Some
thieves come in the night, but the ones that really scare me are
those who come in the full light of day. Three thousand years ago, a
delegation of people came to the prophet Samuel to ask God for a
king, because Samuel's sons were not trustworthy successors: "
But his sons did not follow his ways. They turned aside after
dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice." (I
Samuel 8:3) People haven't changed much! God had this answer:
Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking
him for a king. He said, “This is what the king who will reign over
you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them
serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his
chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and
commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his
harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for
his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks
and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and
olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth
of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and
attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle
and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of
your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day
comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but
the Lord will not answer you in that day.”(I Samuel 8:10-18)
Right now
we're hearing a lot of talk from politicians who think that the
government is the answer to all our problems, just as the elders who
came to Samuel about a king. The problem is that "the
government" does not exist except as human beings with the same
combination of good and evil as the rest of us. Some governments are
thieves on a grand scale; the problem with big government is that
those who rise to power have the same faults that God warned Samuel
about back in his day. The third king of Judah and Israel, though
blessed with wisdom that is still legendary, was followed by a son
who was a world-class example of unwisdom, and lost half the kingdom.
The Northern Kingdom had three hundred years of corrupt kings,
topped by Ahab and Jezebel, still known for their greed exemplified
by Ahab's coveting a poor man's field and Jezebel's conspiracy to
steal the field and murdering the owner. There was not a single
honest king in the history of that kingdom, eventually being stolen
by a succession of the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Alexander
and his successors, and then Romans, Arabs, Turks, a British mandate,
and still being fought over today. The southern Kingdom of Judah
survived two more centuries, having held out against the Assyrians
but then invaded by Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, but managed to
rebel and were an independent kingdom for a century, but then
absorbed by Romans and all its successors until Israeli independence
in 1948--but still accused of having stolen it from the surrounding
Arab countries.
T
Over the
last century we have seen a generation of politicians around the world
being deposed, leaving behind (or taking with them) vast amounts of
ill-gotten assets stolen from their empires. It's not the honest
folks who have the ambition and greed to seize opportunities of
power!
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