My work brings me into contact with educated people, some of them professing Christians, some unbelievers. I plan to attend a training event in November right around election time. I would like to be better equipped to explain and engage in meaningful ways why we do not engage in politics without coming across as uncaring or disconnected. Would either of you want to give any advice in that situation? I'll defer to you, Dean. It's great. Thanks, Brother Mailen. It's good to hear from you.
You know, this is a great question. And I think one of the biggest cautions in all this is that we keep a respectful, honoring attitude for our government. And this is no matter who's the president. And this is through my years of walking through this. You know I've lived through this through Democratic presidents, and I've lived through this with Republican presidents. And so many people get involved, either the left or the right, in this very American hating kind of a thing.
And this never needs to be named among us. You know, there should always be a love for our country, a love for our leaders, and that should come out of us. And then as we have that mature discussion then, and they see that respectful opinion to us, politics is a great place to segue. And I've dealt with this. My parents are very, you know, I don't care who's president, they're going to go. Well, I guess they don't have levers anymore, but you know my dad would go to the poll and click the R lever, and I'm done.
And that doesn't matter. No matter who it is or what the agenda is, he's going to hit the R lever and turn around and go home. So a lot of times we'll come up with these issues. And I'll just ask, I remember one time I was during maybe when Obama was going, or I can't remember the issues that were one of those. And some of the biggest things were border control, healthcare, things like that. And I just said, what would you think Jesus would answer to that would be?
What would be some verses we could see that Jesus would apply to whatever these politics that are getting thrown around? And he just looked at me and said," What does that have to do with it?" And I said," Yeah, that's kind of the problem is that I think he does have some things to say about these." And it goes both ways. It goes to the Democratic side and it goes to the Republican side. But bringing in these very hot issues and casting it into the way of Christ is a good way to do it.
And usually you can pick it depending on who you're talking to on what issue you could bring up in that way. But we are concerned about these issues. We are concerned about abortion. We are concerned about border control. We are concerned about healthcare and all these things. And we may differ even in this room on how those should be. We do believe the kingdom of God gives answers to humanity's problems.
And so we want to use these times to engage in those discussions, but we believe the kingdom of God is the answer to those and not the politics of this world. So I would encourage and get them talking and then just kind of take that and take it a different direction as I've tried to use that. Amen. And one of the things, like I've said before, I'm plugging the platform a little bit that going into conversations, it's helpful to have a baseline of knowledge in yourself and a conviction within yourself.
And both the Christian citizenship course and the change of allegiance course are great ways to gain knowledge about this topic. But then, like Brother Dean said, taking that knowledge in a way that is in care and love for another person rather than just being right, I think, is the tendency or where we need to be where we need to be leaning on and applying wisdom to the knowledge that can be gained here. So I appreciate that, Brother Dean.
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