Life in the 21st Century or...It's all about you, boo boo!

The 2016 presidential election is about 1 month away. The candidates are both horrifying, no one likes them, and everyone keeps asking the question, “how did we get here?”

It’s a valid thing to ask. When not a single person you know likes either candidate and is just as utterly surprised and dismayed as you are at the prospect of voting for them, it’s hard to see how something like this came to be. But, like all other atrocities in life, the answer is really very simple.

If you look at either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you can notice one thing: they are in a mad grasp for power, and they don’t actually care about Americans. Both smack of vulgarity and of false pretensions. They didn’t want to become president to make your life better, they only wanted to become president to make their lives better. It’s not about you, it’s about them. For Hillary Clinton, it’s about snatching the one position she’s always longed for and trampling over everyone else to get there. Hillary doesn’t want the position because she’s a woman and because she wants to make a stand for women’s rights. She doesn’t want the position because she loves working in politics so much. No, Hillary wants to become president because she wants to become president for herself. She only cares about Hillary. She might also want the power to lock away Bill for life, I’m not sure. Maybe to payback Monica for good (I jest).

Donald Trump is a joke and I’m not sure how a billionaire from New York (of all places) came to be the mouthpiece of the ordinary American. He’s never done anything ordinary in his life. He’s a laughingstock and each time he opens his mouth I’m suddenly seized by a desire to run from the room. To be quite frank, I’m not sure why he wants to be president. A lot of people are saying it’s because he wanted to help Hillary win since they have been such good buddies for most of their lives (a fake friendship based off political tradeoffs and favors, but that’s neither here nor there). This is an entirely plausible explanation. I don’t believe it’s because the good billionaire suddenly wanted to become the mouthpiece for the ordinary man, I believe that like Hillary, he wanted to run for his own selfish ambitions. He wants to become president because of the strings he can pull once he’s the leader of the free world (God help us) and because it’s such an impressive thing to add to your resume, dontcha know.

And so you have an unsettled election to put it mildly. It’s very serious in that the world is in a tumultuous, serious place, but it seems to be unserious based on the attitudes and behaviors of the candidates. Any debate that mostly consists of jabs and smirks and rolled eyes is not presidential in the slightest and makes a mockery of the participants. And so we come back to the original question: how did we get here?

The answer lies in ourselves. We, the populace of the United States of America, are the reason that we have two awful candidates. The fault lies directly at our feet.

There is a passage of scripture in the book of 2 Timothy that speaks on this and all churchgoers know it well: “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

This passage speaks, shouts actually, and I think for many of us, the shouts fell on deaf ears. No one really thought that these things would happen. No one really considered the implications of loving pleasure more than loving God, of loving ourselves more than anything else. It just didn’t occur to us.

Candidates like Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are the rolled up end result of years and years and decades of selfish behaviors, thoughts, and actions.

As Americans, we encourage selfishness. We applaud it. We applaud the millionaire who stomped over everyone to rise to the top. We applaud the celebrity who exists off Instagram followers and the millions who watch her every move that she posts online. We criticize people who get married and have children too young, thus curtailing a life of selfishness they could have had. And then we wonder why our children are a wreck, why girls as young as seven now report having self-image issues about not being skinny enough and why young boys are out of control at school and at home. We wonder why our teenagers are rude and ridiculous. We wonder why our 20 year olds are purposeless and vacant. We wonder why our elderly are in nursing homes by the thousands and why our marriages fall apart more often than they stay together…it’s because we stopped caring. It’s because we embraced a lifestyle of living only for yourself and this is what happens when all you live for is yourself. People get hurt. Lives get derailed and ruined.

The solution to this problem lies in two parts. One, God comes first. Two, you do not.

God first. Not me. Now embrace the mantra and move forward.