There once was a little girl named Angie, whose parents divorced when she was three. She lived with her mother most of the time, though on holidays and weekends, she’d bounce between her mother (Monica) and her father (Ted). Both parents made a place for her in their homes and all of her needs were cared for; but as Angie got older, she found that wasn’t really enough for her. Though both of her parents lived on a tight budget, she developed a taste for the finer things in life and somehow rationalized that she was entitled to them. Even at a young age, she recognized that the best way to get what she wanted was to turn one parent against the other and to stir up their insecurities, competitiveness, guilt, fear, pride… She found that when they got focused on each other, they’d tend to lose sight of her and her agenda.
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Like the time when she was eight and her mom told her to turn off her favorite show because it was bedtime. She simply told her mom that her father had said that when she turned twelve, she could choose to live with him and that then she wouldn’t have such an early bedtime. This of course infuriated Monica, who immediately went into the bedroom to call Ted. Angie smiled as she heard her mother’s muffled yelling through the door, while she finished watching her show.
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A couple of years later, when she was ten and wanted a cell-phone, both parents told her that she didn’t need a phone and that they really couldn’t afford it. So one day she told her father that Monica had said that he’d better not get her a cell-phone or that she would take it away. This stirred Ted’s anger; after all, who was Monica to tell him what he could and couldn’t do. That very night he took Angie to get a phone and he sneered as they got in the car saying, “I dare your mom to take this away from you!” Angie just sat quietly, beaming and nodding in agreement.
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Then there was the time, when she was fourteen and money was missing from her mother’s dresser drawer. Monica knew it had to have been Angie, but when she confronted her, she said that her father had told her that his child support checks should be going directly to her and that she should just go get “her money” from her mother’s drawer. Again, Monica flew into a rage and called Ted immediately. Despite his vehement denials, she refused to believe anything he said. After hanging up on him, she cried on Angie’s shoulder, telling her how rotten Ted had always been to her. Angie spent the rest of the evening consoling her mother and no mention of the money was ever made again.
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There are a thousand other examples I could give, but you get the idea. Chances are that you know a family like this; in fact, you may even be a family like this. But if you are a friend of Ted and/or Monica, you probably just want to shake them and say, “Don’t you see what Angie’s doing to you to – don’t let her distract you from what she’s doing.” If you can relate to that, then you can probably understand how it feels to watch my Republican/Conservative/Right Winged friends, neighbors and family, battling with my Democrat/Liberal/Left Winged friends, neighbors and family, over all things political. The polarization of the American public during the last three presidential election cycles has reached epic proportions, with a steady stream of anger and accusation raging through every conceivable forum (e.g. Facebook, the editorial page, the blogosphere…). As a person who’s never been willing to get into bed with either, I will say that these folks are like Ted and Monica in this story; and our elected officials have become like little Angie.
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The reality is that our elected government officials have steadily leveraged their position over the last few decades so that it has become very lucrative to be in “public service” and sadly, their votes are too often reserved for the highest bidder. Those bidders are generally driven by wealthy lobbyist groups, whose voice seems to resonate much louder than that of the general public. As the state of the average family in America continues to steadily decline, our elected officials have become wonderfully insulated from the impact of their own decisions. They will not suffer the affects of bankrupting the Social Security system, or driving the Medicare program into the ground, or from the huge budget deficits that most states are now facing; nor will they have to worry about how the health care system weathers their efforts to reform it. They have become like a large company of high priced consultants, who produce little more than rhetorical gains; and yet if they were evaluated in the same way a private sector company is, we’d have to admit that this organization is highly inefficient, top heavy, over priced, unproductive, unreliable and severely over-budget. In many ways they are like a brokerage firm, who we’ve entrusted to invest our hard earned (tax) dollars; but given their performance would anyone seriously invest with such a company. Yet in spite of their blatant manipulation of the process and their obvious failure to produce worthwhile results, they seem immune from genuine accountability. Just like little Angie in the story, they’ve found that all they need to do is stir up some dialogue between the left and right; and in the ensuing chaos their indiscretions and inefficiencies are soon forgotten.
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If we could see ourselves in this little analogy, we would also be able to see that Ted and Monica need to quit taking the bait. Its past time for them to stop blaming each other for what Angie is willfully initiating. If by some amazing stroke of foresight they could catch the wisdom of setting aside their differences long enough to deal with this child, she would have no choice but to change her tactic. If they’re not able to grasp that vision, it’s likely that they’ll one day be raising their grandkids, paying off Angie’s student loans and blaming each other for all their misery.
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America has always been made up of a diverse mix of viewpoints, so the fact that we don’t all agree on what is best is nothing new. The problem comes when our system of government becomes disconnected from the people it is supposed to represent and is allowed to run without any real accountability. As near as I can tell, the checking and savings accounts are dry and little Angie has her parent’s credit cards at the mall. Ted and Monica can get on the phone (or Facebook, or on their blog…) and blame each other, or they can go after this spoiled child. If they choose the former, they just need to remember that when the bills come, they won’t be addressed to Angie.
