Getting The Leaders We Deserve

Throughout scripture, God deals differently with "the people", compared to their leaders. He uses leaders like tools in His hands: hardening Pharaoh's heart, directing kings' actions like water, raising up rulers and bringing them down. One leader can be used to affect change among many people.


But God's attention to the people isn't always sunshine and lollipops. While the topic of this post isn't judgment, it is useful to observe God's pattern of escalating judgment. First comes instruction, then blessing and prosperity, then warning and reminder, then silence. What happens after the silence can take your breath away. Literally.


In the Torah (Numbers 16) God had already quit talking to the people, giving them the silent treatment. Through all their wilderness grumbling and complaining—despite His having instructed and blessed and prospered and warned and reminded them—they hadn't learned to grin-and-bear-it out in the wilderness with that manna. They had turned into a mob. So Korah and 250 Israelite leaders, oblivious to their own peril, mounted a challenge—it was a peaceful protest, they weren't armed—to Moses and Aaron. Korah and company had heard from the people and brought forth genuine hardships. 


But Korah was on the wrong side of the issue. He didn't realize that years of stewing in his own juices had turned him into a frog in a near-boiling kettle. Walking toward their doom, he and his party boasted of being "God's people". With their utter lack of discernment, they didn't realize He'd stopped talking to them. Costly mistake: they and their families were immediately swallowed alive when the earth opened up beneath them. Stunned for a moment, the people shut up. But the following morning they again griped about Moses and Aaron's domestic policy...so another 15,000 were killed by the Lord until Aaron was able to atone. 

For more than 40 years God didn't change leaders, he changed the people—besides Joshua and Caleb, nobody born in Egypt made it alive into the Promised Land.


With that background, let's move on to the topic of choosing the right leader. Specifically, who should we vote for as President of the United States? America isn't a theocracy like ancient Israel. We don't have a King. We are permitted to elect our own leaders. 


God instructed our founders, blessed our land, warned and reminded us of our founding principles...but He seems to have gone silent recently. This is a dangerous moment. What we do next will make or break America. It isn't so much whom we will choose, as much as what our choice says about us. God cares about the values, beliefs and convictions that motivate our choice. He will indeed "give us a leader" based on His evaluation of our heart condition. So here's my advice:


If you believe in God—if you think He spoke to our founders, that He still speaks thru scripture, that wisdom lifts up her voice and that knowledge follows repentance...then I suggest you seek Him like never before. Don't look to government as savior, don't turn inward like a child to bemoan your current circumstances, don't just seek your own comfort. Tough times call for tough choices...choose somebody who rejects the "drift" of recent decades, somebody who emphasizes the personal responsibility of the people to create wealth. It is a choice between stern, scary liberty versus the soothing promises of big-government benevolence—promises that have not, will not and cannot be kept. 


Personally, I distrust those who would play God by pledging to meet all my needs. I pray we will have the discernment to figure out which candidate is less like Korah and more like Moses.