Last night was one of those all night worship and prayer sessions on my favorite radio station.  It was an overnight prayer meeting …only it was on radio!  Awesome!  I fell asleep circa 10p so I am going on information from my wife.

A little earlier though I caught a very interesting discussion on the whole Grand Regency saga and the Waki Commission on poste-election violence in Kenya.  The panelists included some political activists who, by their discussions, I found to be a rather bitter lot.  At some point, they referred to Parliament as a den of thieves or something to that effect.  One of them seemed to be at  great pains to paint the Commissioner of Police as a tyrant hell-bent on killing as many Kenyans as possible at the smallest provocation.  When at some point in the show one of the other panelists pointed out the fact that the Police had largely been successfully in slowing and eventually stopping the slide into anarchy, our activist brother would have none of it.  The Commissioner and the Kenya Police Service can do no right as far as he is concerned.

I observed this as strange trend during the election campaigns.  The fact that Christian politicians (save a few like Mr. Ole Sakuda) would give no credit to their opponents, some of whom had accomplished great things in their constituencies, was dissappointing.  Give unto Caesar that which is Caesars must extend into politics.

I have also observed this pattern in office politics.  In the effort to paint our colleagues / bosses as incompetent twits, we go out of our way to plant negative propaganda within the workforce so that everyone we feel should believe us does so.  It’s not a very Christian thing to do and that is why I find it strange.  It is what makes it difficult for most people to reconcile into one the concept of Christian Politician.  It sounds like such an oxymoron.

In our attempt to convince our audiences that our position is the only really correct one, we have jumped into another ditch.  The one where we actively decieve our audiences into seeing our way of thought.  And yet this trait is not entirely common on the non-political side of Christianity.  I am yet to see this tactic being successfully employed by evangelists.

What is the role of Christians in politics?  Is there a way to play politics in an honorable way?  Is politics and honor like oil and water?

Late last week I had the opportunity to watch a local theatre production on ethnic prejudice and the subject of abortion here in Nairobi.  Those are two topics usually presented separately.  Putting them together well requires very good writing skills and probably a third thread in the story to tie them together.

The third thread was not clear from this play.  Some people got the story at the end and some still had to have the plot explained.  It was like watching two different productions on the same stage.  It was confusing.  What exactly was the play about?  Was it about abortion or ethnicity in politics?  It was actually about the labels we give others i.e. failure, all Kikuyus are thieves etc.

Some brands do this all the time.  They present confusing messages that leave the consumer wondering exactly what it is the company is trying to say.  Or worse still, exactly what the company does.  This is a symptom of brand strategy being out of sync with business strategy.