Dear Mr. President:

There is a book that I suggest you read prior to your first day in office: Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals. It's by Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw. I also suggest it for those contributing these letters.

Somehow, slowly but surely, it seems that this country has strayed a bit from how our Lord Jesus wanted us to live. Jesus "Reader Digest-ed" the whole Torah down to two commands: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" and "Love your neighbor as yourself". Of course, he went on to let us in the parable of the Good Samaritan that actually our neighbor could be people we actually hated, not just people we had an easy time loving!

Somehow it seems we in this country have come to worship other idols (money, beauty, power, position) rather than worshiping God, and we care more about our own welfare, our own wealth, our own happiness and less about caring for those less fortunate in this country and in the world. We say "God Bless America" when we should be saying and praying "God Bless the World".

Anyway, I have found this book "Jesus for President" to be a very uncomfortable read, but in the end I find much hope in the message of Jesus. In your campaigning, you asked us to believe in YOUR hope. You told us the AMERICA is the "great light of the world". Well, as I re-read my Bible with new eyes, I read that JESUS is called the hope and the light, not a country and not a president (no offense, sir). And so I place my allegiance to Jesus, the slaughtered lamb and not a donkey and not an elephant.

Yes, you hold the most important position in this world, but not the Kingdom. We, as citizens of the Kingdom, then have to begin to live OUR lives differently than those living in allegiance to a different "leader". So, please read this book, and read the Bible and see if your presidency might be lived out a bit "upside down".