Lords of Deception

"Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." Romans 1:28-32

I read this in my quiet time this morning. In a pretty unspiritual change of focus, my immediate thoughts went to politics, as in of the American variety, but also politics as a collective manifestation of the heart of man.
I dwell on politics too much. I don't deny it. My predilection, however, may be defensible, because politics in every nation on the planet is only minimally about taking up the torch of righteousness and justice for the governed, and is far more a malignant enterprise aimed at gobbling up power rightfully belonging to the people. Politics is just another manifestation of the lust for power inherent in the darker regions of the human heart. Check out J.R.R Tolkien;s Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and if you aren't up for slogging your way through the novels, the movies deliver stunning depiction of the complicated landscape that resides in the inner man.

America's political stage is overflowing with a cast of characters manifesting unashamedly the lust for power that Tolkien revealed. And make no mistake... power does not stand alone as a harmless choice that some make while others feign disinterest. Power does not exist in the absence of the powerless. To possess power in the sense we are discussing, the possessor must have an entity over which to lord this dominion. Without subjects, power cannot be precipitated. Power is very much like love, which exists only given the existence of a person or object to love, because that person or object precipitates the potential for love that resides in the human heart. Power is a verb, just as love is a verb. But whereas love seeks the good of the loved at the expense of self, power seeks the good of self at the expense of the other.

Power concentrated in the hands of a select few hundred people is not so very different from the power concentrated historically in the hands of the singular kings and dictators that have inhabited the world's stage over the centuries. It is still a concentration of power, and will lead to tyranny. Power must be distributed across the individuals making up the governed, or they will become the ruled.

And even knowing this, we in America speak soothingly to ourselves and say over and over, 'We live in a democracy (which isn't true at all). This is the will of the people at work.' And as we coo ourselves back into our disengaged stupor, the forces of darkness continue unabated, in fact, often to the applause and accolades of mindless television talk shows whose main duty seems to be to parrot back to the people a positive rationale for the theft of power being executed on the main stage. And well, golly shucks darn, if a Hollywood star or starlet embraces the power grab, its gotta be a good thing.... right?

So as a Christian, and to my Christian friends, I ask: what is expected of us, as Believers living in a fallen world destined for destruction? I know that God is the author of liberty, as he demonstrates by imparting and preserving free will in man. And again by His decree that Christ's sacrifice serve as atonement for our unrighteous state, thereby liberating us from the certainty of eternity in hell. And as the author of liberty, God surely does not wish to see his creation subjugated to the will of a handful of Utopian-eyed Statists whose only use for God is in the public square as a means to instituting Social Justice via a Social Gospel... does He? Such changes are not real if they do not flow from a changed heart, they are only symptomatic of a dogma turned policy turned coercive.

And why is it suddenly OK for politicians to coax through their agendas on the wings of 'What would Jesus do?', anyway? I thought we had to keep religion and politics segregated, lest the citizenry hear something that offends them unto the point of incomprehensible agony?
Like so many pawns are we, being drawn across a mammoth board following first this soothing promise and then that one, yielding up our inalienable rights to the seductive tune of the charmer who has neither the authority nor the capacity to deliver on these empty promises.

" 'Because they lead my people astray, saying, "Peace," when there is no peace, and because, when a flimsy wall is built, they cover it with whitewash, therefore tell those who cover it with whitewash that it is going to fall. Rain will come in torrents, and I will send hailstones hurtling down, and violent winds will burst forth. 12 When the wall collapses, will people not ask you, "Where is the whitewash you covered it with?" (Ezekiel 13:10-12)

"What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 1:9)


Its your move.