This post is a response to a comment made on Facebook. Here’s that comment:
Unfortunately, I really believe Mike Huckabee in 2008 represented God’s final chance for America, at least politically speaking. We all pray for Godly, Christian leaders. God gave us a candidate who would openly, unabashedly stand for Him and Christians said “no, thanks,” for a variety of what were generally really silly reasons. I really believe that was America’s Kadesh-Barnea, and we failed as badly as the Israelites did and essentially for the same reasons.
Matthew, people have been saying similar things since the first presidential election, so what makes this most recent “final chance” any different from all the previous ones? Mr. Huckabee, as with Mr. Obama, aligned himself with a patently corrupt political party and did NOT call for radical reform to the Constitution and the ideal that “all men are created equal”. These are the sorts of reforms (along with others) that would run the corruption out of Washington, yet he did not call for this in any wholesale fashion. So what’s the good of being a “good Christian” president if you’re not going to restore the government to its lawful limits and take greater measures to be sure that it stays there this time? And what’s the point in associating with an incorrigible political party? Is this really what Jesus would have done? Did he sign up as a Pharisee so that he would “fight for change” and “take the party back”?
As to your Kadesh-Barnea idea, America has failed a bajillion times in various ways and Christians have either called down or expected curses all along the way. I think if you will stand back and analyze the situation, you will have to admit that God plays no apparent role in American politics. Lots of people like to THINK he does, but what consistent line of argumentation can be offered up to prove as much? When a bad guy loses, people say, “God is victorious!” But when a bad guy wins, they NEVER say “God is a loser!”. No, they then wax ethereal and come up with something like, “God is going to punish this country for choosing the bad guy as president.”
And I would remind you that a boatload of people bought the idea that W was a “good guy”, so they prayed and voted for him. And they gladly celebrated when “God” saw to it that W won (so they thought). Yet W proceeded to violate the Constitution and our “all men are created equal” ideal repeatedly, as have all his predecessors back to Washington. And W told lots of lies and sent troops to murder lots of people in deference to US commercial interests. And W spent money like a drunken sailor. Yet so many believers still consider him a “godly” man.
So, to get back to my previous point, if W, who was thought to be a good guy by so many, turned out to be a bad guy, then all those people who thought that “God was victorious” in getting W elected will now have to retroactively choose the “God was punishing us” option instead.
The only viable option for political reform, Matthew, is that the American people would, en masse, adopt a high-enough set of paradigms as to become apt reformers and overseers of their own government. So many have called upon God to “save the nation”, yet he does not intervene. After a couple hundred years, perhaps we could finally get the point and do it ourselves!
