Seeds from the Sower

Every time I hear a siren, I pray.
It's a reflexive action now, one that began in high school - and no, it's not because I'm afraid someone is coming for me (although there is that).
It doesn't matter whether it's a fire truck, a police car, an ambulance; it doesn't matter whether I hear it while driving down the road, sitting in my office, at home or in church. The reaction has become instinctual - a quick prayer for whatever the emergency is; for the responders, for the victims (if there are any), for safety, and most importantly that in whatever the situation might be, God's presence will be felt.
And then, I think about Michael Guido .
See, it is because of Michael Guido that I do this.
While Michael Guido sounds like an Italian mobster from the Godfather movie, in fact he was - Michael Guido passed away in 2009, at the age of 94 - what is commonly referred to as an "evangelist." He was a regular at the church I grew up attending, and his multi-media ministry, based in a then-small but prosperous Southern town of Metter, Ga. (town motto: "Everythings better in Metter!"), was a regular trip for the kids in this church.
Michael Guido was not Southern, by any means. He was exactly what his name sounds like - a Yankee from up north somewhere. A former big band singer, he settled in Metter because that's where the lady he married was from (and Michael Guido loved to say he "met her in Metter" and laugh like that was a funniest joke he'd ever heard). Besides preaching, Michael Guido was a singer and he produced short radio, TV, and newspaper devotional-type messages from his studios in Metter.
The thing about Metter, Ga., was that it had this wonderful old Southern town square, which happened to be the first place I ever ran into a Klan recruiter.
Right there on the town square on this summer Saturday afternoon was a table, with pamphlets and posters and all the propaganda of the Ku Klux Klan. There were a couple of guys manning the table, very open about being member of the Klan, and more than happy to talk to this goofy, long-haired kid from Atlanta. I don't remember them as crazy skinhead types, but just ordinary guys spending an ordinary Saturday doing what, for them, was an ordinary activity. No big deal.
Still, we all know the prejudice that the Klan stands for. And then you go a little way down the road and you run into the ministry of Michael Guido, as I said a Yankee, who always had what in my mind was this big Ernest Borgnine-kind of smile and seemed so full of love and grace and acceptance. Michael Guido became perhaps the most famous citizen of Metter, and his influence soon eclipsed that of the Klan.
Anyway, one time when Michael Guido was preaching at the church I grew up in, some kind of emergency vehicle went by outside, siren blaring. And the way I remember it, Michael Guido stopped in mid-sermon, explaining that he made it a habit to always pray when he heard a siren, which he proceeded to do.
Needless to say, that made an impression on me. I began to follow Michael Guido's lead from then on, and even now, these many years later, I can't hear a siren without throwing up a quick, silent prayer - and thinking of Michael Guido.
Many, many years later I was driving down I-59 in Alabama and I came across a Christian talk radio show. The host said his guest was this evangelist from Georgia named Michael Guido, who would be speaking at some conference that night, and he opened up the phone lines for people to call in and talk to Michael Guido.
Nobody did. The host kept getting Michael Guido to talk, and Michael Guido told about why his ministry was based in Metter, Ga ("I met her in Metter,'' he said, with that same big hearty laugh, as if it were the first time he'd ever thought of that joke). But nobody ever called.
The host was clearly embarrassed. It wasn't that he didn't usually get calls - I'd heard his show from time to time while traveling, and he did have some measure of popularity (enough to later be elected to the Alabama legislature). And he kept apologizing to Michael Guido, saying it was unfortunate  that Michael Guido's radio broadcasts were not carried in this area so undoubtedly people were not familiar with him.
This was before cell phones, and I kept thinking I should pull off the interstate at the next gas station and call in, because I could ask Michael Guido about his radio ministry, about this big German Shepherd dog that he had that once rescued some wandering hobo out of the woods, about how I remembered him coming to preach at my church growing up and the impact he had on me - all these memories from my youth.
But I didn't.
And for days afterward, I felt bad about that.
Here's the thing, though - Michael Guido's ministry was called "Seeds from the Sower."
Funny how those seeds get planted, and what those seeds - all these years later - still produce.
You never know, do you?

