I've been part of a work bible study for years and though there have been comings and goings of folks, there was a core group that meets quarterly to discuss how things are in the different companies where we landed. I know that most of them are committed Fox watchers, but one lady is a tried and true Fundamentalist. We didn't make it two sentences past howdy before she asked, "Do you think Obama is the anti-christ?"
Wow, I was floored and I'll tell you more below if you're interested.
In the past I knew I was the odd man out in the group. I was anti-Bush from before the outset of the Iraq war and had to listen to them speak with tongues dyed red from all the Bush/Fox kool-aid they drank. I brought up things like, hey, he (Sadam) allowed the inspectors in and we had him contained, and they spouted things like Sadam was BAAAAD and there were no WMDs found because he smuggled the WMDs to Syria. yada yada. I eventually learned that there was no convincing them so I just kept my little mouth shut. (So why didn't I stop going - 'cause they're nice folks and I'm not going to insulate myself from the world just because they don't share my views.)
So anyway, today she pops the question, "Do you think Obama is the anti-christ" and I instantly said, "No." After that I held my tongue but a few sentences later some of the Fox vitriol about his dad being Muslim started spewing forth and to cut off where that was going I finally grew a pair and said, "Look, I have to let you know that I'm an Obama supporter." That instantly shut up the Muslim stuff and that never came up again. But we did get into quite a discussion none the less.
There were four of us at the table but most of the discussion was between me and her. Her arguments were Obama has no experience vs McCain's and Palin's vast experience for which I responded that my experience of seeing republicans the last eight years tells me I want no more of that kind of experience. I said I'd rather have an empty suit I don't know what will come than a suit that says one thing but does another. I said the republicans now have a long history of saying something but doing the opposite and I don't trust them any more.
Next up was, "He's going to raise taxes." I responded, "So who's going to pay for $11 Trillion of debt Bush stacked on us?" and I followed with, "Somebody has to pay taxes and it makes me damned mad that Bush heaped all that debt on my children and grandchild which forces the next president to deal with his crap!" They all agreed with the latter statement. I then said, "And I'll tell you what, given the war, I would have paid more taxes to fight Osama Bin Laden, but Bush never asked. He just kept on piling on debt. Why didn't he ask for sacrifice?" They agreed with that too. (woo hoo I'm winning points!)
"You can't know he's a Christian just because he says so," she said. I said, "You don't know I'm one, or McCain is one, and I don't know if you're one. Only Jesus knows our heart and from what I see Obama has a good heart and I'll take him at his word."
We had a great discussion on the economic situation where they blamed Clinton for the mortgage crisis because he "forced" banks to loan to minorities to which I responded that banks have the responsibility to make their own decisions, and besides, the issue isn't so much with the loans but with the packaging and swapping the loans and Credit Default Swaps they built as a result. I trotted out (which I happened to learn today) that the entire value of US mortgages was only $12 Trillion (source) but the value of the CDS and packages was $62 Trillion (source) and it was the huge leveraging by the banks that blew up, not just the mortgages. They trotted out the Democratic Freddy/Fannie connections as a fault and I trotted out the Phil Graham CDS deregulation as a fault. Eventually we all agreed to agree that there is plenty of blame to go around and greed was at the root.
Somewhere in there I expressed my disgust with republicans because of the unnecessary war and torture that ruined our reputation. Later she said just as I can't agree with torture, she can't accept abortion. I quipped something vague about coat hangers and we left that one at that, but I wish now that I had said that even if republicans were right on one issue they're so wrong on all the rest that I can't accept them based on their whole record, not just one thing.
Finally she tried convincing me that I should pray as God will help me discern in my heart what is the right decision. I didn't answer that. She didn't tell me in so many words but I know that she's going to pray for me to have a change of heart. But guess what, I do pray and my heart tells me that what I hear from Obama's lips are reason and Godliness. What I hear from McCain's and Palin's lips are anger, hate and vitriol. I think God's already let me know who I'm voting for and anger, hate and vitriol are not on the menu. Now I'm praying for God to open her heart to see what I see. I can only hope God is still in the miracle business.