Isn't Any Evil Evil?

I'm not one who regularly writes about political things. Truth be told I don't think I've ever written about a political thing. However, I am one who regularly writes about Biblical things, and in doing so I often encourage those who call themselves Christian to look at all things (which would include political things) from a Biblical perspective and through a Biblical lens. That's the point of this post. 

This is not a post about a particular candidate (per se), or even about a particular party.  Instead, it's a post about a menacing mantra, a prevalent "proverb", a troubling train of thought that I am being bombarded with via social media, and am hearing more and more in coffee shop conversations as well as in check-out line chatter.  

It's a post about a statement that says a lot about whether we are living our life by principle or by pragmatism.

The statement is this:  "I guess I'll have to vote for the lesser of two evils."   And when it's said by someone I'm left to assume that they really believe that the only two choices they have are between two varying shades of iniquitous evil.  (Sidenote:  if you don't really believe that the choice is between two actual evils you can probably stop reading ... but maybe you should consider selecting a softer synonym.)

In response here's my point for you to ponder: 

Isn't the "lesser of two evils" still an evil?

The Angst of Autism: "How Does Autism Feel In Me?"

One of the questions I’m most often asked by parents of people living with autism (and one of the questions I’m honestly most afraid to answer) is “What does autism feel like?”

My fear comes from two places.  

The first is that I never want anyone to take my personal experience of living life on the spectrum as being the universal experience of living life on the spectrum.  My story is just that - my story, and while there are always common denominators in the autistic experience, there is also much diversity.  That’s why they call it a spectrum.  

Dr. Stephen Shore once said, “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.”  

The specific ways that autism feels and manifests in me may be very different from the specific ways in which it feels and manifests in someone else.  So, I’m sometimes afraid to say how it feels because I don’t want to ever be set up as the autistic standard.

The second source of my fear is that there have been some folks who’ve just not been very nice when they’ve learned what life’s actually like for me.  I’ve been called "crazy," and "cuckoo," and "a couple of fries short of a happy meal."  I’ve been labeled a lunatic and laughed at by those who really should know better.  I’ve had people talk terribly about me behind my back - not knowing that their words would eventually make their way to the front of my face...and more painfully to the center of my heart.