Wednesday, November 5, 2008

My Audacity of Hope

Last month, Valerie and I, with Dan & Bev Mayerle, enjoyed four days of touring England on our way home from Russia. It was our first visit and I hope we get to go back.

On a city bus, an older gentlemen asked me, in broken English, if a particular building in the distance might be St Paul’s Cathedral? When I replied that we ourselves were headed to that famous landmark, he immediately responded, “Oh, good, we’ll go together!”

“Persia!” was his answer when I asked where he was from. He was proud of the land of his fathers, but ashamed of its leaders (“we have a very bad government”). He fell back on the ancient name rather than admit he was from Iran.

Our few minutes together, walking slowly down the street to the great cathedral, comprised a pleasant exchange about our families and snapping photos together (touched up here to protect their identity). We left them with a brief word of testimony of Isa, the only One who died for them and loves them still today.

It was my first time to meet anyone from Iran, and the story serves to frame something about yesterday’s election. More about that below, but first some general observations:

• America has a new President elect. I salute Obama’s remarkable success and genuinely want him to be an effective president. He deserves opportunity to succeed. But given what we already know about his positions, such a hope seems audacious indeed. Praise God that our hope, and faith, are not in Obama but in Jesus Christ.

• Obama’s achievement has cast an important new vision for all black Americans.

• This election looks like very bad news for unborn children. I hope a President Obama does not continue his senatorial trajectory of approving the murder of innocents. Robert George has written a compelling article clearly spelling out that Barack Obama has been not only “pro-choice” (if such a moniker is even accurate) but clearly pro-abortion. Until now, there has been no pro-abortion law he would not support, nor any protection of the unborn, however miniscule, he would not reject.

• Obama comes to the office at a moment of ponderous global challenges. Within hours of his election, Russia announced it is deploying missiles inside Europe in defiance of a U.S.-led missile defense plan. The Taliban has called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. These may portend what’s to come and we need to pray for courage and wisdom for a new, untried President Obama.

I also hope a President Obama does not fulfill his pledge of no-conditions discussions with global thugs like Ahmadinejad. Which brings me back to that delightful couple from “Persia.” I read today that, “Polls taken inside Iran show that the Iranian people are the most pro-American in the Middle East, after Israel.” Reading that, I understood the warmth of our encounter with two strangers on the streets of London. May their favorable view of Americans … and the attendant opportunity for the spread of the gospel in their land … remain undiminished in the coming months and years.

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