The truth about Cindy Sheehan

"We are not waging a war on terror in this country. We’re waging a war of terror. The biggest terrorist in the world is George W. Bush."

"America has been killing people, like my sister over here says, since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible for death and destruction. I passed on that bullshit to my son and my son enlisted. I’m going all over the country telling moms: “This country is not worth dying for. If we’re attacked, we would all go out...But we were not attacked by Iraq. {applause} We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if {applause}. 9/11 was their Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant."

"I just want to say that you students, Students Against War, you have all my support and all my organization’s support. I told Kristen if you have any actions and you need a ringleader, that I only live about an hour away. I’ll be here. If I can sleep on somebody’s floor, we can have this, we can camp out, do whatever we need."

"If he thinks that it’s so important for Iraq to have a U.S.-imposed sense of freedom and democracy, then he needs to sign up his two little party-animal girls. They need to go this war. They need to fight because a just war, the definition of a just war, and maybe you people here who still think this is a just war, the definition of a just war is one that you would send your own children to die in. That you would go die in yourself."

"We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

These are all Cindy Sheehan's own words. They aren't "swiftboating." They are not a smear. She spoke these words at a rally in defense of leftist lawyer Lynne Stewart at the Universtiy of San Fransisco. She has also accused George W. Bush of murdering her son.

This is the United States of America, and Cindy Sheehan has the right to condemn Bush or praise him or anything in between. But if she chooses to make herself a public figure, she should also accept the scrutiny that comes with it.

The left would like to paint Ms. Sheehan as every mom, and there's compelling case to be made there. There aren't hard statistics, but anecdotal evidence points to a 75% divorce rate for parents whose child dies. There is no glee to be held at her divorce. It is not part of the story. And those who try to make it so weaken their cause. Her comments speak for themselves.

Cindy Sheehan is not the graceful, dignified woman of quiet conviction that she is portrayed as. She is a left-wing ideologue, and a rather radical one at that. That's okay. We have the right to do that in this country. If she wants to camp outside President Bush's ranch, God bless her. But let's not pretend that she is something that she is not. And let's also not pretend that she has some special deferrment that renders her immune to valid criticism.

Are you worth it?

Well, here I am with something to say. Doesn't happen very often, but when it does, the world stands up and...

...runs to the bathroom while the commercial is on.

It's one of the hard things of Christian thought to marry the combination of God's omniscience (that's 'all-powerful nature' for those of you who like country music) and our free will. I think I have made a breakthrough in this area.

Okay, it is probably tremendously elementary thinking theologically, but I would like to pretend it is a massive new way of putting things together and it is, after all, my blog.

One of the things that Christians (and all people, for that matter) struggle with is the meaning of suffering. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the book of Job is among the hardest. Its answers don't make sense a lot of the time, at least not to me. But maybe if they did, I wouldn't think on the things that I struggle with.

When things suck, and they will in every life from time to time, each person, as a free agent, has a decision to make. Am I worth perservering through all of this? Am I worth doing the hard thing and taking the next step and the one after that and the one after that, even though I am bone tired and my body aches for rest?

On the surface, that question would seem self-centered and maybe even self-absorbed, but I'm not certain that it is. I think that faith plays a key role in the answer to that question. After all, so much of the New Testament talks about perservering and running the good race.

We're spoiled, maybe, by television race coverage. We see only the winners. The guys who break the tape or gallop into the winner's circle or drink the bottle of milk. Sometimes, the best race is run by the person nursing an injury or racing with a heavy heart, or just plain having one thing go wrong after another. These people don't get the glory, but they might have run the best race.

Running the race is hard work. It requires us, sometimes, to continue on though physical, mental, or spiritual pain that can be blinding in intensity. But if we are worth it, we can have the courage to continue. God made us. We are His, fearfully and wonderfully made. By definition of our existence, we are worth perservering.

In my estimation, that is part of faith: the idea that no matter how hard the fight might be, we are worth the effort because God has said we are. He loved us so much that He gave His Son for us that we might have the ability to hang with him sometime later.

Maybe that is what it means to have faith, is simply to believe that.