How quickly treasure can turn into trash

Over the course of the past year, The Trophy Wife has become heavily involved in helping Alabama recover from damage suffered through both the tornadoes of last April, 2011, as well as more recent ones that hit in Center Point.
On weekends, I've gone with her to help with cleaning up neighborhoods, or trying to salvage damaged homes, or bringing relief supplies or, in December, delivering Christmas presents to families whose lives had been both literally and figuratively turned upside down.
Occasionally you run into a story that seems just too cruel to be true.
One recent Saturday we worked on helping salvage as much as we could from the home of a lady whose father's house had been hit in Center Point. The roof was completely gone; the stuff stored in the attic had, in many cases, fallen into the main part of the house; a side storage area had been blown completely off its foundation. Everything was soaked.
What made this really hard was that this woman's house had been completely destroyed in the tornados of last April. It's hard to believe one family could have been hit so hard, in such succession, although as I listened I learned that she was hardly alone in this. Other families had had the same thing happen; some had their homes destroyed, rebuilt, and then destroyed again almost as soon as they were finally moved back in.
But this woman's attitude was incredible. She was very clear about what she was really after: family pictures and documents and keepsakes. Some we found buried under debris in the house; some we found while cleaning up "trash" from around the neighborhood.
The other things from the house - furniture, clothes, pots and pans, books, household items - she said, "if it looks like it can be salvaged for a yard sale, salvage it to sell. Otherwise, it's trash."
Now, as a recovering pack rat who has trouble throwing out a wire or even a bent nail because "I just might find a use for it some day," I couldn't imagine how she so easily got to this point. In fact, The Trophy Wife knew I was looking at books that were being thrown in the dumpster, struggling with whether they could be salvaged.
And at times it got difficult for this lady, but each time she started to waiver, she resolutely returned to the instructions, "Clear it out."
"When you lose everything one time like we did last spring,'' she said, "you realize that as long as you got out alive, the rest of it doesn't matter."
This reminded me of a story I heard recently about an American who ministered mostly in China, and had been placed under house arrest. One day, the soldiers came and said, "You can leave for America."
Of course that started a celebration, and the soldiers added, "You can take 200 pounds with you."
They'd been there a number of years, so he and his wife and two children started culling through belongings: books, a typewriter, a vase, certain mementos they'd each collected and just couldn't bear to leave behind.
They started weighing things, taking this off and adding this one, going back and forth, debating this and that until, finally, they had 200 pounds right on the dot.
The soldier said, "Ready to go?"
"Yes."
"Did you weigh everything?"
"Yes."
"You weighed your children?"
"No, we didn't think..."
"Weigh the children,'' they were told.
And just like that, all the stuff - the books and keepsakes and mementos and such - just like that, it all became trash.
Amazing, isn't it?
It happens.

Just because you're a hypochondriac doesn't mean you might not really be sick - some day

