Thursday, January 25, 2007
Christianity's View of Treachery in Politics
Many news organizations and bloggers love to condemn political leaders as liars, murderers, theives, adulterers... the list goes on. It is a grand example of being infected by the virus of politics. It seems to be the nature of competition in politics to excoriate leaders, often for transgressions most everyone of us commit on a frequent, or at least common basis.
Setting aside the news reporting of a transgression, why is it necessary to condemn a man or woman, for example, as a liar when something they believed to be true- and acted on- turned out not to be so? Worse, what kind of people, outside of politics, make it their mission to denounce and slander a political leader for even one transgression or blunder, intentional or not?
I came across this quote from CS Lewis, which seems appropriate for Christians who follow politics.
Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way we hate things in our selves: being sorry the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is any way possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.
Mere Christianity, Chapter 7- para. 6
Setting aside the news reporting of a transgression, why is it necessary to condemn a man or woman, for example, as a liar when something they believed to be true- and acted on- turned out not to be so? Worse, what kind of people, outside of politics, make it their mission to denounce and slander a political leader for even one transgression or blunder, intentional or not?
I came across this quote from CS Lewis, which seems appropriate for Christians who follow politics.
Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way we hate things in our selves: being sorry the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is any way possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere, he can be cured and made human again.
Mere Christianity, Chapter 7- para. 6
Comments:
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I'd say that if a person sincerely believed it to be true after making a good-faith effort to ascertain the truth (and, in the specific case of government officials, taking advantage of all the resources available to them), then, even if the consequences of an honest mistake are horrible, it is still an honest mistake.
But the effort to ascertain counts, particularly in public service. For about 25 years, the standard to which I've been held in my private-sector work is not to publish anything I KNEW to be false or, through due diligence, SHOULD HAVE KNOWN to be false. I think public servants ought to be held to standards at least that high.
This is, of course, a generality. You don't t appear to be speaking about any speaker or situation in particular, so neither am I.
But the effort to ascertain counts, particularly in public service. For about 25 years, the standard to which I've been held in my private-sector work is not to publish anything I KNEW to be false or, through due diligence, SHOULD HAVE KNOWN to be false. I think public servants ought to be held to standards at least that high.
This is, of course, a generality. You don't t appear to be speaking about any speaker or situation in particular, so neither am I.
# posted by 
: 2/01/2007 11:42:00 AM
: 2/01/2007 11:42:00 AM
Perhaps it is naieve, but I prefer to think great, terrible mistakes are just that. But for the record, I don't think Iraq is a mistake.
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