Don't vote for Jesus

Shortly after Ted Cruz announced he was running for president last week, I heard something in passing on Fox News at work. (I will only ever hear something in passing on Fox News because I will never watch it. I don’t do partisan news coverage [and there’s a study that proves watching Fox News makes you dumber]. So no MSNBC either. And I don’t have cable at home, so I’m lucky to avoid most of the almost laughable 24-hour cable news cycle anyway. But Fox News is on a TV at work sometimes.) I don’t remember exactly what it said, but it was to the effect of, “Ted Cruz wants to rally conservative Christians to regain political power.”

I dry heaved at that a little (which I find to be my reaction to a lot of things I’ve seen on Fox News) because there was so very, very much wrong with it. I actually know very little about Ted Cruz. I generally avoid presidential politics until I have to pay attention to them, which I think is around primary election time every four years. But the idea of trying to thrust religion into politics is always bad. Always. And I say this as a Christian (albeit not a “conservative” one, whatever that means). A Christian who thinks legislating morality always has and always will be a bad idea. Because you know who legislates morality really well? Countries ruled by sharia law. Countries where women can’t read or support themselves and are treated like chattel. Countries where you can be imprisoned or put to death for reading or believing something that isn’t in line with the national religion. (Countries “conservatives” claim to despise, by the way). Trust me, we don’t want that here.

And if you claim to be a big fan of Jesus, you should probably know he wasn’t a big fan of political power. Or religious power, for that matter. You might recall it was those in political and religious power who killed him. He also was always pointing out how those in power were going against the will of God and treating their fellow humans like crap. And then he was like, “I’m going to go have dinner with all those meek sinners, so deal with it.” He spent most of his time those folks. As far as I can tell, pretty much the only time he spent with the powerful was to tell them they sucked and occasionally offer them a shot at redemption.

A few months ago, our pastor said, “Jesus didn’t come as a moral crusader. He came as a grace crusader.” He came to bring this radical idea that your life and eternal destiny didn’t amount to a tally of what you did wrong and what you did right. That he was going to take care of all that through his death and resurrection. All you had to do was believe he did. For someone who has screwed up more times than I care to think about and still fails a lot at following Jesus, do you know how liberating that is? It’s so crazy different from what we’re used to here, where we’re judged almost solely on our merits. For anyone who ever has messed up (and to be clear, I mean everyone), that should be wildly appealing. People should be flocking to Jesus and Christianity by the bajillions. 

But they’re not. In America, at least, they’re running away from it in droves. And I think the people who are sending them sprinting are those who call themselves Christians. Those who will wage a loud public fight about making a cake for a gay couple or not being able to erect a statue of the Ten Commandments at the courthouse. Those who fight for tax structures to protect the wealthy. Those same people tend to remain pretty quiet about making sure poor people can get medical care or providing food and a good education for impoverished children. 

Philip Yancey, one of my favorite Christian authors, wrote that most people know more about what Christians are against than what they’re for. I just can’t put into words how tragic that is. It’s like a direct defiance of Jesus’ command to “Go and make disciples of all nations.” It seems “conservative Christians” have taken that to mean, “Make it sound like Christianity is about a bunch of intolerant, holier-than-thou pricks who care only about themselves and their agenda.” 

I’m sorry this isn’t a funny post. But my heart has been aching ever since I heard that stupid report on Fox News earlier this week. It breaks to think that the amazingness of Jesus is being reduced to nothing but political mud. And then at church this past Palm Sunday, I was reminded that the people who welcomed Jesus on the original Palm Sunday and treated him as a king were the poor, oppressed and powerless. Those who arrested him that Thursday night and put him through six different trials were an entirely different set of people. They were the political and religious elite. 

For some more thought-provoking material on this, check out this post on the God's Politics blog (which I found after I originally wrote this, but man, you'd think I'd plagiarized a little. I'm just glad this weighs on the heart of others). 

Meal Planning for the Juvenile Palate, or, Why I Should Just Give Up and Feed Everyone F@*$ing Cereal

I’ve been trying to plan meals more lately - like so I shop intentionally at the grocery store and not drift toward whatever sounds delicious and make enough of something so that there’s enough left to eat for another night or two or freeze for later. There are all these web sites that tell you how to make meals for a month in one Saturday afternoon and get all the ingredients at Aldi for $100. Most of them want you to pay for this unrealistic plan that will leave you chopping green peppers until 3 a.m. and running out of Zip-Loc bags, freezer space and sanity.