   I went to the doctor today as a follow-up to my first physical in several years.
   When I woke up this morning, knowing I was going to hear the results of all the tests that had been done on me, I couldn't help but think about how routine and ordinary the day was starting out, and started thinking about all the people whose days started just as routine and ordinary, only to go to the doctor and be told something horrible.
   You go to bed believing you are completely healthy, that nothing is wrong. You wake up feeling good, get your breakfast, check the weather, maybe read some news reports. You get dressed, think about what you have to do at work, what projects remain to be worked on. Maybe you kiss your wife and say 'good morning' to your kids and wonder about how you're going to pay a bill.
   Then you go to the doctor, and suddenly everything changes.
   Now, just to be clear, nothing changed for me. For being someone who takes such lousy precautions about my health - who eats bad and doesn't get enough exercise and all that - I'm ridiculously healthy, which I can only say is due to genetics. It certainly isn't due to anything I've done.
   But, you may recognize, I'm also a bit of a hypochondriac. Not that I'm always thinking I'm sick, but I'm one of those people that reads or hears about someone with a strange medical condition and I start to think I have symptoms. When I actually feel sick, I don't worry about it; it's when I feel healthy that I'm convinced I have a brain tumor or I'm slowly bleeding to death internally or my kidney has stopped working or my appendix is rupturing.
   Now, I come by this honestly. My aunt - my mom's twin sister - displayed similar traits. She was constantly coming by to see my mother when my mother was sick, and looking at my mom's pills, and then deciding that she should take a few of those pills herself  'just in case.' This got to be particularly disconcerting when my mother was going through one of her bouts with cancer. You can imagine the strength of some of the drugs she was taking, that my aunt was helping herself to 'just in case.'
   By the way, my aunt outlived my mom by 10 to 15 years, so maybe she was on to something.
   I'm always ready, when I go into the doctors' office, for the 'uh-oh' moment. You know, the one where the doctor peers at or probes some part of my body and says, "uh-oh." When I go back for the results of all the blood work and tests, I fully expect him to clear his throat, and suggest I call my wife to join us, so we can go over "options."
   Is there any more terrifying word in all of medicine than "options?"
   Well, actually, I wouldn't know. I've never been told I have any "options" - other than to lose weight or exercise more or eat better. Usually, the kind of things that wind up being wrong with me - detached retina, torn bicep - leave me with no option except to fix the problem or not.
    I once had the reoccurring headaches that my regular doctor couldn't figure out. I had all kinds of tests done, with nothing showing up. Then I went to, I think it was, a neurologist, who heard my symptoms, opened a text book, and showed me the textbook description of what I was saying and the diagnosis. He wrote me a prescription for a pill he said was hardly ever prescribed anymore and so was very cheap, and it worked.
    And, I'll admit, there are a few minutes when I'm disappointed after getting a clean bill of health. Not that I want something terrible to be wrong with me, but I keep hoping there is something to explain the little ills I have - the same little ills anyone my age would have - and that there is a pill I can take to fix it: to lose that 10 pounds I need to lose, or bring back recall for names that I forget, or help me realize my life-long dream of playing in the NBA.
   Now, all of this is not to belittle those people whose lives are turned upside down by what starts out as a routine visit to the doctor and ends up being anything but routine.
    It just struck me how life can be changed so quickly, so simply; how one minute you wake up worrying about breakfast and work and paying bills, but go to bed wondering how your family will be taken care of if those 'options' the doctor offered you don't work.
    This is not profound, I know.
    If I wanted to be profound, I'd say something like, "none of us knows when life will come to an abrupt end. If you think about it, every moment we're advancing either to heaven or hell."
    That's kind of depressing, even for a hypochondriac.
    So let's go with this: "You can't change yesterday, but you can ruin today worrying about tomorrow."
    On the other hand, it does help pass the time.
 
   

