With an eye on the future of our nation, I did not find this past week an encouraging one. In his inauguration address our president spoke of a resolve “that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune”–but government policies make clear that yet to be born babies and some at the other end of the age spectrum are excluded from that care and protection. Biblical, and even messianic language is nothing new in politics, but I was struck by a carefully crafted sentence: “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.” As one of the geographic references implies, and the following paragraph makes explicit, this is endorsement at the highest level of conduct that the Scriptures call sin. Examples could be multiplied. I’m sorry–I can’t see this as a star guiding us, but rather a further descent into darkness. Why the darkness? It’s not because of the outcome of an election–the ideas that are molding our society have plenty of support in both political parties. At heart the problem is a matter of faith.
As God commissioned Isaiah, recorded in Isaiah 6, the prophet was told that his prophetic ministry would result in darkness, in judicial blindness. In John 12:37-50 the apostle picks up that prophecy to describe the rejection of the words of Jesus by his covenant people, Continue reading “Darkness!”