Here we go again, Christoids!
Only one Republican presidential candidate seems to make any sense, really - Ron Paul - and only two Democrats - Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. But Mike Huckabee has struck me as at least lacking the mean streak and bloodlust of the others, both Republicans and Democrats.
Well, I have bad news from his home state about our Southern Baptist preacher.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/13/huckabee/
But this is not a political rant. The Bible, in its dreary tale of Herods, Pilates, and such like, does not offer much hope in worldly rulers. No political system that selects for the shallow, manipulative, deceitful, and obsessively ambitious - weeding out all others - is apt to give better results than random chance. It is the true proverb: the scum rises to the top. I don't doubt that a random number generator in your PC would pick a better President by grabbing any Social Security number. The great advantage of hereditary dynasties is that you might get lucky by chance, instead of selecting only from those that are best at climbing the ladder over the faces of their fellows.
But what I want to know from my fellow Christians is, why does the scum rise to the top among us like this, but what's far more important, why do we love to have it so? Why does the basic qualification for high position in the Christian world seem to be utter hypocrisy and totally unprincipled ruthlessness, covered by a smarmy sanctimonious exterior. Don't tell me it's a few bad apples, because it isn't. It's routine, and when it's this systemic, it's not the fault of any of these bad apples. It happens like this because we like these psychopaths, and we hate those that walk in the truth and in the unhypocritical love of Jesus. We get the rulers we demand, and since God is not like that, small wonder that for all our clamor about Jesus being Lord we do not experience God as one of those rulers.
Perhaps before we pray, "Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done," even one more time, we should work out with God how how we don't want his name hallowed - since our own names will not seem so special that way - how we don't want his kingdom - since we won't get to be boss that way - and how we don't want his will - since we might not always get our own way. If we do that, we will find that 1 John 1:9 still works as advertised today.
Well, I have bad news from his home state about our Southern Baptist preacher.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2007/11/13/huckabee/
But this is not a political rant. The Bible, in its dreary tale of Herods, Pilates, and such like, does not offer much hope in worldly rulers. No political system that selects for the shallow, manipulative, deceitful, and obsessively ambitious - weeding out all others - is apt to give better results than random chance. It is the true proverb: the scum rises to the top. I don't doubt that a random number generator in your PC would pick a better President by grabbing any Social Security number. The great advantage of hereditary dynasties is that you might get lucky by chance, instead of selecting only from those that are best at climbing the ladder over the faces of their fellows.
But what I want to know from my fellow Christians is, why does the scum rise to the top among us like this, but what's far more important, why do we love to have it so? Why does the basic qualification for high position in the Christian world seem to be utter hypocrisy and totally unprincipled ruthlessness, covered by a smarmy sanctimonious exterior. Don't tell me it's a few bad apples, because it isn't. It's routine, and when it's this systemic, it's not the fault of any of these bad apples. It happens like this because we like these psychopaths, and we hate those that walk in the truth and in the unhypocritical love of Jesus. We get the rulers we demand, and since God is not like that, small wonder that for all our clamor about Jesus being Lord we do not experience God as one of those rulers.
Perhaps before we pray, "Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done," even one more time, we should work out with God how how we don't want his name hallowed - since our own names will not seem so special that way - how we don't want his kingdom - since we won't get to be boss that way - and how we don't want his will - since we might not always get our own way. If we do that, we will find that 1 John 1:9 still works as advertised today.
posted by Peter Attwood at 12/29/2007 12:32:00 PM
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