Geraldo, 'Woodstein', and rock star reporters

Grandpa Ray! Tell us a story about when you were growing  up!
   When I was a young man in Journalism school (or "J-school" as it was called), there were two "rock stars'' that influenced me and most of my classmates: Geraldo Rivera, and the two reporters that brought down the Nixon government collectively known as "Woodstein," actually Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.
   Why we admired Woodward and Bernstein was obvious. Two reporters who stumbled upon Watergate, the event that brought about the conviction of so many White House staffers and presidential advisers and ultimately led to the resignation of the President, Richard Nixon.
   That seemed to be the ultimate example of the power of the "Fourth Estate," the unofficial fourth wing of the United States' governmental system of checks and balances. A free media is there to be a watch dog on public officials, and no one emerged as more of a watch dog than the Washington Post in the early 1970s.
   As for Geraldo - one of the first pop culture stars to be known simply by one name - he was a passionate "journalist" who crossed the line that we were taught was sacrosanct of impartial observer to involved, impassioned story-teller. In class we often made fun of the way Geraldo so obviously took sides in his reporting, but we loved the fact that he didn't sit behind a desk and tell the story, or do his reporting from a nearby media center, but rather put on his fatigues and walked into the middle of whatever story he was "doing." (He "did" stories, rather than 'report' them).
   Yes, it was sensational. But it was exciting, too. I always wanted to be a war correspondent along the lines of Ernie Pyle or Michael Herr (an embedded journalist who covered the Vietnam war and wrote a fascinating book called "Dispatches"). Both of those men - and many others like them, but those two were among the most famous - lived with, ate with, slept with, marched with the soldiers they covered, telling the soldiers' story from the front line. Indeed, after Pyle made the European theatre so real for Americans in the way he covered that  part of World War II, he turned his attention to the fighting that was still going on in the Pacific (after the surrender of Germany) and was killed in action.
   So Woodward and Bernstein and Geraldo became the rock stars of journalism, opening up to many of my generation the idea that not only could we report on the most powerful and famous  people in the world, but we could actually join the most  powerful and famous people in the world.
   This was not new, by any means. People who talk about media as being objective don't know their history. The media in this country has rarely been truly objective. Go back in history and see the way the media attacked even George Washington; how the media abused Andrew Jackson; the influence of editor Horace "Go West Young Man" Greeley in making the New York Tribune the mouth-piece of first the Whig party and then the new Republican Party; and so on.
   So what we're seeing now with the proliferation of cable news networks and talk radio shows that barely try to hide their political agendas is not new.
   However, this idea of journalists becoming rock stars really took off with Geraldo and the two-headed  monster often referred to as "Woodstein" - particularly when Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman played them in the movie "All the President's Men."
   Even as I was part of the media for so many years and believed in it and defended it, I worried about it the profession. "Watergate" and Woodward-Bernstein created a position known in every media room as "investigative reporter,'' which too often became little more than a professional bounty hunter in pursuit of the great evil doers of society. The problem with that was/is that there is often not enough evil to go around, so to justify having that position, investigative reporters had to make everything they report sound as if it were going to be the next Watergate.
   And too often, reporters moved from the ununofficial "fourth estate'' relationship to the government into something akin to the Secret Police.Unlike real police, however, reporters are not bogged down by due process or legal procedure, and they have the power to indict, prosecute, and convict anyone as long as the story sells papers or generates improved ratings.

   I have been part of "investigative teams" that were assigned to look into a story, only to realize there really wasn't a story there after all. But because the paper had invested so many resources (manpower, time, money) into the investigation, we pretty much had to justify ourselves by coming up with something, anything. So we did.
   One of my favorite stories occurred during the early days of the internet. I was in sports, and often we'd get these rumors on the internet that went viral. It seemed like everyone was repeating it. I had an editor who told me I needed to write a story about this rumor. I said I had looked  into this particular rumor and it was not true. The editor then said I should write a story saying the rumor wasn't true. I laughed and said, "This is great. You want me to write a story about things that aren't true? I can do that all day, every day. I can fill the paper writing about stories that aren't true!"
   At that time, to this editor's credit, he realized what I was saying and left the idea alone. But I dare say that these days, that same editor is forced to have his reporters address wide-spread rumors in print or on air because "that's what  people are talking about."

   Add to that the fact that reporters know they can make their reputation by being the one people talk about, that they can not only report news, but make news, and that makes them famous - mini "Geraldos'' and "Woodsteins."
Which has been and remains the goal of so many J-school graduates since the 1970s.
   And just like you have to be wary of politicians who become addicted to power, so do you have to be wary of reporters who seek that kind of power. Because power and recognition is addictive; it makes crack look like caffeine in comparison.

