To your first question, as to whether God is always in charge, yes, I do believe that.

To your next question, there isn't an answer, not because I am opposed to people doing the will of God, but rather that people who believe they are doing the will of God are no less sincere for all that it might be the wrong thing, and not necessarily the actual will of God.

Most people today, who have direct conversations with God on the level of Abraham's face-to-face encounter with the Almighty on Mount Sinai are in mental institutions, so the sense of being certain that one is doing the will of God in the world isn't enough of a standard of behaviour.

The closest thing we have to a guide to Christian behaviour in the world is in the Bible, both in the actions of Jesus and what he said. Politics was alive and well in the world in Jesus' time. The religious leaders of Jesus' time tried to trick Jesus into making political statements, into turning away from his basic message about God and Jesus responded with the familar "Render unto Caesar" phrase, which it seems to me, most people have misunderstood to mean that there is a way to serve both God and Caesar, and have intermingled the two.

There were slaves in Jesus' time too, as there were gays, the death penalty, and all the usual political hot buttons. Yet Jesus addressed none of that. When it came to the religious aspect of the death penalty, he addressed only the issue at the heart of it: "Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone."

He did not say that they were not to stone the woman according to religious law. He basically called their attention to the problem at the heart of all judgment - the problem of who is sinless enough to sit in judgment of those who are sinners. And what is justice, if someone who is an equal sinner executes such judgment on another sinner? Is that justice when the executioner is as guilty as the prisoner?

If Christians participate in anti-abortion work, or anti-slavery work, it is the way and the mindset from which they approach those things that makes the difference. Not so long ago it was very shameful for an unmarried woman to give birth to a child out of wedlock and who were those people who made it so shameful that women would subject themselves to attempts to rid themselves of the fetus even when there was a risk to their own life?

That's the real question. The real question isn't about abortion, but about what it is that, Christians have done or are doing to make it unnecessary.

Christians are to be salt and light. James says, "do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?"

There are two kingdoms - the Kingdom of Heaven and the kingdoms of the earth, which Satan offered Jesus - worldly power over heavenly power. Christians today chose too often worldly power and want to impose Christianity and Christian ideals of right and wrong on everyone else. Jesus never did that.

He spoke to believers about what they ought to do in their own lives as believers, not about what they should be telling unbelievers to do. And their actions are the witness that has served to bring about modern notions of democracy, down to the idea that since in Christ we are not strangers but brothers, no Christian person can hold another person as his slave. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, in Christ Jesus.

So it isn't so much a straight answer. The Bible isn't a handbook in the sense that we can look up every situation or moral delimma and find a quick and clearly right solution. More often that not the answer is something along the lines of "rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's" and having to decide whether you yourself are without sin enough to cast the first stone.

And yes, Mennonites do lots of missionary stuff, particularly the Mennonite Brethern which are evangelical. Traditionally Mennonites have believed that the Word was best spread by your actions to others which is how the Mennonite Central Commitee came to be. It does relief work all over the world.

I agree that we are God's hands on earth and that we are made to do things for him. But God's hands on earth have no national identity, no skin color or vote. God does not love the Iraqis less than you or me. So my position is that I help, without thought to where my country stands or doesn't stand politically because I do not identify with it in that way. If my country is at war with another country, my country's enemy soldier is not my enemy and I would not deny him a cup of water.

However, that is not to say that my country does not benefit if I serve at a soup kitchen, give a beggar a dollar, a moment to a child or visit someone in prison, or, like Jesus did, pay my taxes. I pray for my country. I pray for its leaders.

These things do not have the possibility of being contrary to anything God wants. This is the "treasure in Heaven" we are to store, the things that moths and time don't corrupt.

When Daniel and the other captives in Babylon were offered wine but requested water, they did not insist that everyone in Babylon ought to drink water. They obeyed God rather than man, even though they had no way of knowing whether that would mean their immediate execution as enemy captives. Why are so many Christians nowadays not content with drinking their metaphorical water but want to insist that the proper Christian thing to do is to vote in candidates who think that drinking only water should be the law of the land?

Not very free, if you ask me. Neither from the POV of democracy nor from the idea that Christ freely calls men to come to Him.

This article on an anabaptist site is really what answers your questions about me for me, better than I can do. It is the traditional Mennonite position vis a vis Christians and the nation but it is also my personal position.

We just had an election. I did not vote. The country in which I hold citizenship is not here.

Layla