It is election season. The commercials are many. The candidates are convincingly speaking about how they can make things better. No! Wait! That was how it was 20 years ago. Today, the commercials are still many. But, the candidates are not convincingly speaking about how they can make things better. They are convincingly speaking about how the other candidate will destroy our lives, how deceptive they are, how abysmal their voting record is and how their business and personal relationships are quiet demonstrations of their clandestine efforts to take over the world. That is politics in the 21st century. It was “seek and inform.” Now it is “seek and destroy.”
When I speak with folks about the election, there is one common thread. Everyone wishes that there was more positively directed information and straight talk about plans, intentions, running-mates, cabinet positions and bipartisan efforts. But, that stuff apparently doesn’t do the trick for getting elected these days.
I am fascinated by the number of people who have told me, “I just wish someone could tell the truth and I wouldn’t have to log onto ‘factcheck’ (the site that has made a fortune on discovering that lies among politicians are not hard to find) to see how much is truth and how much is lie. I have followed up with the question, “How much is the distortion of truth in politics a reflection of our society?” Or, “is the political arena an aberration of our culture?” A further question, “is truth telling a diminishing or lost virtue in our society?”
I hearken back to Jesus- “full of grace and truth” telling the woman at the well that true worshippers will worship God “in spirit and in truth.” I think about Jesus’ night of arrest when he told the apostles pointedly, “I am the way, the truth and the life” and how Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would lead people into truth and that he is the Spirit of truth. That is Jesus- truth embodied and spoken. The closer we get to Jesus the more committed we should be to telling the truth and living the truth. I believe that this solitary commitment may be the most impactful commitment we make in a world that is becoming increasingly disappointed in its own inability to find, manage or tell the truth. We must be people who are so open to the Lord that we can see our lives for what they are, sin that must be confessed, changes that must be made and God’s clear desire for us. Walking in and speaking truth is a watershed of sorts. This is our time.