   At the same time, I still believe in the necessity of a free and unfettered media. I'd rather have the current system of agenda-led media than a state-controlled media (and yes, I realize some would argue that some of the media appears to have become state-controlled). Because somewhere in the middle of the extremes lies the truth, and "we the people" have a responsibility to educate ourselves - often by reading through the extremes - to decide for ourselves what is true, or at least what we believe to be true.
   And, yes, I'd jump at the chance to be something like a war correspondent again, to put myself in the middle of the biggest story to be as close to a neutral observer as I could be. There is nothing, for me, like the rush of confirming and breaking a story and racing to meet deadline, of being the one "in the know."
   Because knowledge remains power.
   But we all know what power does ....

The off-season of Christianity

"Preach the Word."
Because of a significant youth minister I was blessed to have in my life while in high school, those words became something of a catch phrase for me and my friends in our church youth group. A guy named Dan DeHaan came in and taught a lot of us not only to love studying the Bible, but taught us how to study - along with encouraging us in how to live out our faith.
Even after Dan moved on from the church I attended, we'd occasionally stay in touch. He once led a weekend retreat at the college I attended, and happened to be teaching from 2 Timothy. When he got to the phrase "Preach the Word" my ears perked up like a dog hearing his masters' voice. My head snapped up and he was looking at me and gave me a wink.
Dan had a major impact on a lot of people, young and old, particularly around the Atlanta, Ga., area where I grew up. He died in a tragic plane crash when he was only 33 years old. His funeral packed the sanctuary of the old First Baptist Church in downtown Atlanta with people who had been impacted by him in some way - from professional athletes to musicians to just guys like me.
It was tragic, because when Dan was buried, "the Word" was buried with him.
------------------------
A lot of football fans find themselves captivated by watching Tim Tebow play football.
Built like a linebacker with that big ol' square head, he's awkward for a quarterback in almost everything he does, yet I find when he's playing I can't take my eyes off him.
A most unlikely-looking NFL quarterback, Tebow is known for his almost guileless manner, a humility in his words and manner that attracts people. There is no mistaking his dedication to God, his love for Jesus Christ, and his unique ability to get people talking about Christianity.
It's not unlike the current NBA phenom, Jeremy Lin. His story is even more unlikely than Tebow in that he played college ball at Harvard, which is far more likely to produce guys who own NBA teams rather than play for them. Undrafted, cut from at least two NBA teams, kicked around the D-league, Lin has taken the NBA by storm with the New York Knicks. And the way he incorporates his personal faith in Jesus Christ has caused some to call this Asian-American the "Taiwanese Tebow,'' since he's of Taiwan descent.
I love watching and listening to Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin and others like them.
I'm not much of an athlete, however. I guess I'm not really a Christian.
------------------------
Ever wonder what it would have been like to follow Jesus around when he was on earth? Not be one the '12' - his closest disciples, but maybe one of the many hundreds or even thousands who also followed. Those people undoubtedly were taught by some of the 12, who were routinely sent out by Jesus to heal and perform miracles. You know there had to be people who really identified not just with Jesus, but with Peter "the Rock" and John "the one Jesus loved'' and James "the son of thunder" and Matthew "the tax collector" ... and Judas.
I've never heard anybody talk about followers of Judas, but you know there had to be. He was one of the 12. He undoubtedly went out and performed the same miracles than the others did in Jesus' name. There must have been people attracted to the crowd following Jesus because of Judas.
Judas would have seemed to have a special place in the inner circle. It seems he was passionate about the poor and coming to their aid, and he seemed to be the one who handled whatever funds the disciples managed to have on hand.
So imagine the disappointment when those people found out Judas had betrayed Jesus. Maybe they felt Judas was a hypocrite, a fraud. And then throw in the fact that even Peter denied Jesus on the night of Jesus' arrest ...
When a guy as close to Jesus as Judas was turns out to be a hypocrite, it makes you wonder if maybe they all weren't hypocrites.
--------------------------------
It's tempting to stop right there, but I can feel some of you rolling your eyes, some of you perhaps getting mad, some of you even thinking "What the heck ...?" You are ready to argue against the idea that "the Word' was buried with Dan DeHaan, or that if you're not a successful athlete you're not a Christian, or that because Judas fell away, why believe in any of it.
But it struck me that many times, I do act that way. I get disappointed when some visible Christian turns out to be cheating on his faith and it makes me want to hide. It's only natural to measure myself against certain people and, realizing how short I measure up, want to stay quiet. And who among us hasn't felt helpless to go on when someone who has lead us and encouraged us and taught us is suddenly gone?
In the same passage where Paul tells young Timothy (in 2 Timothy 4) to "preach the word" he goes on to say "in season and out of season." Sometimes it can feel like it's really out of season to "preach the word" - particularly when a Christian leader you looked up lets you down, or when you don't seem to measure up to many of the Christians who have such a great platform from which to share, or when someone who taught you and encouraged you suddenly up and dies, leaving you feeling disappointed and alone.
Yeah, that could be a time when it certainly doesn't seem like the 'season' to be 'preaching the word.'
But you know and I know "the word'' wasn't buried with some guy you many have never heard of named Dan DeHaan, or that I am not a Christian because I'm not an NFL quarterback or NBA point guard, or that all followers of Christ are hypocrites and deceivers just because someone with the credentials of Judas was.
No, the message has always been more important than the messengers.
Don't get me wrong - I know some people seem to be more gifted than others. But I also think that's from our limited human perspective; I don't imagine God sitting up there creating some for column 'A' (quarterbacks, actors, evangelists, singers, millionaire businessmen), some for column 'B' (so-called "regular'' people) and some for column 'C' (third world peasants class who will be lucky just to hear the Gospel).
I believe God values us all equally, and one day we just might be surprised to find that in the kingdom of heaven, that third-world peasant had as much or more influence as the pop culture star Christian.
God works through people. No doubt about it. But He also works in spite of people.
Which is good news. Because there are times I am a hypocrite. There are times I don't live what I believe. And there may be times when those people I look up to as having it all together stumble and fall.
When that happens, it doesn't change the truth of the message. Because truth is, well, truth. Nothing can change that.
As someone once said - and you probably know who said it, but it doesn't matter because the truth was there before he said it - our salvation is "by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone."
Which helps us survive deceit and hypocrisy; survive when we don't feel we match up; survive when those we rely on leave us.
We "Preach the Word'' - in season, and out, and do our best "to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth." (1 Timothy 2:15).

