As you may have noticed, the blog is redesigned (Thank you Blogger for creating some better templates to use!). With the redesign is a new header. Gone is my “autograph” and in its place a wood plank with my name and the phrase “Ramblings, Rumblings and Rants from the Right Side.”
Of course.
I’m a preacher. EVERYTHING needs a little alliteration, right?
But why did I say “The Right Side.”?
Simple. If you know me, I am a political junkie. And my political DNA is decidedly Right-Wing. I am a Republican. I am a Conservative. I am a Baptist. And I personally don’t know how you can be the last without being the first two as well. If you don’t fit into my mold, hey, no harm. no foul. But this is who I am and I make no apologies for my worldview, my political leanings, or my convictions regarding morality.
So “Right Side” immediately conjures thoughts of Red State ideology (though I live in the deepest blue state south of Massachusetts), and those thoughts would be correct. I “campaigned” for Gerald Ford when I was 9 years old, telling adult relatives and teachers of the evils of Jimmy Carter. I voted for Reagan, just wish I could have voted for him twice. I’ve had Bush/Quayle, Dole/Kemp, Bush/Cheney and McCain/Palin bumper stickers. I was contacted by Mike Huckabee’s staff and asked to be one of his delegates to the 2008 Republican National Convention (couldn’t go, too expensive on a preacher’s salary!) I’m hoping Huck runs again, but am ready to throw my weight behind Haley Barbour if he doesn’t.
But “Right Side” also speaks to my non-political worldview.
I am a firm believer in an unpopular concept called Absolute Truth. I cannot look at the creation around me and not be convinced that there are Laws that govern everything in the universe. It is absolutely true that 2+2=4. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself its not true, 2+2=4. It is absolutely true that when water’s temperature dips below 32o Fahrenheit it begins to turn solid. No matter how hard you argue, that fact is inviolable. Truth is not, despite current popular opinion, relative. If my truth and your truth disagree, one or both of us is WRONG. There is an absolute truth to EVERYTHING in the Universe. I have found that the truth contained in the Bible IS Absolute. There is nothing wrong in the Bible, there are no mistakes. In 14 years of preaching ministry, I have never had someone claim to me that the Bible was full of contradictions or mistakes,who was not also found to have never read the Bible. The WHOLE thing.
Its amazing to me how “relative truth” ALWAYS goes hand in hand with a person who has never made a serious attempt to read the Bible. I don’t go around giving my opinion or making sweeping claims about astrophysics, I don’t argue String versus M Theory (but I know what they are) and I don’t try to tell women I know how they feel. In other words, I should have some basic understanding of a topic before I spout off my opinion of it.
This is where I become befuddled at my fellow man. The Atheist (the Bible call him a fool – Psalm 14:1) who has never seriously studied the Bible makes pronouncements about its fallibility. Joe Average whose personal education program only extends to watching television refuses to listen to reason and sticks his head back in the sand, ignoring his need and going to hell. Excuses to ignore the truth abound in modern America.
So I’m a right-winger… and these are my views.
I hope that if I don’t offend you, I at least make you think. And if I do offend you, I hope you stick around long enough to be challenged to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12)
