It happens every election season: we get bewitched by some charismatic politician promoted by his (or her) adoring support in the media, and fooled into believing his (or her) promises. We fall for the same old lies we fell for before…

Presidents, prime-ministers and their underlings always want to be thought of as doing a great job on the economy. They want to look good, they want to keep one or two of their many promises, and they have some pet plans of their own to spend tax-payers money on. Taxes aren’t high enough, so what do they do? They borrow money! That’s why the US government is now in debt to the tune of over nineteen trillion dollars. In numbers, that’s $19,000,000,000,000 (note 1). It works out to over fifty-nine thousand dollars per man woman and child in the US, if the population is three hundred and twenty million.
You could play Marx’s advocate if you want and take away all of Donald Trump’s money. And what about the billionaires who are supporting the Democrats: shouldn’t we take their money away too? Sell off the blood-suckers’ assets and hand the loot over to those  nice government  people, who will go and spend it on who knows what rather than paying off some of the debt. Then run the tics  and leeches out of town…

But that would make very little difference to the debt. Trump’s net worth is estimated to be 4.5 billion dollars. Take that off of the national debt and you still owe $18,995,500,000,000, making virtually no difference to the per-person debt. Perhaps we’d be better off putting that money-making talent to good use for the country.
As one radio wag said, now we’re in this much debt, why does the government bother to collect taxes? Let’s just keep borrowing instead!
The current president declared that his would be “the most transparent administration”. Since those words were uttered we’ve had the Ben Gazi scandal, the “Fast-and Furious” gun-running scandal, the Clinton top-secret email sharing scandal, the IRS targeting of Christian and conservative organizations, the distain of the very constitution the president swore to uphold, the ushering in of gay marriage, the demonizing of those who uncovered the sale of aborted viable-baby body parts, the intentional ignoring of scientists opposed to the politically correct view of climate change, the rise and rise of “ISIL”, the demise of Mubarak and Qaddafi in the so-called “Arab Spring” and the attempted demise of Assad…and much more.
So what, you may be asking, do these things I’m whining about have to do with fueling our faith, which is the intended goal of my blog? The answer is that they serve to remind us, if we step back from the fray a little and observe from God’s perspective, that what we are dealing with is human nature. There never will be a perfect human government, not even if you and I get the chance to run it.
Yes, we need to engage in the system and to make the best of an imperfect world: that’s God’s will. We need to vote and to preserve what real freedom there is. But we also need to purge the urge to entrust ourselves to human beings, including the handsome ones, the confident ones and the eloquent ones. God said through the prophet Jeremiah:
“Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a shrub in the desert…” (Jeremiah 17:5 ESV).
The antidote:
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream…” (verses 7-8).
NOTES
1: http://www.usdebtclock.org/

• FAITH