Bjcorbin's Blog 
Along the Path to Glory
April 19, 2010 by bjcorbin
The longer that I walk the journey of faith the more that I am convinced that our relationship with God is only as close as we want it to be and that if we feel that God is distant; it is because we’ve not done our part in cultivating that relationship. The scripture says that if we’ll draw close to Him, He will draw close to us; that if we’ll seek Him, we will find Him; and that if we’ll open the door to Him, He will come in. In every case, we’re called to take the first step and God promises to be responsive. Along the way I’ve encountered those who claim to be seeking Him and not finding Him, but I’ve noticed that many times these ones aren’t really as interested in finding Him as they are in finding something that they believe He can give them. In such cases, their faith and hope is not rooted in the person of God, but in that “something” that they believe that He can provide for them.
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It seems to me that our first step toward God is generally driven by the realization of our need for Him; and while that is a necessary step, it is important that we not stop there. If our need becomes the motivation, the fulfillment of that need will generally cause us to cease our pursuit. In the scripture, we see an example of this in the story of the ten lepers. These men understood that they had a need and on some level they believed that Jesus could address that need; but once their issue was resolved, nine of them couldn’t even be bothered to come back and say thank you. We frequently see this in churches today; where a circumstance will drive a person to cry out to Jesus, but once that circumstance is resolved, we never see them again. Such a person can claim to believe in Jesus and they may even have a testimony of how He’s worked in their lives; but they cannot necessarily claim to have a relationship with Him or even to be a part of His family.
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This needs based pursuit of God can be taken a step further, in that we can come to view Him as the source of all good things and therefore the provider for all of our needs. This too is a valid revelation to have, but again it keeps our needs at the center of our motivation and it doesn’t necessarily drive us toward relationship. I believe that the man healed through Peter and John at the gate (called Beautiful) to the temple could be symbolic of this mindset. He sat at the gate everyday, presumably because he recognized some virtue in God’s people and maybe even in what was going on there; but he himself didn’t feel as though he could enter in. Today, there are many in the church that come because they recognize that they have needs and that God has the ability to meet those needs; but they don’t feel personally connected to Him and/or as though others have been afforded access that hasn’t been granted to them. Such people can be identified by their tendency to exalt gifted ministers, to drift away when their needs are being met and to be angry with God when they perceive lack in their life. While it is Gods’ heart to meet the needs of His people, this paradigm threatens to reduce the mission of the “Body of Christ” to little more than that of a benevolent service organization (e.g. the Lions Club, Meals on Wheels…).
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It seems to me that Gods intent since the fall of man has been to reconnect us to Him and that the hindrance to this has always been our insistence on doing things our own way. The Ark of the Covenant, the Temple, Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, the tearing of the veil, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit… all demonstrate His desire to be in “direct” relationship with His people and yet mankind continues to find ways to squander these provisions. While the Lord revels in His role as our provider, His heart is to be so much more than that. The temple was never meant to be a monument to an historical God, it was meant to be a place to encounter the living God (i.e. in the present tense). As the Lord meets us at the place of our need, our thankful hearts bring us into the gates and our praise draws us into the courts. As He inhabits our praise, the tangible sense of His nearness moves us to the place of genuine worship (i.e. in Spirit and in truth) and of submission to His will. As we step toward Him, He steps towards us and His glory is revealed. As we behold His glory, we are transformed by it and we begin to reflect His image. Like Moses coming from the mountain or the Apostles emerging from the Upper room, our “unveiled faces” reflect His glory and it becomes apparent to those around us that we’ve been in His presence. Through this reflection of His glory within us, He draws men unto Himself and His commission for us is fulfilled.
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We can be truly grateful for what He’s done and even be willing to sing His praises, yet never reach the place of genuine worship, submission, relationship, transformation or of Him being glorified in us. We can continue on to the place of worship, submission and even relationship, yet if we never get close enough to behold the glory of the Lord, it is doubtful that His glory will ever be revealed in us. Within the Charismatic movement there is much ado about “the anointing” (i.e. the spiritual gifts & supernatural abilities given by God for the work of ministry), which is no doubt a tremendous blessing; but it was never meant to become a substitute for the manifest presence of God (i.e. the glory). This emphasis on “the anointing”, without a corresponding pursuit of the person of God, only serves to divert our focus from the “Author & Finisher of our faith” and onto ministers and ministries. Evidence that such an imbalance exists would include ministers who are treated like superstars and church members who experience little or no genuine transformation. At the gate called beautiful, Peter & John did not give the crippled man what he thought he needed (i.e. money); instead they allowed the glory of God to be revealed in them. Beyond the physical healing that this man experienced, it says that he entered into the temple with them and that he praised the Lord. As we’ve become the temple of His Holy Spirit, we need to remember that the glory cloud did not descend upon the temple from the sky, but that it rose up from within the temple. It is Christ “in” us that is the hope of glory; and all of creation continues to wait in eager expectation for the revealing of the sons of God.
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