another diet plan. What I'm looking at is a world where I hear more people complaining about outrageous gas prices than worrying about the effect that the exhaust from their over-sized SUVs is going to have on the lives of their children and grandchildren...and maybe sooner than we all think. What I'm looking at is a country that is running scared from terrorists, and instead of trying to solve the problems at hand, we're shooting at everything that moves...that has a darker shade of skin. What I'm looking at is a country that is ruining its image and influence abroad as it wages war and threatens war, forcing our neighbors to accept our agenda or face the consequences, and calling it "freedom." What I'm looking at is a country where, in the same day, one family decides not to go to the doctor because they can't afford it, while another buys another BMW, and no one seems to have a problem with the contradiction.

But, worst of all, what I'm seeing is a Church unwilling to change, unable to see beyond what single-minded leaders are saying should be the issues of our time. What I want to know is, when was it decided that the key issues on God's mind were abortion and gay marriage? When did He tell us that He cared more about whether or not a gay couple could have a joint bank account than the kid in the hood who is denied a good education because all the money goes to the school that the rich kid from the suburbs goes to, or the man working two jobs but still can't afford health insurance? When did He tell us to care about the unborn child and do everything to save it, but to make the starving child in a slum in Nairobi second, third, or even last on our list of priorities? When did he tell us to spend all our money on bombs to destroy our enemies (they're all heathens anyway), and not to worry about the droughts and the natural disasters and the air pollution (the earth will eventually fix itself...plus this gives Me extra ammo to punish this sinful world with...hey, it worked on New Orleans)?

When are we going to wake up and look around?! Our world is in trouble, and we're too busy arguing over the morality of a couple of US laws to do something that could actually affect change.

What would it look like for the Church to stop being the moral police and actually start living out an holistic gospel? The fall of man was about so much more than a couple of humans breaking a rule, and therefore the cross of Christ is about so much more than making us behave. That fateful day in Eden did more than destroy our relationship with God. It destroyed our relationships with each other and our relationship with our planet. When are we going to see that? And when are we going to start living out the FULL gospel in our lives, in our nation, and in our world?