I think we can all affirm that God is neither Republican nor Democrat and I am relatively certain he is not a member of the Tea Party gang. God’s love and grace so transcends the language of culture that when we try to co-opt his presence and define him by ideologies or a political belief, we reduce him to everything that is scandalous and broken. Can we really be serious when we proof text our way through the scriptures to justify our political positions on guns, abortion, homosexuality, service to the poor, or our blind support of capitalism? The left and right are both guilty of these insane power struggles. We bastardize the scriptures and bring shame to their authors by suggesting we can prove any ideology from one, two or a thousand citations on a culturally driven issue.
Love God with your whole heart and mind and your neighbor likewise and then stand up and justify the murder of innocents, children or homosexuals in Uganda. Religious traditions on the right and the left justify their hate speech and language as being prophetic and taking a stand. “You have to stand up to evil,” so they claim. All the time not seeing the log in their own eye or the hypocrisy of a position that would justify murder, racism or making your political enemies the subject of hate speech.
When tempted to take your cultural and political ideologies and to wrap them around a set of scriptures, take Karl Barth’s advice and summarize your position with his simple response when asked if he thought the Bible was true: “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.” Live in love, grace and peace regardless of the lives and actions of your so-called enemies. Let’s be known for how we love and not how we hate justified by esoteric themes found in proof texting our scriptures.
You walk through the streets and alleys of Huruma Slum in Nairobi and you quickly realize you are in a world once marked and scarred by violence. The post election violence in Kenya that captured the world’s attention in 2007 and 2008 found its way to the slums of Kibera and Korogocho but nowhere was the violence more intense, more tribal and more debilitating than in the Huruma and 
In Manzini, Swaziland a Christian and a member of the Church of the Nazarene works daily in the Ministry of Natural Resources providing valuable and important technical expertise to the leadership in this government ministry. His biggest challenge is the corruption that runs rampant in various mid-level bureaucracies, a characteristic that has come to challenge many governments in Africa. He has choices, he can close his eyes to what is going on around him, he can confront the institutions that seem to breed corruption and subsequently lose his position, or he can engage by creating a faithful presence in the midst of corruption and abuse. He can choose to live his life as a living witness to the power of his faith. He can create a “faithful presence.”