I am a bit tired of all the name-calling and ad hominem attacks that I hear coming from both sides of the political aisle. My conclusion, however, isn’t that democracy is broken but rather that the people trying to implement it are fallen. Political infighting doesn’t make government bad; it just shows that the justice league has become a den of robbers.
We all live in glass houses so let’s be very careful when we throw rocks at one another because we may just break a window or two and find that we don’t have enough spiritual currency in our deposit of faith to pay for the damages. We have two options; we can stain our glass windows with pride in order to make them appear more solid than they are, and then hope that our rocks of indignation don’t crack our fragile facade, or we can heed Jesus’ instruction to drop the stones and receive unmerited forgiveness. We are still called to tell others that they live in glass houses but must be careful that we don’t do so surrounded by a pile of our own shards.
And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” (John 8: 7-11)
C.S. Lewis gave us another interesting analogy for the fragile nature of our beliefs and actions in A Grief Observed.
God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.” (CS Lewis – A Grief Observed)
We may try to flash a royal flush to impress the outside world but that only obscures the fact that we live in a house of cards.
