Save the Sheep? and the Enemy King? Bad Political Choices!

Save the Sheep and the Enemy King? Bad Political Choices!

By Craig M. Szwed

Political correctness, political and moral liberalism, social, spiritual, and moral relativism, all these concepts and practices have one thing in common. They all go directly or indirectly against things that God has ordained. All of those practices and philosophies are driven by self-centered interests based in wilfull human condemnation or variant approximations of what God says to do. Those deviations from God's way of doing things are our own twisted human ways of deceiving ourselves into thinking that we are trying to do something right or good. Each of those self-justified things leads participants away from God and godly living, no matter how convincing or pleasant the tenets appear or sound, no matter how utopian their siren call.

We could compile a huge list, here, of all the unholy things that all of us have chosen to do in our lifetimes, things that felt or seemed right, things that we simply wanted to accomplish or experience. Yes, many of the things on that list would be direct violations of God's commands, but the sad part is that many of the things that we would have to write on that list are not necessarily wrong in and of themselves, but we have made them wrong because we chose to do them outside of the will of God for our personal lives, even "sins of omission".

James 4:13-17 clarifies the difference between our will and God's will:

"Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:
¹⁴  Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
¹⁵  For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.
¹⁶  But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil.
¹⁷  Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

Since the Garden of Eden, we have battled with God, and with ourselves, as to whom we shall serve and obey. God gave us the ability to choose, and all too often we choose wrong, simply because we base our choices on our impatient and incomplete understanding of the situation, our intellectual arrogance, or our feelings. Why do we make choices like that? Romans Chapter 1, and other Bible references, say that we do so because of our lack of humility and lack of thankfulness toward God. The bottom line is that we are too self-centered in our thinking.

In 1 Samuel 15 there is a powerful and sad tale of how King Saul chose to violate his office by disobeying what the LORD God had commanded him via Samuel the prophet. In spite of having been hand picked, with God's guidance, Saul was a willful man. He started off doing right, but ended up disobeying at a critical time. In the end, he lost his kingdom to David.

The whole tale in Chapter 15 is well worth reading, though the conclusion of what caused King Saul to lose his kingdom is summed up in 1 Samuel 15:22-29:

"And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.
²³  For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.
²⁴ And Saul said unto Samuel, I have sinned: for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD, and thy words: because I feared the people, and obeyed their voice.
²⁵  Now therefore, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD.
²⁶  And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee: for thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, and the LORD hath rejected thee from being king over Israel.
²⁷  And as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent.
²⁸  And Samuel said unto him, The LORD hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day, and hath given it to a neighbour of thine, that is better than thou.
²⁹  And also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent."

Let us each check our own motives and foundations on which we base our choices, our philosophies, our politics. Let us see what is leading or driving us along our path. Let us humbly and realistically ask ourselves if our objectives are what God Almighty wants for us according to His Word. Then and only then shall we begin to do the right things for the right reasons, and therein do the things that please God. Only when we please God shall we ever be able to be satisfied, at peace, secure, or prosperous in the things that last for good instead of for evil.

If you wish to look deeper into things pertaining to eternal security, here's a good place to start: http://www.godssimpleplan.org/gsps.html.