Therefore, dear friends, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. 2 Peter 3:17 (NIV)
This week has been bitter/sweet for me. On the one hand, I am thrilled to bring the gospel via crusade—to so many in the nation of Haiti—can’t wait! On the other hand, watching the tired, old familiar pattern of ‘character assassination’ ramping up for the next election is really getting old.
I am referring of course to what undoubtedly all of you have seen on TV or read by now, the accusations of sexual misconduct lobbed against presidential candidate, Herman Cain. First of all, this isn’t a post defending or accusing the man—none of us knows what’s true or not in this mess. What it is; however, is a protest about the automatic activation of political smear machines that starts up around this far out every single election! I believe it scares off the most qualified candidates—who wants to throw their hat in a ring where (at least some) of the garbage people bring up is completely fabricated and designed to do nothing more than throw water on a fired up campaign?
Seriously, I don’t care if you’re Mother Teresa running for president—somewhere, someone decided it was okay to systematically dismantle another person’s character all in the name of winning.
It’s not. Talk about lack of character. Isn’t that very tactic about as character deficient as it gets?! And again, this is not about whether or not Herman Cain did what his accusers say he did–who knows?! It’s about “timing.” Why not deal with this when it happened? Why wait? Because this tacky tactic works. It puts doubts in people’s minds and derails even the best of people. Few can survive it.
But here’s the real rub.
Absolutely everyone I know—including me—has a past less than squeaky clean. Fact is, you can dredge up something on anyone if you try hard enough. But by ‘trying hard enough’ are we not pushing the most moral, upstanding and qualified candidates to the fringes? The only people that will soon be willing to enter the fray will be those so morally deviant that they don’t give a rip what people dig up on them—everyone already knows they’re a playboy, or a drunk, or a former drug user, etc.
How’s this good for the nation? How’s this good for anyone?
Now the REAL, real rub…
At the time of this writing, I hadn’t even heard of the mess at Penn State University. Satan sure weaves a massive web–doesn’t he? For all the falsely accused there seem to be an equal amount of truly deviant people getting away with murder. Honestly, how does one live positively in this world without knowing Christ Jesus? How does one muster up hope of any kind when we see how depraved mankind is capable of being? One word…
Jesus.
Now, where do we as individuals fit in? Is there any take away for us? Perhaps you’re reading this today and you’re like me—you want to finish this race called life and someday hear the words from Jesus, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” If that’s you, I have a small bit of advice. Simple really, but worth its weight in gold.
Keep chasing God!
It’s hard to fall when you’re holding on to Him! And it’s hard to focus on trivia when your so close to the glory of God! Plus, there is the priceless added benefit of God never basing His love and forgiveness on our performance. His mercies are new every morning.
On the other hand, it’s easy to fall when you’re only looking at yourself. Don’t believe me? Next time you go out jogging, carry a mirror and look in it the entire time instead of the course you’re running. Chances are you won’t go far before you crash! Or, at the very least, run off course.
How does this happen? We wander from our first love, that’s how. The God who saved us, the God who called us to serve Him according to His purposes, the God who shapes us for a mission can sometimes be the God we forget among the busyness and materialism of our culture.
Bizarre, isn’t it? When we do this it’s like we’re trading diamonds, rubies, emeralds and gold for broken pieces of glass, colored rocks, shiny plastic and a pile of sticks! Actually, it’s worse, because there may be a gap between the quality and value of sticks and stones compared to gold and rubies, but there is an infinitely greater gap between what it is to be in close relationship with God and what it is to experience worldly pleasure. Why do we trade splendor for scraps? Why do we exchange treasures for trash? Who in their right mind would favor imprisonment over freedom
Millions choose these over God’s best every day. And why would someone called to influence millions and who has seen countless miracles and blessings from the hand of God risk it all to crawl around in the mud and swim a few laps in the sewer? It takes a lifetime to build a solid reputation but only minutes to bring it all crashing down. And why does this happen? Because we buy a lie. We wander from our first love to follow instead lies from the one who never loved us at all.
Want to know the most sobering truth of all in this? It could happen to anyone. The moment someone thinks they are above it, ‘it’ (whatever that is for each of us) gets a little bit closer. Whatever pastor Herman struggles with may not be what you and I struggle with, but we all struggle with something and Satan knows exactly where each of us is weakest. And the irony of it all is that it’s usually in an area we feel pretty good about, pretty strong in. That feeling of self reliance and assurance goes by another name as well. The Bible calls it pride, and whenever it shows up in our lives our own devastating fall is not far behind.
So, yes, this week has been a mixed bag. but not just me, for millions everywhere as we are reminded once again, but for the grace of God, there go I.