Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
It can’t keep going like this.
I mean, it can’t, right? Something’s got to give.
The divisions in this country get deeper, and then the threats hurled across the chasm get darker. Tragedies abound and all the arrows point down. I wonder what depths we’ll have sunk to when my future grandchildren show up.
How’d our boat get in this gooey, brown creek, anyway? And, where did that paddle go?
The ones who do, in fact, study history, are doomed to gnash their teeth while all the unread yahoos repeat it. So, we’ll continue like this, circling the drain. You’ll know the blind guides who are leading the parade: they’re the ones saying that the good guys just need to win the next election. You know, the latest “Most Important Election of our Lives!” Then, we can stick it to the other guys, like they’ve been doing. Only, we’ll do it better. We all just need to vote harder.
We keep insisting that, if bad government is a problem, the solution is better folks in that government. If the “great ones” that Jesus referred to in Matthew 20 are doing a terrible job, then what we need is some greater ones. It sure sounds reasonable. Just ask the ones running for the job.
However, the teaching of the Scripture is undeniably this: Societal death is the price we all pay for failing to love our neighbors as God commanded us.
The more we go on failing to love and serve, the more chaos ensues, and, the more our news is dominated by stories that must make the angels smack their own foreheads. People would rather live under a tyranny that keeps the peace, than under chaos. Make the trains run on time and you’ll have my vote, sir.
We shout at each other about our rights, and not one can define what a right is, where it comes from, or how we might know we have one.
We’re not building spaceships here. This isn’t that difficult. Literally from page one of the Bible, the intention is that men and women, made in God’s image, should be self-governing people, not needing “great ones” with badges and guns to tell them how to act. But, self-discipline is hard. It’s so much easier to just keep building prisons.
God will not let chaos reign. He cares too much about the weaker folks, who are its first victims. If we prove that a full-fledged police state is the only thing that will keep our homemade hell at bay, then God is gracious enough to give us that. It won’t matter which party runs it. The boot on your face will feel the same.
We can choose the kingdom of God, or the guard towers and razor wire.
The good news is you don’t have to convince everyone to make the right choice. When God promised to heal the nation in 2 Chronicles 7:14, there was no requirement that the good guys had to win a super-majority. They just had to figure it out at the level of individual believers. You do the right things. The change comes from the Lord.
Gordan Runyan is the pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Tucumcari. Contact him at: