In The Same Breath

Therefore I have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God, but we should write to them to abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from blood.

 - From Acts 15

The problem with our politics, is that one side has part of it completely right, and part completely wrong . . . while the other has the opposite.

When, in Scripture, the time comes to lay out the essentials, you almost always find the two parts, completely right, in the same context. Except now, the Apostle James has included it all in the same sentence, or breath. 

It's like in the Old Testament, where it is repeated over, and over, and over again: Take care of widows, orphans, and aliens (Democrat) . . . but be sexually pure (Republican). Now of course, the previous sentence is not a perfect representation; merely an assertion of where they place their priorities.

And also, the OT repeats the directive to love God (applies to everybody . . . practiced by few).

James's take on the concept is particularly 21st Century Progressive. He wants full inclusion of people that heretofore had been left out. And of course Christ already took care of the "98 %" in His ministry.

And James's Progressivism is noteworthy. It's pithy and challenging. But in the same breath James says to teach the Gentiles the other important stuff; you know, the part about living right, and pure lives. 

Oops.

I do not want to go into too much detail here. I just wish people would read Scripture . . . all of it . . . and take it to heart, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

There was a time when Americans could disagree on politics without being at each other's throats. I think that it was because most people still had some regards for both sides of the equation.