In the past few days, as President Bush's popularity has plummeted following his commutation of Vice-Presidential Aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison time, I have heard a lot of Christians say that it is the duty of believers to support their leader.
A verse in Acts – 23:5 to be precise – repeats an admonition found in Exodus not to curse the leader of your people. President Bush would certainly seem to fit that description, particularly to those people determined to read Scripture literally.
Believers who rely on that verse to carry them past the multitude of mistakes made by this administration surely must be forgetting other verses which indicate the opposite.
Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the LORD by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.'
"This is what the LORD says: 'Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.' " (2 Samuel 12:7-12)
So obviously a leader anointed by God is not immune from criticism. In fact, God has sent many prophets over the centuries and charged those prophets with the unhappy task of speaking truth to power. This had to be an especially difficult burden during a time when democracy as we practice it today was a foreign concept. Most rulers gained their thrones through what was seen as a divine birthright which made these rulers only slightly less than gods themselves.
As the church grew more influential in the centuries following Jesus' earthly ministry, church leaders entered into an alliance with different rulers that in hindsight could only be called unholy. In exchange for an end to the kind of persecution faced by the earliest Christians, church leaders agreed that they would support the actions of various secular rulers. Believers who were mistreated by these same rulers could nevertheless take comfort in rewards that would be theirs in the afterlife.
Obviously, an arrangement like this is susceptible to corruption. The founding fathers would have been aware of the actions of England's King Henry the Eighth, who wiped out established church authority to make himself a secular leader and church official at the same time. Karl Marx would have taken note of believers accepting unjust acts on earth in the name of obedience. Marx would come to the conclusion that religion was nothing less than an "opiate of the masses."
If the founding fathers had been as dedicated to the notion of not criticizing their leaders, the United States might well never have been formed at all. We'd continue to be a British colony displaying the Union Jack at public events.
When our current President entered office, he pledged to bring honor back to the White House. The President asserted that his favorite philosopher was none other than the Son of God. And yet, the conduct of this administration displays little evidence of Christ's influence or the influence of any philosopher concerned with morality and ethics.
Since January of 2001, the American people have been fed a steady diet of misinformation, carefully phrased statements and outright lies as this administration has pursued its policy goals. Americans have seen the disaster that was the Iraq War mushroom into an even greater catastrophe brought on by cronyism and torture. President Bush and his top aides have exploited American's fears to further their agenda.
Taken as a whole, these actions constitute nothing less than blasphemy against the principles advocated by Jesus. Since Jesus is part of the Trinity, the blasphemy extends to the Heavenly Father.
Given this crass and cynical exploitation of believers by this White House, is it any wonder that God hasn't honored the administration's plans for the Middle East?
Now the time has come, once again, for prophets to speak truth to power. We undertake this solemn duty, not with any glee, but with a sense of urgency born of the hope to spare America's military any more deaths and injuries. The burden is so great that it cannot be ignored.