The art of understanding politics does not depend primarily on having read an exhaustive stack of investigative books. Investigative books are as full of lies as the politicians themselves are, and if we have read any we should make our decisions on which to believe on the basis of other criteria. As Dennis Miller once put it, Washington is to lying what Wisconsin is to cheese. The temptations to deceive lie heavy on politicians, but also on those who would expose them, and those who would replace them.
Our ability to read what is going on around us depends on two things — our understanding of first principles, and our ability to read a story. First principles include our understanding of the gospel, human nature, the realities of chthonic envy, and the doctrine of creation — that kind of thing. The world we are attempting to read must be the world God created. And for many doctrinaire Christians, this is enough for them. They think that if they have read the play, perhaps a number of times, then they understand the play.
But, moving on to the second issue, they don’t understand (at all) why they were cast to play the part that God assigned to them to play. Either they understand the part they were given, but don’t understand why (though everyone else does), or the derangement is more serious and they believe that they are Hamlet instead of the second guard, standing in the back with his pike. In this latter instance, their behavior tends toward the disruptive.
I have just finished reading a very fine book on Calvin Coolidge, and so let me close this out by quoting a few of his observations that are specimens of political wisdom. And remember that according to Scripture, wisdom brings its own credentials . . . that the wise know how to read.
“Nothing is easier than spending the public money. It does not appear to belong to anybody. The temptation is overwhelming to bestow it on somebody.”
“A nation that is morally dead will soon be financially dead.”