Politics, Broken Promises, and Trust

“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”

Well, as everybody knows, the President broke his promise – millions of times. As the number of individual policy cancellations escalates, so does the outrage. The President was re-elected  based on a trust factor that is slipping away.

                                                 

The word of God warns about this: 

Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God. Psalm 146:3-5

My day planner has a pithy quote on each planning page. A couple days ago it was a Spanish writer, Baltasar Gracian y Morales, from the 17th century, who said, The sole advantage of power is that you can do more good. I had never heard of Senor Morales before, but he could have been an apologist for the Affordable Care Act. I wrote in my planner under this absurd statement, But you won’t want to, dummy.  

People on the political left trust that a big, centralized government will help more people, and do more good. As attractive as this idea apparently is, in the real world it has been disproven over and over, throughout history.

Give a few people power over the lives of others, and the “good” they do ends up being defined by their own selfish interests.

They’ll decide what is “good” for you and for me, whether we like it or not. They’ll tell us, for example, that the health plans we have are substandard, and they’ll pass laws that will force our insurance companies to cancel those policies. And they’ll choose “better” policies for us. We’ll have to pay more, with higher deductibles, and “benefits” we don’t need or want. But, hey, we gave them power to do good for us, even if our liberties are sacrificed and our choices are eliminated.

The problem with trusting princes, health tsars, and political appointees is that they are all sinful human beings who will ultimately act out of their own flawed egotism.

Those on the political right usually champion self-reliance and rugged individualism. But trusting yourself is only marginally smarter than trusting princes or politicians. Because you, too, will flip the car into the ditch, so to speak. It’s just that self-reliance means that you’ll be driving the car by yourself when the crash comes. The disaster will be confined to only a few people. The big government folks are taking a seat on an enormous train, putting their trust in someone else to get them to their destination. And when the engineer derails the train, the disaster will devastate multitudes.

This blog is not political; it’s about Jesus. Whatever our political persuasion, trusting Christ alone is our only hope.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5, 6 

Blessed is the man who makes the LORD his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie! Psalm 40:4

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. Psalm 118:7-9 

Put no trust in a neighbor; have no confidence in a friend; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your arms; for the son treats the father with contempt, the daughter rises up against her mother, the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; a man's enemies are the men of his own house. But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. Micah 7:5-7

Not one word of all the good promises that the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. Joshua 21:45

Amen.