Moral Presidential Candidates

I was just reading an article about how a "well-known evangelical theologian" was no longer endorsing Trump and bemoaned his character.  If basing your decision on moral character is determining your vote, I'm not sure there is anyone to vote for!

Romans 3:23 

"for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God"

We are not going to find a person of moral character that will be sinless, but I do believe that we can find people that live up to the next verse,

Romans 3:24
"and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."

Let not our sin define us, but rather through grace and a striving to be more like Jesus everyday be the definition of who we are.  

We are looking for people of character, not that they are perfect, but rather striving for that perfection.  The reason we have gotten so caught up and divided with Donald Trump is the fact that he is not striving for something greater than himself.  As a country we want a strong leader, but also a leader who knows that God is the creator and ultimate leader.

I hope that through this process we take inventory of our own character.  Determine if as individuals we are striving to be more like Christ everyday.  If we all did this our world would be a much different place, still not perfect, but better.  

Vote your conscience this election, understand who you are voting for, and at the end we must come back together as a nation and stop the division that has struck us over the past several years.  

Future of Education

The education of the next generation lies with utilizing, incorporating, etc. the changes that have been brought about by the information age technology; database management, information search-ability, and access to infinite amounts of information.  The future of education will take full advantage of these opportunities to offer educational services to everyone who is willing to partake.

We need to understand how the next generation is being raised, what information they have access to, how they think (they think differently then being raised in a non information accessible generation) in order to maximize the learning experience and prepare them for their future.  Our current system of education, class room lectures, short periods of learning one subject and moving to another subject, corporate learning, everyone graded based on where they should be for their age level and in preparation for going to college, etc.  I would like to note at this time that college is a good alternative for kids that need additional training in a professional subject, but it is not the right choice for everyone, and in today's world even the idea of going to college is getting turned on its head.

It is amazing to see how all the schools in this country have finally gotten around to preparing all students to go to college.  We have eliminated shop classes (we are too smart to have to build things with our hands), we focus more on social agendas than factual information, and we have reduced education to teaching everyone that they need to think all the same so we don't hurt anyone's feelings.  Listen, we will not survive as a country if we continue down this path.  We need to understand, embrace, and learn to communicate our differences in a civil, critical thinking, and honest manner.  We need to offer opportunities for kids to fail, to understand that we are not all going to be successful at the same thing, or all live in the same type of life style.  We need to broaden the possibilities and the acceptance of the type of work that provides for our families, the type of lifestyles that make up a dynamic, fruitful society.

The future is not about getting a job, although that's what a lot of us will do and that's ok, but the job landscape is changing and we will get into that in a moment, its about preparing kids to be independent.  In our society today there is no company loyalty, we have moved to a "contract" mentality even if we work for a company as an employee we can leave at anytime.  We need to teach our kids how to represent themselves whether they go to work for a company, start their own company, or create opportunities that create an income; we need to teach our kids about all these opportunities and how to operate in this future environment.

When you look at some of the most successful people in the world, a lot of them did not have a college or even some a high school education.  As Robert Kiyosaki points out in his book "A's and B's work for C's", C's being capitalists, these are people that create opportunities.  They are the visionaries.  These are the people that create the future.  We need to prepare our kids to think like this in the coming "work" environment.  We need to teach them to think critically, creativity, and cognitively.  We need to offer them hands on experiences.  As they think critically they will discover to use their brains to solve complicated problems and overcome their failures.

We need to be teaching the next generation with the skills to think this way.  In a digital world we need to offer opportunities to be hands-on, to think strategically (verses data collectors, reference: "Making Your Brain Smarter" by Sandra Bond Chapman), and think independently.

What if we created an environment where kids could explore ideas, learn through doing (and failing), and get exposure to hand-on applications, and real life experiences?  An environment that will prepare them earlier in life for being leaders that are successful and productive in business, the community, and as citizens.  With the access to unlimited educational programs and courses on line this is possible, to gain insight from the best teachers in the world and at a fraction of the price of a college education.  We need to take advantage of this access and provide instructional support to guide our kids to thinking this way earlier in life.  The one piece of information that I remember from college about being a designer was, you just need to know where to look for information, because you are not going to learn everything in school.  I want to offer this opportunity to the next generation.  To teach them not about facts and figures, but about the learning process and that the opportunities are limitless, they just need to know where to look and how to manage that knowledge and they will go far in life.