A Pause to Think

If you actually like to read this blog of mine, thank you.
I apologize for not blogging as frequently recently as other times. I feel guilty about that, I guess because for years I had deadlines for articles that I had to meet, and it's a habit that's hard to break.
But sometimes life just gets busy, or maybe I just don't like anything that I think I have to say.
This is one of those times.
But I am working on a couple right now that I hope will either entertain, or encourage, or make you think.
I'm doing a lot of reading - just finished a biography of Robert E. Lee, a book about the aftermath of Watergate, a handful of collected sermons by Fred Craddock, a novel by John Gresham. That has caused me to think quite a bit.
I'm starting a collection of essays by Thomas Sowell, a novel by James Patterson, and a book called "The Missing Play from the Playbook" by a former NFL quarterback, coach, and friend of mine named Dave Rader.
And I do a lot of driving. Oh, if only I could translate the thoughts I have while driving into this blog. I'm so brilliant, with such insight, about mile marker 93 along I-65!
But I have taken a pledge not to text and drive, and I assume that includes don't actually write and drive, so I always hope whatever insight and ideas I have will come back to me in time.
Sometimes they do.
Sometimes they do, and I realize they weren't as great as I thought while riding along the highway.
Sometimes they don't come back. That's frustrating.
But if you care, there's more coming. Soon.
And I appreciate the dialogue these things sometimes starts.
Usually the responses are far smarter than whatever I've written, and I'm encouraged, built up, educated, and caused to pause to think.
Thanks. And let's keep the dialogue open.

