Think

It’s Palestine and this traveler is winding through the arid landscape. It’s twilight, and his day’s walk is almost over. He drinks the cooler air, and lets the feathered barley wands brush his palm. Something luminous shines at the base of the stems up ahead, so he stops. He stoops to see.
A pearl?!?
He sells everything he owns to buy the field, pearl included.

Therefore, I believe Jesus wants us to think, to be fairly up-front about where we are in our thought processes -- bouncing ideas off each other -- and, ultimately, patient with each other. Revolutionary!
We’re an immense Siamese twin joined at the heart by the creeds, what’s plainly written, and the “love God, love others” that sums up all the other commandments. But as far as most everything else goes, I think God actually wants us to be ... different. (And I love it.)

Therefore, God wants us to think, which is what I think the parables were all about. Necessarily, you had to put some effort into it to make it your own -- if you wanted it.

So, “different” v. everyone voting the same. Because, otherwise, how would we have power and clout?
I’m visiting my parents in Virginia, and the Lynchburg's News & Advance’s most-read story, on-line, for at least a week and a half was Liberty University’s adverse reaction to an evangelical manifesto that, as I understand it, downplayed the importance of “Christian politics.”
Political activism was Jerry Falwell’s thing, and I can see his point. America’s bit, broadly speaking, is in Washington’s teeth so, obviously, Christians should have a hand on the reigns.

Well, yes. Every Christian needs to vote, but as far as the direction we should all be pulling ... I’m not sure there’s anything we ALL should be doing, except seeking God, living the simplicities of the creed, etc. And thinking. If you find yourself among a big group of people all doing the same thing, well, maybe you’re a bird of a feather (flocking together) and that’s so very nice. But it’s statistically very unlikely.

For whatever Matt Taibbi stumbled into at the Cornerstone Church’s Encounter Weekend in Tx, undercover as a Rolling Stone contributing editor, I extend my pity:
“By the end of the weekend I realized how quaint was the mere suggestion that christians of this type should learn to ‘be rational’ or ‘set aside your religion,’ about such things as the Iraq War or other policy matters. Once you’ve made a journey like this -- once you’ve gone this far -- you are beyond suggestible. It’s not merely the informational indoctrination, the constant belittling of homosexuals and atheists and Muslims and pacifists, etc. that’s the issue. It’s that once you’ve left behind the mental process that a person would need to form an independent opinion about such things. You make this journey precisely to experience the ecstasy of beating to the same big gristly heart with a room of like-minded folks. Once you reach that place with them, you’re thinking with muscles, not neurons.”

-- May 1, 2008, Rolling Stone