Values to instill:

1. To serve God and our neighbors with all our heart, mind, and soul.

2. Instill critical, creative, and cognitive skills to foster innovation, creativity, and self reliant thinking.

3. We need to learn and work smart so we can give generously.

Teaching focused on:

1. Values and principles from the bible

2. Citizenship through History Study

3. Information gathering and management

4. Hand-on experiences

5. Business/Management Systems

The sooner one can fail the sooner they will become wise.  Through the exercise of trial and error kids can build upon that experience.  They not only learn that they made a bad decision (critical thinking) they need to work through that mistake (cognitive thinking) to develop a solution to being successful (creative thinking).  What if we provided the resources, guidance, and wisdom to get to a successful solution faster?  This is the idea behind the next generation "school".  It would be an entrepreneur experience that would immerse the kids in a high sensory learning environment.  At first this could be overwhelming.  Part of this experience will be to help manage and start to build a path that will lead to to being a creative, generous, and successful leader that will not only create opportunities for themselves, but others as well.  

Living with "Margin"

There was a time when we had time to visit a neighbor, take time to sit and read a newspaper, call someone just to see how their were doing.  Today we have gotten in this mode of always being busy, needing to fill up every bit of time with something.

Toby talked about this a couple of weeks ago and I think it is so important to have margin in your life, to stop and smell the roses.  Life goes by quickly and we aren't stopping to enjoy it.  By living this way we aren't "available" when He calls us to serve Him or others.  We have crammed ourselves to the hilt with activities, need for information about our friends and other people, we move on average every 4-7 years, so we are constantly meeting new people that we need to keep in touch with, we travel miles from where we live to work with people that we only see at work, and stop where we don't know anyone, we live in a public yet secluded life.  It is not wonder that we have a majority of the population on antidepressants.

We need to get back to a life style that brings everyone back to family, community (local), accountability to those around us.  To live in a community where we live and work and raise our families.  Where we teach our kids about being self-reliant and dependent on God and those around us.  Self-reliant isn't about doing everything yourself, its about have your own opinion, understanding the world enough to vote intelligently and carry on a logical conversation using critical thinking verses what others are pumping into our minds...

We live in a community, because God created us to live within a community, a community of believers, and people that support us.  Our marriage is a reflection of our relationship with God and God ordains this, this unit of two people is the smallest group of community.  As Francis Chan mentions in his book "Forever You and Me", marriage is Gods smallest battle unit.  It is a starting point for building community in our lives, we depend on our spouse and we do things with them within our community.  We experience life with them.  This is God's way of providing another person to walk through life with.

Not sure how we get back to this type of life where others matter enough to allow us to stop and take the time to help others in need.  If we don't do this ourselves it will be impressed upon us through other avenues, that will eventually tip the teeter totter in the other direction, and the outcome will more extreme then we can envision.  May we come back to this way of life before it is impressed on us...

Millennials

Millennials are the future.  Whether we embrace it or not.  Toby had a really good message on Sunday that spoke the truth about the position that the current church must embrace and about the position that the millennials find themselves in and are non the less concerned about.  This position is a position that is different than the previous generation, they are a generation of innovators, thinkers, and free wills, they are the "We" generation.  This in contrast to the previous generation of the "Me" generation, building wealth, and creating a stable, comfortable lifestyle.  There are pros and cons to both ways of thinking.  Glen Beck pointed this out from some books and authors he read and interviewed, I think the "Pendulum" was one of the books.

Toby talked about building the future of the church that includes building up the next generation of leaders, the problem is that the Millennials have a lot of ideas and energy, but no resources or money or wisdom to navigate getting successful results.  Generations need to work together to build a future of tomorrow that encompasses all of our strengths.  Together with can build anything, divided we fail.
We need to utilize our elder generation for their wisdom, they have so much to offer and we have already let many years of experience disappear and those that had learned so much pass a way without that knowledge getting handed down to the next generation.  We have lost our family history from being past on by dividing the family with sending our kids to school and we head off to work, only to be united briefly, if we are lucky for maybe a quick dinner.  We have lost the family as the nucleus of our society.

