My elderly
friend is a staunch Republican who feels she can’t, on moral grounds, support
Donald Trump. I understand her hesitation, but when I put it in a historical, biblical
and spiritual context I don’t see the problem. David committed adultery with
Bathsheba and then had her husband killed. Saul, who became Paul, persecuted
the church and gave his approval to the stoning death of Stephen. Both of the
men, in spite of a lack of moral character at the time, were called by God to
be his chosen instruments. “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the
LORD’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21 NIV).
1 comment:
Gail;
-----If we could see into the hearts of people, we couldn’t support anyone for anything on moral grounds. “The LORD looks down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there are any that act wisely, that seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike corrupt; there is none that does good, no, not one.” (Ps 14:2-3) What part of “no, not one” does your friend not get? Or is she not one? Because if she is one, she is as morally reprehensible as are Hillary and Don and the rest of us! Or she can’t support another imperfect human because she's perfect?
-----Your friend needs to remember that not one of us is righteous before the Lord because we are righteous. We are righteous because, through Jesus' blood, He sees our desire to be righteous as righteousness. But He still does not see what we are as righteousness. She needs to think of it this way: Jesus berated the Pharisees’ show of righteousness as merely the white paint that such a show is. It doesn’t make anything under the paint different. However, painted with His blood, although you remain a sepulcher full of bones, a new life process has been sparked within. The sandwich’s physical slice of bread remains what it is. But it’s process, the way it interrelates with everything, begins to change because your other slice of bread -your spirit- has become alive in the Holy Spirit through God’s forgiveness. That’s how God’s grace makes us alive. It doesn’t perfect the bag of bones. It perfects the spirit within. And then, our commission becomes to walk in the Spirit, attending life by spiritual matters, not by physical matters, which commission none of us keeps completely.
-----That Trump, Hillary, your friend, you, and I are imperfect and reprehensible is a physical matter. For Hillary, it might be a spiritual matter as well, I don’t know. Her conversation certainly does not exude His blood as much as it does white paint. But then, whose does completely?
-----On my way to work the morning before yesterday, I was listening to a guest on Hugh Hewitt’s morning radio show. (This is what I like about talk radio: you get to hear ordinary blokes like you and me bear witness to what they’ve seen, and if you listen carefully, clues in how they say what they say will tell the reality or falsity of their story.) This guest was a psychologist trying to convince Hugh that Trump was off his rocker on the basis of having attended church with him regularly over an eighteen month period. I was not impressed with his diagnosis being based upon a couple dozen half-minute to a-minute-and-a-half conversations with him. What impressed me was that Trump attended church regularly.
-----Now we all know that sitting on a shelf does not make one a book. But we also all know that sitting on a shelf can be a book. It is not my place to judge “book” or “not book”. But it is my place to notice basic philosophies. Trump's tend to indicate more blood nature covering his sepulcher than do Hillary's. Do I know for sure? No. But do his bones seem to animate more living type processes than do Hillary’s? They seem to by quite a bit. Would my bones not voting for his bones be half a vote for Hillary's bones? Of course they would, and so would your friend’s. This vote is not about picking perfection. It is about spirituality. Spirituality says vote for the more of morality so you won't have to settle for the less of it, and by all means, leave the perfection thing up to Jesus.
-----Please! Encourage your friend to be more spiritual, at least on November 1.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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