I Am Not Crazy!

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. ~ Albert Einstein

My wife and I have voted for 37 years.  A lot has changed in that time though our involvement in the democratic process hardly changed beyond casting a ballot. Ten years ago we decided to do more. We financially supported a number of candidates. Our reward?  Despite the punishing barrage of phone calls from political fund raisers, we found satisfaction that for relatively few dollars, we acted to support what is right.

Now we are doing even more.  We plan to host a campaign fund raiser in our home for a candidate running for the U.S. Senate.  One friend asked, “Are you crazy?”  Rest assured, we are not – or not yet!

People say that campaigning has turned ugly.  It is the competing forces of the human will striving for a goal that only has one “winner.”  It gets rough, and it is something we could not personally do.

Yet, in a democratic society the election of the right people for public office is one way a Christian serves as a “good Samaritan” to others.  While we are not fans of letting the government do our charity work there are things we can do collectively as a nation that are difficult or impossible to accomplish as individuals – so we elect candidates to act on our behalf.

Since we cannot run for office we are compelled for the sake of others to support someone who closely shares our values.  Is our candidate the perfect one?  No and neither are the other candidates.  To “perfectly” reflect our values we would have to run for office and that we cannot do.

It is not cheap to host this event.  We put off replacing the TV or getting that new tool for the workshop.  Skimping a little here and there enables us to do this without lessening our support for the church, for Christian Life Resources, for Wisconsin Right to Life or the other charitable causes we value.  We simply readjusted what we spend on ourselves.

What if the candidate loses?  Then he loses and we move on, looking for new ways and new candidates to support to help us help others.  For now, we like this guy and we decided we had to do more than just vote.  If we were to keep doing the same old thing, now THAT would seem insane!