Millennials have learned from this, that friendship and love are more important then financial success, success that keeps us from Gods primary calling on our lives which is to love one another.  When we accumulate all this "stuff" we need to house it, store it, maintain it, and use it, it doesn't leave us with much time to enjoy life with those we are living it with.

We need to understand the Millennials are a generation of creative minds that want to create.  I met with a networking group of entrepreneurs in Denton about a year ago and it was very interesting that most of not all of them did not have business cards and most of them did not have a lot of money and din't seem to care about having any money as long as they were able to create.  Not that they didn't want to make money, but that it wasn't their first concern.

All this being said I believe that the direction that this thinking will head them is actually a good one.  One thing that humans will always have the ability to do is critical, creative, and cogitative thinking.  With the dawn of AI, robots are a long way off from being able to create outside of a logical process, I don't want to say they will never get their, but they are a ways off...   With this thought in mind the future belongs to those that can think critically, creativity, and cognitively.

We need to be teaching the next generation with the skills to think this way.  In a digital world we need to offer opportunities to be hands-on, to think strategically (verses data collectors, reference: "Making Your Brain Smarter" by Sandra Bond Chapman), and think independently.

(See Future of Education)

Focus on Christ

In this twisted world we need to stay focused on Christ.  We need to love God even more and continue to love our neighbor.  In this election season we have seen the worst of humanity, not just in the things said but also in the hateful nature those words and actions in some cases have demonstrated.  The part of being a part of a Christian based society is that, as Christians we do not conduct ourselves in this fashion (just another indication that we are in a post Christian era or not a Christian nation anymore).  There is civil discourse and as a nation we are not conducting ourselves in this way.  The traditional values that we have upheld from our founding have been taken over by entitlement, pride (striving for power), and self fulfillment and serving oneself.  If this is the future of the United States than I am happy to surrender myself to the one true King.  We as Christians need to understand that through the recent generations, we as a country have failed to pass on the Christian values that made this country great.  Through this failing we have entered the post Christian world.  Let us not be restrained by trying to sustain what has become an "American life style" without God.  Let us embrace a life style with God, living in a godless America.  Let us focus on what God has called us to do, let the world wander down the path of destruction, there is no need for us to follow.  Let us refocus our attention to love and raising Christ focused families.  When the world has imploded, Christ will prevail.  

When we focus on the discourse in the media, politics, and etc we lose focus on God.  This is very hard for those that believe that this nation has been blessed by God and find it had to believe that we need to give that up.  The issue is that we have been so focused on insisting on that God has ordained this nation that we have lost focus on the true target...

American Dream

What is the American Dream?  Our presidents' throw this idea around when they are talking about providing opportunities and benefits that the government can help the people reach a certain financial pinnacle.

The American Dream is not a tangible, it is an ideal.  The opportunity to struggle and succeed with out the restricts of class, government dictate, but within a rule of law that provides all the same opportunity to be successful in whatever endeavor that may be.  The typical reference to reaching this ideal is a house with a white picket fence.  This is not the "American Dream"!  This can be the thermometer but its not the goal.

We have become so caught up in the measurement of the American Dream we have lost focus on what it truly is.  The government has done as much as possible to provide, not an opportunity to reach the "American Dream" but rather, the house with a white picket fence, at the cost of future generations. This has come in the form of subsidy's for housing, college, and now phones, TVs, etc.

We need to teach our kids that the american dream is about what you make of your life not by what you gather.

Introduction

The United States of America was founded on biblical principles. We need to rediscover those principles. I felt a calling to raise awareness to what the bible says we need to be doing as Christians and contrast that with what our culture is telling us today.  My hope is that this will help reestablish biblical principles that will guide us today.

Through this calling and desire to bring Christ back to the forefront of this nation's consciousness, my intent is not to belittle those that are Christians but rather raise the question to ones own sole on whether they are acting as Christ would want them to act.  Providing a standard against the status quo of our contemporary society.  I fall short of these ideals but look to these thoughts as a standard to strive for in my own life.

As you read through these ideas please feel free to provide you thoughts and feedback.  I look forward to productive and civil dialogue with all representatives including those that may oppose wholeheartedly these ideas.  As a free society we must all be willing to listen and engage in ideas that may be extreme so that all grievances can be addressed, allow all to be included and take an active roll in the American experiment.

My intention is to focus on Biblical principles, but there may be a peppering of other thoughts that relate to other areas that I am passionate about.