A Tishbite at the National Prayer Breakfast
Political engagement is messy, and so welcome to planet earth. When actual political controversies are going on, they are . . . well, controversies. It takes backbone to get in there and fight. When you do that, people don’t like it.
When the controversies are over, one side won and memorials are built in honor of the victors. Sometimes the victors deserve the memorials and sometimes they don’t, but they always get them.
Now downstream, the Lord taught us that those most prone to appeal to the tombs of the prophets are the very same people who would have murdered those very prophets if given the opportunity.
Reformers are always troublemakers, making trouble in the present. And those most prone to say things like “never again” about the previous generation’s outrages are those most likely to institute the processes and procedures to land us in the same outrage again, or something very much like it. Think of the eugenics movement in the first part of the twentieth century, and all the horror that came from that. And then think of the most visible representative of that movement today — Planned Parenthood — and think also about which president speaks at their ghoulish events, calling down the blessing of God on them.
C.S. Lewis once commented that it was Owen Barfield who taught him to view the present as a “period.” At some point in the future, say, two hundred years from now, Christians will look back on our era, and they will say . . . what? They probably won’t be using the expression lamesauce then, but what they say will be some kind of synonym.
We live in an era when the third use of the law is almost entirely neglected, even by Reformed thinkers. So our descendents will consequently see an era characterized by superficiality, faux authenticity, economic ignorance, bloodguilt, narcissism, lust, and feelgood, affirmative action voting.
Now, having said this, please note that I am not urging everyone to vote Republican. I am simply observing what we may not do. We may not support a wicked throne, as evaluated by biblical law.
And as measured by biblical criteria, Obama is a wicked ruler. Abortion is my case in point, but there are numerous other issues that would make the same point. But even if this were the only issue, it would be sufficient. Manasseh supported causing infants to pass through the fire, and I don’t really care if he supported tight money or loose money at the Fed.
So if some Tishbite were invited out of the wilderness to speak at the next National Prayer Breakfast, it wouldn’t be pretty. And anyone who can’t see that doesn’t belong in the ministry.
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