A Reflector Of Our Darkened Souls
When King David of Israel committed adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba and sent her husband off to the front lines to be killed in battle, the prophet Nathan confronted the king and exposed his immoral behavior. This led David to confess his sins and repent. Today, David would have hired a good criminal defense attorney and used his palace staff to spin for him and smear the prophet.
Most of the attention during weeks of nonstop “scandal” coverage has focused on what President Clinton may have done with a White House intern. Republicans have started to emerge from their speak-no-evil strategy to criticize the president, “if these allegations are true.” No one asks the bigger question: Did we get the president we deserve?
Virtuecrat William Bennett accused Clinton of corrupting the morals of the American people. This is a common lament among many who believe the cause of our decadence is in the White House. They reason that by replacing the leader, the followers will become more virtuous. If this were so, 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George Bush should have made us morally better. It didn’t - because presidents lack the power to transform hearts toward good or evil.
Former Vice President Dan Quayle told the Conservative Political Action Committee convention that our nation is crying out for moral leadership. If it is, the cry is a muffled one. Polls show as many as 73 percent approve of the job President Clinton is doing, including a significant majority of women who might be expected to have been offended with his “of course I’ll respect you in the morning” behavior.
Along with Hillary Clinton, we’ve put our concerns about morals and character in a box, so to speak, and prefer to worship at the altar of the economy. If the economy is all that matters, we really are stupid.
At the extremes, nations insensitive to their moral foundations get a Hitler or a Stalin. Short of dictatorship, they get sexually transmitted diseases, broken homes, abandoned children, overflowing prisons and dysfunctional lives.
The prophet Hosea admonished the ancient Israelites when they governed themselves according to their equivalent of “polls” and how they felt rather than the laws of God. This was his indictment: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds. … Because of this the land mourns, and all who live in it waste away …. Israel is corrupt.”
Should we be proud that nations far more sexually promiscuous than our own are now praising our president for what they regard as his serial adulteries? They hope our nation is becoming like theirs. Is that what we want for ourselves and for our posterity? Those looking for the next president to fix things will be disappointed. Moral decay leads to political decay. In fact, politics won’t decay if the people are healthy.
On the eve of his election as president, a reporter asked Ronald Reagan: “Governor, what do people see in you?” Reagan replied, “Would you laugh if I told you they see themselves?”
If many of us saw ourselves, or at least saw how we would like to be, in Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton reflects who we really are. To indict him is to indict ourselves. His is a mirror that reflects our darkened souls.
Forget whether the latest charges are true. Bill Clinton’s lack of character and candor is beyond dispute. Even his defenders talk like lawyers instead of prophets. Clinton will probably hang on to the end of his term, but his chance to be a moral leader, which is an essential component of the presidency, has been foreclosed.
Hosea pronounced a verdict on another nation that lived like this: “A people without understanding will come to ruin.” It’s mourning time in America.
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