November 18th 2019
Author: Michael Dewar,Sr.
As I watch these impeachment hearings three questions come mind. First, whatever happen to the truth? I mean the naked truth that people swore with upheld hands to tell. About the spring of AD 30, Pilate, the Roman Governor had a popular Rabbi on trial before a hostile crowd. Pilate had already determined the Rabbi’s innocence and wanted to let him go. But the crowd, led by a powerful High Priest with political connections was determined to have the Rabbi executed.
In the dialogue between Pilate and the Rabbi, Pilate asked, are you a king? The Rabbi responded that his kingdom was not of this world. That he came into this world to testify to the truth, and everyone on the side of truth listens to him. Pilate asked, what is truth? Without waiting for the answer, he walked out and handed the innocent Rabbi to be executed (John 18:33-40).
The irony is, the Rabbi had previously said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to God except through me” (John 14:6). What’s the point? Like Pilate, some public servants will subvert the truth, trash the constitution and sell out the country for financial gain and political expediency.
Second, the impeachment hearings have moved me to ask, is this another Babel generation we are facing? In Genesis (11:1-9), we see a post-flood generation building the first skyscraper, a tower and a city. It was man’s attempt to build his world in defiance of God. God came down and confounded their language, so they abandoned the project.
Have you noticed how we no longer speak the same language as a people? Republicans speak one language, Democrats another; the rich one language, everybody else another. Baby Boomers speak one language, Millennials another. With changing language comes changing values. I am not saying that is all bad; it is good to have different perspectives, if we can treat our opponents as neighbors, not enemies. I am getting at democratic ideals. The same thing that fractures none-democratic nations and have them in turmoil has come home to roost in the U.S. Reason? Perhaps greed, the lust for power and money, plus the abandonment of fundamental values that made us the envy of the world.
It is also ironic that on 9/11 we watched the Towers fall. They fell from above because the first attempt to bring them down from below failed; the foundation was strong. Now, we have a builder of towers at the pinnacle of executive power with an AG arguing for absolute power which only God Himself has. The handwriting is on the wall that there are cracks in the foundation of this democracy and if we are not careful, the whole structure will come tumbling down on all us as the implosion of the Twin Towers.
Third, the impeachment hearings have moved me to ask, have we gone back to bed. We said, 9/11 was a wake-up call. And every major shooting incident since, we say it’s a wake-up call. But I hear no one say the stunning breach of security the impeachment hearings reveal is another wake-up call. Perhaps, we are sleeping so soundly that we haven’t heard a thing. Or, we are safe with a false sense of security, so we went back to bed as we do after every crisis. We were caught with our pants down on 9/11 that we could not even scramble a couple of F-16s flying several times faster than the speed of sound to ward off the hijackers from the Twin Towers or the Pentagon. If a few hijackers can strike at the heart of our economic and military might and have the American President on the run, doesn’t frighten you, what will? If politicians are asleep at the wheel, perhaps we don’t need them after all.
Some of us can take comfort in the fact that we are not just U.S. citizens but citizens of the commonwealth of nations and have a choice of somewhere to run, but where will you run? On the other hand, it might be pure fiction that if the bricks of this democracy come loose there is somewhere to run. Perhaps, we have all come to the water’s edge. Yet, I am hopeful that there are some dedicated public servants that have not succumb the deadly disease of patrician politics. In case you didn’t get it, the Tower that is at risk this time is the entire democracy.