Sunday, October 20, 2019
Sunday Reflection: On Tumult
I've noticed a lot of other people checking their news sources about every 20 minutes lately. We're living in a time of political tumult right now (and frankly have been for a while).
It's hard not to see it all as a spiritual crisis, but I would be careful about jumping to that conclusion.
Yesterday I posted a federal statute that seems to cover the most recent controversial action by our President-- awarding his own golf club the honor of hosting the 2020 G-7 summit. It sure seems to me like the President and his administration acted in violation of that law.
That matters, and it is wrong. It needs to be addressed as part of the impeachment inquiry.
But it doesn't mean we are in an existential crisis.
One thing that is really encouraging is that most of the President's attempts to do bad things haven't worked. One of the fascinating things about the Mueller report was the way it revealed the instances-- time after time--that people around Trump quietly defeated his worst impulses. He told his counsel to fire Mueller. The counsel just didn't do it.
That means we are looking, so far, at bad acts with little impact.
Even as we condemn the behavior, we need to recognize that important grace.
It's hard not to see it all as a spiritual crisis, but I would be careful about jumping to that conclusion.
Yesterday I posted a federal statute that seems to cover the most recent controversial action by our President-- awarding his own golf club the honor of hosting the 2020 G-7 summit. It sure seems to me like the President and his administration acted in violation of that law.
That matters, and it is wrong. It needs to be addressed as part of the impeachment inquiry.
But it doesn't mean we are in an existential crisis.
One thing that is really encouraging is that most of the President's attempts to do bad things haven't worked. One of the fascinating things about the Mueller report was the way it revealed the instances-- time after time--that people around Trump quietly defeated his worst impulses. He told his counsel to fire Mueller. The counsel just didn't do it.
That means we are looking, so far, at bad acts with little impact.
Even as we condemn the behavior, we need to recognize that important grace.
