January 11, 2018

Will We Ever Learn?

Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may have zeal for them. It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always, not just when I am with you. – Galatians 4:17-18

We have thankfully completed yet another election cycle. The ugliness was awful but not unexpected. One of the candidates has a way of stirring things up, calling himself a conservative Christian and his opponent a liberal who is light on crime.

It’s not true, of course. But he has used this platform and repeatedly been elected to political office. It’s like he has on a Teflon coat that mud refuses to stick to.

He knows exactly what buttons to push. Prayer. Pro-life. The second amendment. He conducts his campaign in churches, refusing to participate in a debate or answer questions from the media. Why should he? There are too many people who support him, refusing to believe the facts.

It’s no different than when he loudly protested his Ten Commandments monument, insisting that it belonged in front of the Judicial Building. He neglected to mention that the Ten Commandments were already on display inside. News reports pointed that out but his followers didn’t pay attention.

I wonder how many of them have read the Old Testament. How many recall the snakes and how God had said anyone who was bitten could look to the bronze snake he’d had Moses make. (Numbers 21) Later God ordered that it be destroyed because the people were burning incense to it. (2 Kings 18)

It was never about the bronze snake. It was about God. And it was never about the Ten Commandments. It was about a politician using God’s people to make a name for himself.

This same politician has been accused by numerous women of improper conduct. When they were teens and the politician was in his 30s, he would come on to them. He would have inappropriate contact with them. He would warn them that no one would believe a teen over a District Attorney.

Now they have come forward, speaking loudly. He denies knowing any of them, despite evidence that says he did. Still, his followers stand supporting him as though he is one of God’s chosen people instead of an imposter enjoying his moment of fame.

We have an obligation to look beyond party lines and really pray about the candidates. A political party affiliation doesn’t mean one person is a better Christian than another, nor does it mean that a person who claims Jesus really knows Him.

How can we be so blind? It is a pattern with us all. God’s people have always allowed ourselves to be deceived by those who would use us to gain glory for themselves. Will we ever learn? Probably not.