Cornell West says that he is trying to follow Jesus’ commands. How then can he support a candidate who so openly talks about his intention to disobey Jesus’ command “Do not resist evil”. (Mt 5:38-41) If Jesus had meant for this command not to apply to people when those people served governments, then Jesus would have told us this. Jesus never did though. And all attempts to claim that this command does not apply to people serving governments, are just excuses that we use when we want to disobey Jesus. Paul did not do this in his letter to the romans. in this letter, Paul tried to persuade his readers not to resist government sponsored violence. paul did not tell his readers that if governments told them to resist evil, they should obey those governments. The people to whom this letter was written, knew that all governments hated them, and probably could not even imagine being asked to serve a government. So paul did not write about this contingency. I hope that the candidate West supports, Barack Obama, does become the next president of the United States, because I believe that West and many other African-American people who call themselves Christians, will see this inconsistency in their attempts to follow Jesus, and will convince Obama to try to truly follow Jesus. I have little hope that this will happen with any other candidate for the presidency of the United States. Currently every candidate for this office talks just as openly as Obama does, about his or her plans to disobey Jesus’ command, “Do not resist evil.” West has said that any person who wants to help other people has to be prepared to be scarred, wounded, and bruised by those people. And West has said that this is especially true when a person tries to help African-American people. Based on personal experience, I believe that this is just as true when a person tries to help Slavic-American people. But I do believe Cornell West when he says this, and I fully expect that I will be scarred, wounded, and bruised by the responses to this letter. Why then am I writing and publishing this letter then. Just crazy, I guess. What else could I do, though. I really have no choice. Still, I probably would not have the courage to do these things, if not for my faith in Jesus.