Avoid the Appearance of Evil

Call me ‘Old School’ if you wish; but certain principles of conduct from another era seem to have been lost along the way.  Let me explain…

Several years ago I was given the assignment to check up on a woman from church whose husband had recently died.  She moved into our area and was still in the middle of grieving for her loss while at the same time she had nobody locally to lean on when her emotions got the better of her.

I made it a point to drop by regularly during the month, no scheduled appointment; just a neighborly check by to let her know someone was thinking about her.  She would invite me into the house; but this is where avoiding the appearance of evil comes in.  Instead, I’d suggest we sit on the front porch where her neighbors could see that nothing inappropriate was going on. 

That brings me to the handling of votes and the appearance of impropriety, whether it exists or not, can be proven in court or not; red flags of danger have caught the public’s attention.  Perhaps that should be re-worded, red flags of danger have been ignored by those whose motto is, “Win by any means and to hell with anyone who says otherwise”.

I realize that being a supporter for your political party means hoping your candidate wins; but does that mean ‘at any cost’, to include destroying the fabric which holds your nation together as a constitutional republic?

When I watched a news clip showing poll workers covering up the windows so nobody could see them counting the votes, ignoring the protocols which call for members of the opposing party to be in attendance while the votes are counted, refusing to allow poll watchers during the election and other actions which would lead a critically thinking person to wonder if possible voting irregularities were being carried out. 

When I was in college taking a course in Insurance which involved actuarial statistics to determine risk factors along with other issues that comprised that industry, it became fairly clear that some statistics form the limitations of reasonability and allow for the determination of what is unreasonable.  That’s why people over eighty year of age don’t purchase life insurance; the cost would be prohibitive, that assumes you could find a company dumb enough to sell the policy.

The use of statistics is important when looking at votes.  Certain polling places shut down in the wee hours of the morning following the election and then opened up a couple of hours later proclaiming they’d found thousands of votes…all for one candidate; the laws of statistics chimed in and proclaimed in unison, “Male Bovine Excrement!”.  There’s no way, statistically speaking, that all the votes which mysteriously appeared during the night were all cast for the same candidate, at least not legally.

That said, there are folks jumping up and down cheering for their candidate’s presumptive win, closing their eyes, ears and minds to the likelihood of massive voter fraud; instead, euphorically caught up with, “He did it! We’ve won the White House!”

I’m having a difficult time congratulating the presumptive winners and those who’ve sold out this nation’s constitutional republican form of government for a cheap copy of a banana republic complete with bought and paid for election results. 

Some might claim ‘sour grapes’ because my candidate hasn’t been re-elected.  My gut reaction tells me I’m watching an election process that steals a victory at any price and a public that will not only tolerate evil; but blindly congratulate those involved. 

Putting it all in perspective with lessons learned from the Come Follow Me home study course, which only this past week covered Mormon’s witnessing the destruction of his people, a people ripe with iniquity who delighted in flaunting their evil ways rather than repent.  I had to wonder, did the Lord know this week’s lesson would be a duplicate of what is going on in America nearly two thousand years later?

The idea occurred to me that regardless of the outcome of this election, the steady downward spiral our nation has taken towards socialism along with accepting, tolerating or even so many of our fellow citizens boasting of their evil ways; in spite of all these warning signs, we must place our faith in Jesus Christ and find joy in our knowledge of the gospel.  We have enjoyed the easy life; but the refiner’s fire proves us in our trials, whether we endure to the end is us to us.