Crimes and Misdemeanors

Apparently Governor Mark Sanford has been involved in some pretty sketchy activities of late. I guess we could all play the part of the offended prig and condemn the poor fellow for some or all of the high and low crimes our wandering governor has been accused of. After all, he has tarnished himself and the high office he holds; he has betrayed his wife of twenty years, not to mention his four sons. And what about the people of South Carolina? No, this governor has earned the almost universal scorn being heaped upon him by commentators everywhere.

Well, I am not going to try to add too much weight to the suffering the governor has been experiencing of late, but I do have a major bone to pick with Mr. Sanford. You see, I am a hiker of the Appalachian Trail and for years now I have been telling my wife, my children and my friends that I am off for another long hike in the woods and the mountains. Yes, and worse, I would come back with tales of storms and bears and creeping things in the night and everyone would listen intently as they learned of my trail heroics. Better yet, they would envy my fierce determination and bravery as I forged ahead toward the lofty goal of getting to Mt. Katahdin, the trail’s terminus in north central Maine.

Thanks to our Lothario governor, though, the hiking population of America has now been consigned to sleeping in their tents in the backyard under the watchful and suspicious eyes of their wives and family. The men of America have lost their campfire bonding moments forever because the smitten governor decided to use the Trail as cover for his real trip to Argentina to see his darling Maria. For this reason alone our dear governor has earned a certain degree of my bitter contempt.

But while his offense against hikers is bad, his love letters to his South American bombshell are even worse.

Didn’t he realize that his saccharin prose, now available for all to see, represents a crime against everything that is true, noble and lovely and that every Romeo out there now has been left bereft by his florid prose? He certainly tried hard enough to match his words to the object of his not so secret ardor, but unfortunately, as he attempted poetic flight, the whole sorry linguistic contraption fell fatally to earth with a fearsome thud:

“You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself… in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details ...(W)hile all the things above are all too true - at the same time we are in a hopelessly - or as you put it impossible - or how about combine and simply say hopelessly impossible situation of love…. I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never…covered before - so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know... In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul."

It boils down to this: Here we have the star crossed governor bleating over the age old dilemma of having your cake and eating it too.

Mark Sanford: Have you no shame! You stand guilty of the crime of mauling the English language. Perhaps you should resign now before you kill another word or ruin another hiker!

Consider the Eye

When we do think about it, we are amazed by images created by cameras. We are mystified by the extraordinary power behind digital technology. We sit transfixed before high definition TV screens often confusing the fleeting image with reality itself. But do we ever stop to consider the original technology that surpasses all the imagery generated by the genius of man?

Take a moment to consider the human eye with its stunning ability to translate trillions of particles of light into images instantly comprehensible to the human brain. We spent time explaining the function of the eye, but we have a rougher time dealing with its original invention. Worse, we tend to avoid the idea that the human eye had an inventor. We may marvel at the highly complex technology behind image making, but at the same time we assume that the far greater technology of the eye just somehow came into existence by chance or by the mysterious laws of nature. Perhaps the original design is far more astonishing than anything we have come up with since through our own ingenuity.

Gods, Kings and Mere Mortals

Evan Thomas made news last week. It is not known whether he was speaking for himself or for the entire editorial staff of Newsweek magazine, but here is the very cosmopolitan Mr. Thomas speaking to Chris Matthews on MSBC. "I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above--above the world, he's sort of God."

Wow. From mere mortal to “a sort of God” in five short months! But maybe we should pause a moment before elevating Barak Obama above emperors, kings and other assorted potentates. For as often as not, these god-like leaders turn their power against the very people who have chosen to be ruled by them. You do not have to look too deeply into the pages of history to find an A-list of scoundrels once considered god-like saviors. In the long course of human events, it is not difficult to find a palace full of such specimens from Nero and Caligula to Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler. Luckily, Obama has not proclaimed himself to be God…yet.

Furthermore, if Evan Thomas were to look back to Old Testament history, he might not be quite so sanguine about the prospect of America being led by a “sort of God” president.
In the time after Moses and Joshua had died, Israel had no king. Eventually though, the people grew restless and so they demanded that a king be chosen. The people went to the prophet Samuel who turned to God for direction. God tells Samuel: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king….Now listen to them; but warn them solemnly and let them know what the king who will reign over them will do.”

Samuel does what God commands: He warns the people that the king will take their sons and make them serve in his armies; he will take their daughters to be “perfumers and cooks and bakers; he will take their fields and a tenth of the produce from those fields; and he will take their flocks “and you yourselves will become his slaves.”(1Samuel 8:8-18)

Perhaps Evan Thomas and the editors at Newsweek should be careful about what they wish for. Didn’t our Founding Fathers rebel against the tyranny of kings? Isn’t it more reasonable to think of our president as a mortal rather than compare him to a “sort of God”? Wouldn’t the history of the American experiment suggest that we should resist the temptation to think of our rulers as anything other than mere men? Or would Mr. Thomas prefer to see America suffer the fate of so many nations who ceded power to an all powerful god-leader who then led the people down the well trod road to serfdom?

Tear Down This Wall!

Has conservative talk radio been good for the Republican Party? For five long presidential election cycles, Republicans have offered America presidential candidates who have proved to be verbally challenged. At the same time, the stars of conservative talk radio have climbed from success to success, reaching a daily audience that any political leader would envy to have and creating an impression that conservatism is a force to be contended with in America. We know conservative talk radio has been wildly successful, but it is less clear what it has meant politically. Could the rise of one be linked to the decline of the other?

Conventional wisdom would suggest that Rush, Sean and many other talk show pundits have aided the conservative cause, but there may be a darker side to the phenomenal success of the talkers. Perhaps Republican candidates have steadily declined in power and effectiveness because talk radio has inadvertently separated the messenger from the message. Can you imagine Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy or Ronald Reagan allowing the media to do all their talking for them? Can you imagine, Winston Churchill stepping aside while a radio commentator communicated his inspiring messages to the British people? It would never have happened.

Democratic operatives have gone to some length to proclaim Rush Limbaugh the titular head of the Republican Party. They have a point. While Rush Limbaugh addresses an audience for 15 hours every week, conservative politicians slink around the outer edges of the Beltway avoiding the limelight if at all possible. Being sheepish is safe. It sadly seems that Republicans are afflicted by CAS (Controversy Avoidance Syndrome).

Only when the Republican Party recovers its voice will it have any chance to change the direction of America. It is not enough to become Obama’s Greek chorus. You need political leadership to bring genuine reform. And political leadership needs more than position or title to motivate the greater population for the need for real change. And you cannot divorce the message from the political messenger. Rush Limbaugh could not have said with any authority, “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Only Ronald Reagan could.

A Copy and a Shadow

In the letter to the Hebrews the writer speaks about the priest being “copy and shadow of what is in heaven.” Have you ever thought of yourself and your life as a copy of something else? Or do you consider yourself to be an original?

Elsewhere, in one of the psalms, it says that God had an idea of who we could be even before we were conceived: “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.”

What an amazing thought: God knew everything about each one of us before we even existed. And how agonizing it is when we fall away from God’s intention and pursue the unruly desires of our own unfettered hearts. This is what Cain must have meant when he lamented that his crime had rendered him “a restless wanderer of the earth.”

Unlinked from God’s intention for us, we stray to the right and the left looking for satisfaction where nothing lasting and beneficial can be found. But when we acknowledge at long last that we know we are known and we experience the transformation that brings us back into the genuine comfort of God’s good orbit, then we can say with a full and blessed heart: “I once was lost and now am found, was blind but now I see.”