All Have Sinned and Fall Short of the Glory of God

September 15, 2022

Leadership Notes

I'll begin with our current president. Here is what he said way back when:

"Here's my promise to you: If I'm elected president, I will always

choose to unite rather than divide. I'll take responsibility instead

of blaming others. I'll never forget that the job isn't about me -

it's about you."

Here is what he said less than a month ago:

"Too much of what's happening in our country today is not

normal. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent

extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic."

The guy he replaced couldn't shake free from his egotistic, bombastic personality traits. While often crude, worse was the way he stoked suspicion of our democratic process. He was often a corrupting influence on people and processes.

In 2016, the candidate who was defeated, and many of her devoted supporters, had a hard time accepting the results. Much ugliness ensued. Never forget that. In 2016, following that election, articles appeared and questions arose, asking how anyone who called themselves a Christian could have voted for her opponent. Too many people went down too many rabbit holes that fall. On all sides.

From 2008 - 2016, our president authorized the droning deaths of more innocent people than any previous Nobel Peace Prize winner. It was a depraved misuse of weapons technology.

Finally, the man before him involved us in foreign adventures that took a horrendous toll on life and treasure. This is not a comment on what's right or wrong. Simply on what is. As well, in those years we saw an erosion of privacy rights and an increasingly intrusive police state that haunts us to this day.

I'll stop with 43. You get the point. Each president, beginning with the first, had good and bad running through them, with a lot of gray area in-between. As broken, fallen people, we always do the best with what we have. Paul said, in Romans 3:23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Some more than others. I'll let the partisans argue the degrees.

I hope these words do not cause offense. As we've travelled through The Book of Revelation, we've seen how all governments and institutions are corrupt, corrupting, and corruptible. We put our trust in no person, place, or thing. If I've learned one thing from The Book of Revelation, it's that while we live in this world, we are not of this world. We are citizens of heaven. Our trust is in God alone…Christ alone…the Holy Spirit alone, and the Scripture that reveals them to us.

It is easy to get caught up in the agitations and controversies of this present age. A fault line of sin runs through our lives and our world. I find certain calm in this observation from Charles Spurgeon:

"As we feel a thousand deaths in fearing one, so do we feel a

thousand afflictions in the fear of sorrows which will never come.

Probably the major part of our griefs are born, nourished, and

perfected, entirely in an anxious, imaginative brain."

Be of Good Cheer!

Richard