a good "debate"

On Wednesday I was working at Nofo and my regular father son duo came in for their weekly lunch appointment. They are very interesting people and usually ask me about the book that I am reading at the time... this week it was Transforming Discipleship by Greg Ogden.

They then asked me if I had seen Rick Warren (pastor of a huge church in CA and author of well known book Purpose Driven Life) interview Obama and McCain. Honestly, since Matt and I dropped our cable subscription I have not been following the election at all, partly because we are watching the Olympics til all hours of the night each night and partly because I'm lazy and don't seek out info for myself. I want it spoon fed to me... (my confession)...

I was REALLY skeptical of what this forum would be like... what types of questions would they ask? How would the audience respond? Would this situation prove to be embarrassing for those who consider ourselves followers of Christ? To my surprise, after watching the interviews last night I have to say that this will probably be the most influential part in helping me decide the election.

I say this for a couple reasons:

This discussion was all about issues, the candidates talked in candid ways about things that I cared about. This rarely happens when I'm watching sound bites.

They were both asked the same questions without hearing each others responses, so it seemed to be more of their initial response rather than a come back to the other person.

I got to hear how their faith plays a role in their politics.

I got to hear what each one was passionate about because each of them spent different amounts of time talking about different things.

I tried to embed the videos in this post, but couldn't figure out how to do it off of the CNN website. I looked it up on you tube and their are some funny spoofs of it and sound bites, but if you are interested in watching it in entirety, go here... Obama part 1; Obama part 2; McCain part 1 ; McCain part 2.

My assessment will come in the next post.