Recently an editorial in our newspaper paper referenced the lack of
candidates willing to run for local public office. They highlighted part of the
problem stating, “Admittedly, running for
and serving in public office is not a game for the weak at heart or those who
lack commitment.” I had to laugh because the same organizations that encourage
a person to be civic minded and become a candidate are the ones that then use the
elected official for target practice. In the church we too have elections for
elders and deacons and I could say the same thing of these candidates. However after
the election there is a startling difference between the treatment of those
serving in public office compared to those serving in the church. “The elders who direct the
affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose
work is preaching and teaching.” (1 Tim 5:17
NIV)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----In our culture, leaders are targets because everybody has ideas, and we’ve been taught for several generations now that anybody’s ideas are valid just on the basis of his having them. It is kind of a consequence of the old “everyone is entitled to their own opinion” thing. Reality has a different way of validating ideas. Our economic mess is a good example. Many years of bad ideas are being invalidated before our very eyes. At the same time, many years of good ideas - warnings, actually - are being validated. Regardless of however much validation reality provides, there are those who forever remain true to their own ideas instead of accepting the correction of either reality’s testing or wise warning, like Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice.” What makes public office so difficult in our culture is that both fools and wise men occupy leadership roles, while both fools and wise men man the weapons shooting at them as targets.
-----It would seem to me that some of the problem could be alleviated if we simply began teaching our children the truth about opinions and supporting it amongst our friends and neighbors. A right to one’s own opinion makes nobody any more honorable or correct in his thinking than does his breathing of air. A resounding “SO WHAT!” should be the taught and encouraged response to this “everyone has a right to their own opinion” superfluity. It is not a right to an opinion which makes an opinion good, correct, workable, or even welcome. How likely that opinion is to be validated by the tests of reality should be its only invitation into the public forum. There was once a day when our culture was different. It was ok to call a foolish opinion foolish, publicly. And if a person continuously offered foolish opinions into the public arena, it was ok for him to be known publicly as a fool.
-----But standards are different today. For the sake of mere esteem alone anyone’s opinion’s would seem too important to be disregarded or criticized, except of course for the opinions of conservatives, Bible honoring Christians, or Jews. Conservatism and honor for the Bible go hand in hand in many ways even though there are non-Christian conservatives. The underlying principle of conservatism is validation in time by reality‘s tests. It is basically one of the Bible’s principles, too. But the tests of time and reality are the bane of the fool, whose thinking is of course gloriously unbounded by any tests. To offer a fool a public voice is only to join him in his foolishness, and to call many problems into our company. So the volleys of flack sent up against leaders are mixed in nature. That sent up by fools at wisdom just ought not to be. But what even more ought not to be is any lack of flack sent up by wisdom at foolshness.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment