complete in the same mind and

Going to offend with this post, but don't really care. The American Idol finale was this week, and in an "upset" clean-cut singer Kris Allen beat media darling Adam Glambert (sic). Glambert is gay and wears eyeliner, and shrieks like a banshee; Allen is married and smiles alot and led worship in church. They didn't announce vote totals, leading many to believe that it wasn't even a close contest. In a recent interview the finalists discuss their feelings on the result.

Allen makes an interesting statement. He had hoped that his faith and Glambert's sexuality would not play into the voting -- that America should have only taken their musical skills into consideration when picking the winner since this was a singing competition and not a Presidential election. And many would agree with this statement -- hence the outrage at the result. Was Glambert a better singer, a more creative artist, a better musician? Absolutely.

But here's the thing: I do not buy the position that we should keep faith out of our vote. Faith should NEVER be kept out of anything. The devil wants you to believe that faith is something that can be separated from your everyday life; that faith is something that doesn't have its place in some areas of your thinking. That kind of thinking is exactly why Obama is president. But it is a profoundly wrongheaded view of faith. It is in my opinion the reason we have so many lukewarm Christians. These believers think they can have parts of their lives and parts of their belief systems and perspectives be unrelated to faith, allowing them to be so much like the world in everything they do, including voting.

What these lukewarm don't understand is that our whole life is one war. Everything we do and think is part of this war. This is the reason Paul writes Ephesians 6. And even in something as insignificant as a singing competition, our faith matters. We lose and the devil wins when he can make us put blinders on our faith. When we pick anything -- President, American Idol, Best Picture of the Year, favorite sports team, you name it -- our choices, our way of thinking needs to be controlled by our faith in Jesus Christ. CS Lewis understood this point, and made the greatest of quotes: "I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."