Insanity

I'm reading in Acts chapter 4 today about the Jewish rulers examining Peter and John regarding their healing the lame man in the temple.  Peter nails them between the eyes with his pointed remarks:

"...let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone."

So what's their response?  They discuss the matter and decide that even though Peter and John have performed a tremendous miracle in the name of Jesus, they still need to suppress talk of Him being the Messiah or any silly thing like that.  Like the miracle in no way validates Peter and John's testimony.  Or even has anything to do with the matter.  Right.

Q:  How could they possibly be so blind and unthinking?  How could they possibly NOT be filled with fear and awe at the possibility that they just killed the long-awaited Messiah?  How could they not have been stopped in their tracks by the stupendous implications of this?   I'm reading this, amazed at the depravity of human nature, and at the same time, convinced at the accuracy of the account by the sheer perversity of this bunch.  In what work of fiction would you find such a reaction to an utterly convincing event?  Only in real life would such a thing happen.  It's stuff like this that convinces me even further that the Bible is a true account of history and of the reality of evil.

This reminds me of the reaction of the religious leaders to the story of the guards they placed at Jesus' tomb to keep the body from being stolen.  The guards witnessed a supernatural being rolling away the stone from the door of the tomb:

^"And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it.  His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men."

These rough, tough men were utterly terrified.  There were four of them (at least), and they could have overpowered just about any natural being who tried such a thing.  Their testimony to the Jewish leaders had to be shocking.  So what was the Jewish leaders' reaction?  

...they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.”

This is insanity.  The testimony of these guards (four of them!) HAD to be amazing.  Shocking.  Ominous.  TERRIFYING, to those responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.  I mean, what were they thinking?  You'd think that at least some of them would immediately fall on their faces and ask God for forgiveness.  But there's no record of that.  Instead, they bribed the guards to spread what they knew was a lie, and promised to bribe the governor also to keep him from executing the guards (death was the penalty for falling asleep on a watch).

But this is so true-to-life.  People hardened to the truth seldom are convinced by any evidence.  And they will go on telling lies that they know to be lies if the alternative is acknowledgement, repentance, humble acceptance, and a change of direction.

May God deliver us from ourselves. 

Power Games

I'm amazed at the seeming naivete of so many journalists and bloggers covering the current developments regarding corruption in the high places of DC.  So many of them act so amazed, so dumbfounded, so...shocked, just shocked!! at what's come out.  I'm amazed and dumbfounded too (but not shocked).  My amazement is for a different reason, though.  I'm amazed that all this is actually coming out in public view!  If it hadn't been for the election of Donald Trump which, politically, was a black swan event, NONE of this would have surfaced.  It was that political miracle which enabled this one.  Before the election I had resigned myself--for several years, actually--to the election of Hillary Clinton as our next POTUS and to business as usual in DC.  But the election of Donald was truly earth-shattering, and made so many previously unthinkable things thinkable.  Donald Trump is like a chlorine molecule inserted into an oxygen slot in an organism--fits right in and totally disrupts the chemistry.

NOW--what we see playing out in DC and around the nation is a raw game of power.  To be sure, there's still subterfuge involved, but so much more of the raw power is exposed for those who observe.  The left is in full-attack mode.  They seem to be operating on the assumption that rhetoric, not truth, will ultimately carry the day, and they have a nuclear arsenal of rhetoric at their disposal.  The right seems to have some very powerful evidence of official wrongdoing, but they don't have the left's powers of persuasion.  Who will win?  It remains to be seen.

But here's the deal: This battle is being fought strictly along partisan lines.  This greatly favors the Democrats.  They have the luxury of being intensely partisan while accusing the Republicans of being partisan.  It's a double standard which they've enjoyed for decades.  This also weakens the arguments of the Republicans.  After all, if they really had truth on their side, you'd think that at least SOME democrats would join them in their battle, wouldn't they?  But the Dems' not breaking ranks focuses attention not on THEIR partisanship, but on the Republicans'.  It's a weird phenomenon.  And the Republicans aren't helping matters by being so overtly joyful, gleeful even, at having discovered such incriminating evidence on the part of Clinton supporters.  They really make this look like a partisan battle, don't they?  And the sad part is, in light of their recent vote to give the government even greater surveillance powers, it may very well be for many in the GOP.

So--let's see how this plays out.  Like I said, this is a power game now.  The sides have been drawn up, the battle lines are formed.  There are only a few neutrals out there.  Most Americans are in one camp or the other.  Whose will shall prevail?  Most commenters, left and right, speak of "the will of the American people" as though it were a monolithic thing aligned, naturally, with the party the speaker endorses.  But it seems to me that the electorate is pretty much divided 50/50.  People in one camp are very, very unlikely to even listen to any argument put forth by the other.

The LORD God help us, especially His chosen ones.