I wrote late Friday about the deceit in some California propositions.  Impeachment, now effectively over, has involved a lot of deceit.  Why cute tricks?  Make your case, if it’s a good one you’ll win.  If you have to resort to “spin” to even have a chance, well…what’s that say about the quality of your offering?  At this point is not this entire impeachment charade Exhibit A that the Dems do not think they can beat the president this fall?

The line between spin and deceit is a very fine one and it just seems like lately it is getting crossed far too often.  And so this Sunday morning I turned to a Biblical lament:

Oh that my head were waters
And my eyes a fountain of tears,
That I might weep day and night
For the slain of the daughter of my people!
Oh that I had in the desert
A wayfarers’ lodging place;
That I might leave my people
And go from them!
For all of them are adulterers,
An assembly of treacherous men.
They bend their tongue like their bow;
Lies and not truth prevail in the land;
For they proceed from evil to evil,
And they do not know Me,” declares the Lord.
Let everyone be on guard against his neighbor,
And do not trust any brother;
Because every brother deals craftily,
And every neighbor goes about as a slanderer.
Everyone deceives his neighbor
And does not speak the truth,
They have taught their tongue to speak lies;
They weary themselves committing iniquity.
“Your dwelling is in the midst of deceit;
Through deceit they refuse to know Me,” declares the Lord.

Sometimes you just find a passage that perfectly describes your mood.  But in this passage Jeremiah is talking to the nation of Israel.  While the similarities between then and now seem obvious, there are also some differences.

Jeremiah goes on to declare in God’s name that this deceit that separates man and God will result in pain and misery, “weeping and wailing.”  If you are on the receiving end of some deceit, does that not sound like a good thing?  But one must also consider that through Jeremiah God declares such pain as part of an effort to “refine them and assay them.”  In other words, God seeks to purify and redeem, not destroy.

The good news is that we are now after Christ, and that Christ has born the destruction upon Himself.  The necessary purification and redemption comes not through our pain, but through His.

And so, the answer to all the deceit we find ourselves surrounded with is not to declare destruction and call down hellfire, tempting though it is.  The answer is to spread the good news of Christ.

The political problems this nation faces are very real, and at times quite disheartening.  But the answer to them is not in more politics.  It is in the church being the church.  This Sunday morning let’s not dwell on the garbage around us, let’s celebrate the Good News.