My answer is simply that the two are not mutually exclusive. I know that God is good and that He is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. 

However, I also know that there have been times of great difficulty over the course of history. The truths about God didn't prevent the persecution of the Christians under the Roman Empire. They didn't prevent the Great Depression. They didn't prevent 9-11. 

There is no question that things would be worse without Him, but by granting us free will, He does allow bad things to happen. 

In eternity, I know that it will ultimately work out. But in this life, there is always the potential for events to bring great pain and trouble into our lives. That is certainly not in conflict with my faith in God.

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I want to make clear, though, what it is that I'm NOT afraid of.

I'm not afraid of an African-American being President. The color of a person's skin is utterly irrelevant to their fitness for any job. It doesn't matter whether the job we're talking about is garbage collector or the President of the United States.

I'm also not afraid of a Democrat being President. When the Democratic nominee was Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, or Clinton, I didn't agree with them, but I wasn't frightened by them.

Finally, I'm not afraid because of just one issue or policy area. Nobody is going to be happy about every position any politician takes. I'm certainly not thrilled with some of the policies pursued by the current administration. When it comes to a Barak Obama administration, though, there is an across-the-board fear of what he will do in a variety of areas.

First of all are my fears where national security is concerned. Part of that is based on his response to the war in Iraq. He supported timelines for pulling our troops out of Iraq. You're not going to defeat our enemies by telling them you're leaving in a certain length of time so that they know exactly how long they have to wait before they can re-emerge and freely proceed with their plans.

Even more frightening to me, though, are some of his other foreign policy plans, such as his stated willingness to meet with Ahmadinejad without preconditions. I've done a fair amount of reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the biggest reason Khrushchev thought he could get away with putting missiles in Cuba was because of his summit with President Kennedy in Vienna in 1961. Khrushchev perceived a post-Bay of Pigs Kennedy as so interested in maintaining peace that he wouldn't stop the Soviets from what they wanted to do in Cuba. The end result: we came closer to nuclear war at that moment than at any other point during the cold war. 

Similarly, Neville Chamberlain naïvely went to Munich to meet with Hitler, thinking that he could reach an agreement for peace with a man who had never given any indication that he was interested in peace. He diplomatically agreed to give Hitler the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in return for what he hoped would be "peace in our time". Hopes that were dashed a mere six months later when Hitler's armies invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia. The world war that followed would be dwarfed in comparison by what we would have if he made the same mistakes with Ahmadinejad, who said in regards to Israel, "Our dear Imam said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement."

My fears regarding an Obama administration go beyond national security, though. They extend to his economic policies. He's fond of talking about the need to take care of Main Street instead of Wall Street, but I don't think you save the businesses on Main Street by declaring war on the Wall Street firms that finance them. That doesn't mean Wall Street is a sacred cow that should be free from scrutiny. But it does mean that the way to save Main Street is to make sure that it has access to a healthy and appropriately overseen Wall Street. You can't take away from Wall Street without hurting Main Street, but you can help Main Street by making it worth the effort and the risk for Wall Street to invest there.

I'm also very afraid of the impact of an Obama administration on the courts. It's certainly true that there is a conservative faction on the Supreme Court (typically consisting of Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and on occasion, Kennedy), and I'm not thrilled with all of their decisions. Best example: Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion in Employment Division V. Smith, the worst piece of religious freedom jurisprudence in the history of the Court. But Obama's stated philosophy on nominating judges makes clear a complete lack of understanding of the difference between a legislator and a judge. He said, "We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it's like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that's the criteria by which I'm going to be selecting my judges." Those considerations are fine when deciding what laws to pass. But a judge's job is to determine what the law IS, not what he or she thinks it SHOULD BE. That's a recipe for disaster.

Just look at the Court's ruling on the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, one of the most eggregious infringements on free speech in the history of the country. There's no question that McCain-Feingold strips protections away from political speech, which should be the MOST protected speech under the Constitution. But the Court concluded that it was necessary, saying, "Money, like water, will always find an outlet." Do I share the concerns about the potential for corruption in campaign finance? Absolutely. But to say that the answer is to water down the First Amendment is to say that our constitutional protections exist only until a court decides that those protections are in the way of something really important. That kind of error is much more likely to be made by a judge who is motivated by heart and empathy instead of simply what the existing law says, be it for better or for worse.

As a side note, I'm not unaware of the irony of using an example of a Court ruling upholding a law co-written by Senator McCain as a reason for fearing an Obama administration. I have long felt that way about McCain-Feingold, and this is one of the primary reasons I haven't been completely thrilled with Senator McCain. But where my objection to this law reflect a disagreement with Senator McCain on the issue of campaign finance reform, my fear of an Obama administration reflects a different basic philosophical understanding on the role of the courts, and that does not bode well for rulings on EVERY issue across the board.

Finally, I'm quite concerned about Senator Obama's associations with people like Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Now it may be that his relationship with convicted influence peddlar Tony Rezko was insignificant despite Rezko's firm offirming him a job, his representing Rezko's firm at one time, and the highly favorable real estate transactions they engaged in together. It's possible. It may also be that his relationship with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers was insignificant, despite Ayers hosting a coffee for him when he first ran for the State Senate and his writing a brief endorsement for one of Ayers' books. It's possible.

But the situation with Rev. Wright can't be dismissed so easily. He was a member of Rev. Wright's church for 20 years, and Rev. Wright was a spiritual mentor for him. When Rev. Wright's hateful rhetoric came to public attention, though, Senator Obama first tried to tell us that he had never heard Rev. Wright say such things before. Then he said that he had heard some objectionable things. In the midst of all of this, Senator Obama named Rev. Wright to the African American Religious Leadership Committee of his Presidential campaign.

Ultimately, Senator Obama removed Rev. Wright from his campaign and resigned from the church he had pastored. However, even in the midst of denouncing his former pastor, he said, " The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago." While that would be a reasonable response when referring to somebody he knew 20 years ago and was just now hearing about, that is not a description of his relationship with Rev. Wright. Their relationship has be ongoing and close over the course of the 20 years. It's all well and good to say that this is not the person he met 20 years ago. But what about the person he knew and was close to 15 years ago, 10 years ago, last year, etc.? It's simply not credible, and given the similarity of his denials of knowledge of the dark sides of Rev. Wright, Tony Rezko, and Bill Ayers, I can't help but wonder if there was more to those relationships than he was initially willing to admit as well.

It has been said that I should place my hopes in democracy by voicing my opinion and voting for Senator McCain. I will voice my opinion and vote accordingly. However, that was no doubt not much comfort to those who saw the end result of the election of Adolf Hitler. And no, I'm not saying Obama is another Hitler. But what I am saying is that it is very possible for the elective system to put somebody in office who will be so thoroughly a disaster that those living through the disaster will take little or no consolation in saying, "Well, at least I voted against him."