The difference in 'imposing' and 'exposing'

There is always a lot of debate centered around Thomas Jefferson's now-accepted concept of "separation of church and state."
These days it seems like it's used almost equally by people on both sides of the argument: those people who feel that people of faith have no legal right to impose symbols or traditions of their faith into an ever-expanding definition of "government,'' definitions that now include such things as prayer at sporting events or nativity scenes at shopping malls at Christmas; and those people who believe government is trying to interfere with their faith by trying to prohibit prayer and Christmas decorations.
The current presidential primary season has brought a steady stream of commentary from presidential hopefuls talking about the current administrations' 'war on religion,' and indeed (at the time of this writing) the recent effort by the White House to impose governmental morality (an oxymoron if ever there was one) by forcing religious organizations to provide services to employees that go against some of the basic values held by those of that faith.
As a Christian and a Southerner (and hard as it is to believe, those terms are not synonymous), sometimes all I want is for "gummint" - as generations of Southern politicians pronounced the word  "government" - to simply leave me the hell alone.
But while reading I Peter again the other night, it occurred to me that attitude was not what the Apostle Paul expected of followers of Christ.
You may disagree, and that's all right. After all, we all know examples of people who believe that once they've "found the truth'' or "seen the light" the are called to separate themselves from "the world."
That idea takes on a lot of different forms: Branch Dividians or Heaven's Gate or the Manson Family or the Forever Family or the Unification Church or Raelians or the Aleph - the list goes on and on.
Those are the extremes. But then we have the Amish - admirable in their faith and consistency, who certainly live lives withdrawn from much of the world around it. Even closer to home, I grew up knowing people who believed women were not to wear make-up or jewelry or cut their hair, and seemed to always go around wearing ankle-length denim skirts that reach their socked-and-tennis shoed feet, while their blouses are long-sleeved and look like they came out of the 1800s. That, too, is a form of separation from the world.
Many even use the same passage in I Peter that I was re-reading, and believe the part that describes believers as "aliens and strangers in the world" means they are to withdraw and live out their lives waiting for Christ's return.
But the same passage goes on to tell believers to "live such good lives among the non-believers that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God ..." It  just seems unlikely to me that Peter was telling believers to withdraw from the world while at the same time living lives that unbelievers would see and grudgingly admire.
Peter then goes on to talk about how we're to live in the political arena, the business arena, and in our personal lives. The implication seems to me that we're called to be active in all three in such a way that non-believers see it and are forced to recognize the good that comes from that involvement.
Or, as I heard someone once say, "Don't impose your faith, expose it."
While the framers of the Constitution - descendants or recent escapees from European countries where an organized religion (usually Anglican or Catholic) was synonymous with political power - wanted to create a government that could not force a particular brand of faith down its people's throat, there is also no denying that generations of religious thought and belief  - from the Reformation to the First Great Awakening - heavily influenced the framework within which this country's Constitution was shaped.
Ideas like the individual priesthood of the believer and the basic depravity of man led to the creation of a form of government in which every individual was supposed to be equal while acknowledging that because men are  prone to do evil, there has to be a system of checks and balances to keep those evil tendencies from dominating.
I Peter says that we're to be visible in the world, to get involved in government and education and culture and be the best citizens and neighbors and family there is.
This whole idea of dividing our lives into the 'secular' and the 'sacred' was unthinkable to the people in the Bible. It would have led to what we'd call dissociative identity disorder, or multiple personalities. It can't be healthy. You live what you believe in every aspect of your life.
So the question is not "how do I make government leave me alone'' but rather "what can I do to influence government, to participate  fully in this great experiment framed by the Constitution, to make this country better than it is?"
That is, after all, our right as citizens: to participate. To hear - absolutely to hear - but also not to be afraid to be heard. To try to create an environment that might give all of us a hint, a tease, of what heaven - where Peter says our true citizenship lies - might be like.
Live in such a way that people who don't believe you are right will be forced to admit that there is something different about you that they can't help but admire, even if they don't agree.
And "always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have - but do this with gentleness and respect..."
We don't engage in the political arena to impose our faith, but to expose it.
And believe that just as that faith changed us, it has the power to change the world.