Politicians and Promises

The first day of a brand new year! This season is synonymous with all kinds of promises and resolutions as we use the change of year to mentally shut the door on the past and throw open a new one filled with the possibilities of fresh starts.
Promises are also synonymous with politicians, with most of us long past truly believing that these promises will be meaningfully fulfilled. This is because we have been let down so often, leaving many of us more than a little cynical and disillusioned.

The award winning website PolitiFact.com even has an Obameter – a bar graph tracking the fulfillment of Obama’s campaign promises. The site informs us that out of 513 election promises made, Obama has so far kept 75 of them while compromising on 20 and breaking 9. The rest of the promises have so far seen no meaningful action, in other words nothing has been done about them yet.

Closer to home our own President Jacob Zuma promised Parliament in June that the government would create 500 000 jobs by the end of the year (2009). In a report they recently compiled, the Business Day confirmed that only 223 568 job opportunities out of the 500 000 had actually been created (see Business Day, 04/12/09). Of course it should also be remembered that in the meantime the recession caused a loss of a million jobs through this year, while the unemployment rate increased to 24.5%.

This only underlines why so many of us feeling even more cynical about politicians and their promises then we do about even our own new year resolutions. Yet, the question needs to be asked – is cynicism really an appropriate response for a Christian?

Of course, we need to be realistically aware that many politicians have proved themselves untrustworthy. And of course, in other areas of South African life there is much to be concerned about especially regarding poverty, crime and disease.
Despite all this, shouldn’t someone of faith look to be aware of the negative and yet not be coloured and shaped by it? As Eugene Peterson reminds us when we narrow our eyes in suspicion the world correspondingly narrows around us. Instead, we should be living with hope and a sense of wonder. Hope, because we know that despite the fallibility of all human beings, God IS in this world and working, and wonder, because we have been called to become a part of what God is doing.

Yes, there is no doubt about it that bad things do happen and people will let us down. Yet, at the same time, God is alive and on the move in this world and if we follow him we can live in the light and hope of that.
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This article has been written by Gareth Killeen, a minister, networker and editor of CruxMobi.

What does the Good News of Christmas have to say to the bad news of the headlines?

Have you ever noticed how the news headlines at Christmas just do not seem to respect the season? While we are singing of Jesus bringing peace and hope to the earth, even a cursory glance at the headlines reminds us of the harsh realities of crime, poverty and disease.

In this season of Christmas with ‘peace on earth and mercy mild’ being sung, everyday children’s visions of sugar plums are washed away with the hot tears of grown up disappointment and despair.

Yet, this should not be surprising to us because Christmas has always been a season of stark contrasts. It is a tale of both light and dark. John’s Gospel speaks quite plainly to this in John 1.5: “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.”

John’s Gospel contrasts light which symbolizes Christ’s hope, life and meaning with darkness which represents despair, blindness and chaos. It is a contrasting image for a season of contrasts, where bad news headlines dominate our front pages even while we sing of the hope and peace we have in Christ.

‘The light shines IN the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it’. Of course, we would prefer the light to end the darkness once and for all. We want the light to obliterate the darkness, to take all sadness and despair and just toss the whole mess into some cosmic trash can.

In fact, sometimes those bad news headlines loom so large in our reckoning that we begin to fear they WILL overcome the light. Sometimes goodness and love seem so small in comparison to the constant problems that dominate our newspapers that we begin to lose hope.

It is then we need to remember that even the faintest flicker of light is enough to change everything. Professor Laura Lewis, a Bible teacher at Austin Seminary, tells the story of a student who prepared a lesson on Isaiah 9.2, which reads “the people who walked in the darkness have seen a great light.”

When the time came for this enterprising student to lead her fellow classmates through this lesson, she took them into a basement situated a couple of stories below ground level. She sat them down and then read: “You are a people who live in a land of deep darkness.” And then she turned out the light.

Since this basement was so far underground, it was plunged into total dark. Some of the students gasped in shock with the going of the light, their senses numbed by the heavy, all pervasive dankness of the total dark. There they sat in silence for five long minutes, until she read, “Those who lived in a land of deep darkness – on them a light has shined.”

With these words she lit a candle. Now, by no means did that candle extinguish the darkness, nor did it even fill the vast basement room with light, but at the same time it changed everything.

It changed them and their perspectives radically, because it changed quite literally how they saw things. With just the flicker of light, they saw enough to see themselves and each other. They saw surprised faces, puzzled faces and even a few faces streaked with tears. This tiny flame brought all their senses alive again.

For those in the deep darkness, a little light makes all the difference. It changes how we feel, how we listen, how we speak, how we engage life itself, because it changes our perspectives – how we view things, how we see ourselves and others.

A little light makes ALL the difference in the world.

Just as light came into the world through six or seven pounds of infant, so light comes into the world through even the smallest acts of love and hope done in his name.

Remember then that even the tiniest acts of faith, love and hope are light-bringing actions, and that no matter how much darkness we may be facing it cannot overcome even the smallest light, BUT even the smallest of lights forever alters the dark.

This is the Good News of Christmas which will overcome the bad news of everyday newspaper headlines.

Faith & News

In this feature, the editor of Crux Mobi, Gareth Killeen, will regularly explore the intersection of Christian faith and current news and headlines.