Theological Journal – August 25 Franklin Graham’s Claim in God’s Absence from the Dem. Convention

 

Dear Franklin Graham,

I suspect God keeps his distance from both political parties and their conventions. God is sovereign over both, to be sure, committed to none, to be equally sure. His name on their lips or in their platforms is meaningless if not blasphemous. He uses and judges both according to his own wisdom - not by polls. electoral results, pastoral declarations or natural disasters.

 God's Wisdom and Word are seldom what we think best or believe we need. To identify our needs and desires as a political party with His Wisdom or Word is idolatrous. The Cross and the Crown are competitors not compatriots. Indeed, for Christians the Cross is the Crown, the undoing of our politics, our perceptions and practices of power, the prevaricating we accept as coin of the political realm, and privilege and position we vest with meaning and significance.

 If you want to find God at work in either party, I suggest you read Dr. Seuss' fable "Yertle the Turtle." For God is not with the Yertles who build empires and rule from on high but the Macks on whose backs these empires are built. 

"But, as Yertle, the Turtle King, lifted his hand

And started to order and give the command,

That plain little turtle below in the stack,

That plain little turtle whose name was just Mack,

Decided he'd taken enough. And he had.

And that plain little lad got a bit mad.

And that plain little Mack did a plain little thing.

He burped!

And his burp shook the throne of the king!" 

Find the Macks who are burping and you'll know God is near,

for more the Macks burp the Yertles must fear

that the real God will soon cast them on their real rear. 

\So, dear Franklin, that is all for now. God bless.