The topic of Sarah Palin continues to open new vistas for discussion. I haven’t had this much fun since Al Gore started predicting the sky would fall, or whatever it is he has been predicting. Whatever it is, we’re all going to die.
So let’s talk about something a bit more pleasant. All faithful Christians have been praying for their nation, and have been praying that God would do something to deliver us from the regnant follies. Now if God actually moved to answer those prayers, what would it look like? When we pray for an ailing aunt to recover, we have some idea of what answered prayer would look like. When we pray for financial relief because of pressing bills, we know what answered prayer would consist of. But when we pray for our nation, we know what it shouldn’t look like (open season on the unborn, sodomite marriages, etc.), but what form will deliverance take exactly? We don’t usually have a clear idea of that.
I want to suggest two principles for evaluating whether or not we should give thanks for deliverance. We should also consider the point at which the giving of thanks becomes appropriate, and would not just be wishful thinking. If I am in a beleagured fort out West in the olden days, surrounded by wild injuns, and am praying like crazy, and I see a cloud of dust on the horizon, if I give thanks for the cavalry reinforcements prematurely, I might find out that I was actually giving thanks for the arrival of a bunch more injuns. I use the term injun here merely in the hopes that some pc-leftist will stumble across this blog sometime and be annoyed by it. I try to spread a little sunshine wherever I go.
The first principle is that deliverance must be distinctly different from whatever it is we are seeking deliverance from. Deliverance is not more of the same. Deliverance is not politics as usual — deliverance has to exhibit a clear sign that it will take us in a very different direction than we have been going. God doesn’t save us from drowning by leaving us on the bottom of the pool.
The second principle is that — since God is the storyteller here — the deliverance must come in a surprising form. It must confound the worldly wise. It must leave the chattering classes befuddled. The most obvious example of God’s love for this kind of story is the world’s salvation coming in the form of a crucified carpenter. Who anticipated that? But He foreshadowed this approach of His countless times in the Old Testament — He delivered His people by means of a shepherd boy, and woman with a tent peg, and a choir in front of the army, and . . . you get the picture. He has done the same thing throughout church history. And we are always surprised. That’s what is so endearing about us.
Do these two criteria apply to the selection of Sarah Palin as the veep candidate? It is worth serious consideration. And if we are not considering it seriously, it is worth mentioning that our enemies certainly are.