Before I had a kid, I wasn’t very intentional about this sort of thing. I’d throw together whatever sounded good to me (my favorite: plain spaghetti topped with shredded cheddar cheese, parmesan and bacon bits accompanied by strawberries), and my husband would eat a bowl of cereal. Then an hour or two later he’d eat a bunch of crappy junk food. We both work full-time. He can’t cook for anything (he has multiple times left the cardboard on the bottom of a frozen pizza when putting it in the oven and has thrice confused sour cream for cream cheese when I asked him to get one of the items at the grocery store), and I don’t have much time after getting home. 

But now that I have a child that’s a month away from 2 years old, I want to ensure we have family dinners and that everyone, especially him, is getting a nutritious meal, and we’re eating it together. After an enjoyable time cooking, we then discuss our days while my husband and son gratefully shovel food into their mouths. 

This is a glorious idea in my head. In reality, it usually plays out like this: I frantically try to follow a recipe to get something on the table within 30 minutes before my husband gets hangry and my son throws a fit. Husband is supposed to be watching son to keep him out of my way when cooking. Husband instead gets mesmerized by The Simpsons on TV, develops tunnel vision and hearing, and son comes into kitchen and starts going through cabinets trying to find his favorite colander or whines at me because I won’t let him play with the paring knife. Once the meal is ready, my son shoves the food away before even trying it or better yet, throws it on the floor and screams for graham crackers instead. My husband proclaims not to like one of the ingredients and pushes the food around on his plate. I dream of the time when it was just me and my cheesy spaghetti with bacon bits and a side of strawberries.

I guess a toddler is sort of entitled to be an a-hole about food. I hear this is normal, but it seems like everyone I know with a toddler has a much easier time. They share recipes on social media with annoying comments like “Johnny just loved this lentil and quinoa dish! A great source of protein, too!” My son really only likes protein if it comes in the form of processed meat. The more nitrates, the more wiling he is to eat it - cured ham, smoked sausage, hot dogs. But grilled, seasoned, free range chicken breast lovingly prepared by his mother? Hell no. He will have fried chicken nuggets, though, but only if he can dip them in barbecue sauce with high-fructose corn syrup as the No. 1 ingredient. (Despite all this, he is still below-the-charts skinny for his age, which usually makes me cave and give him the damn graham crackers with peanut butter because I fear he’ll starve otherwise.) Another friend of mind told me the only thing her 1-year-old daughter won’t eat is asparagus. That’s it! Laid end to end, one serving of each thing my child will not eat would encircle planet earth. 

But that’s apparently just a toddler thing. Right along with naps and pooping in their pants. My 33-year-old husband, however, gives most toddlers a run for their money on pickiness. Before I met him nine years ago, I thought I was picky. A former coworker accused me of having a “juvenile palate” because I don’t like seafood, eggs, mushrooms, many steamed vegetables, most things that mix sweet and salty together, and Asian food (which notoriously mixes sweet and salty together, so you can see my logic there). But no, I am the world’s most adventurous omnivore compared to my husband. 

Below is a list of things he won’t eat, with rare exceptions and clarifications in parentheses:

All fruit (once or twice a year, he will eat a Red Delicious apple)

Vegetables (will occasionally eat broccoli, asparagus and Caesar salad)

Potatoes that “taste too potato-ey" (i.e. only consumes French Fries and seasoned roasted potatoes that are flavored just so)

Sour cream

Pretty much anything with a high fiber content

Any jelly flavor other than grape

Meatballs/meatloaf

Seafood (which I am totally OK with because I hate it, too)

Soup (with the exception of French onion)

And these are things he doesn’t like very much but will eat occasionally if I beg him:

Ground beef (but will happily eat hamburgers, which are just smooshed ground beef)

Pasta (it really doesn’t matter the sauce or meat or veggies accompanying it, he “just doesn’t like pasta very much”)

Rice

Salad

Generic brand products (despite no evidence to back up his position, he firmly believes store-brand pretzels are inferior to the ones that cost $2 more per bag)

So, internet meal planning mavens, what have you got to fit into those specifications, eh? Because all I’ve been able to come up with is just boxes and boxes of Goldfish crackers and Cheerios.