It has been painful at times to follow the news this week. From groups around the world calling for mutual eradication to members of Congress conducting themselves like misbehaving children—yelling over each other, calling each other names, asking questions and then not letting anyone answer, and then, of course, there’s all of the lying. Oh so much lying. Republicans blame the Democrats. Democrats blame the Republicans. They all blame China, or Putin, or immigration along the Southern border. And all of it in an effort to mobilize their political base. The political party has become more important than the actual people. The American political party has become the new golden statue from the 3rd chapter of the book of Daniel. “King Nebuchadnezzar made a golden statue…’You are commanded, O peoples,…to fall down and worship the golden statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Whoever does not fall down and worship shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire’.”
The rhetoric would have you believe that there are only two choices: Red or Blue. And once you choose one, you can never, ever change your vote. Even if the other side comes up with a great program that most individuals support, you have to vote it down because you can never go against the party. Nebuchadnezzar believed that the people in Babylon only had two choices: worship the statue or be burned to death. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, however, showed him another option. They refused to renounce God in order to worship the idol created by a man. And God protected them from the heat of the furnace. Verse 28 says “They disobeyed the king’s command and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.” When the king saw what God had done, he declared that “there is no other god who is able to deliver in this way.”
Wentz’s, we need to be Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. More people need to be willing to step into the fire and say “No. That’s wrong. We will not bow down to your latest ‘golden statue’.” The good of the people, God’s people, always takes precedence over the current hot-button political talking point. Zig Ziglar is famously quoted as saying “I read the paper every day and I read the Bible every day. That way I know what both sides are up to.” I’ll take it a step further—spend twice as much time with God’s word as you do with the news. I’d be willing to bet that you feel better, and I guarantee that you’ll have a better perspective on what is right for the people rather than the political party.