What has Cinderella to do with Politics

’Tis the season of Municipal elections, Tory conventions and Senate scandals. The history of politics is a sordid tale: of the power hungry manipulating privilege for personal benefit; of dictators forcing rule over exploited people; of tyrants extending influence by war and conquest

Yet there may be more of a common thread to both politics and our favourite love stories like Cinderella than it appears. “Once upon a time . . . happily ever after,” lurks in those tales and books like Utopia, reflecting a perfection of love and life that our hearts yearn for and our best experiences imply.

Political theorist John von Heyking’s book title, Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, evokes a sense that, despite its excesses, even politics arises from the notion that there is an ideal to strive for beyond the ravages of earthly life—a thirsty longing that wrenches our hearts but is never fully satisfied.

I’m sure most politicians start off with a desire to improve community life, but undermine their good intentions by the subterfuge, manipulation and compromise that political ambition seems to require. So as men envision the ideal society and strive for it, maidens also dream of perfect love.

But if we could read the rest of the story of Cinderella and her prince, we might find a degeneration of their love into self-serving manipulation. But neither evidences of fallen partners or politicians should blind us to the desire God has placed in our hearts for the perfection only found in Him.

Pascal wrote: “There is a God shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus.” If God can complete the yearning of the human soul, then He is also the source of a satisfying and enduring marriage.

Depravity?

When I first learned to ride a bicycle, I was let loose on the streets of my neighbourhood and almost immediately came into conflict with another user. My problem was a very simple one; I was riding on the wrong side of the road as the other user testily informed me.

My father had not taught me the first rule of the road—to ride or drive on the left (that was in England of course). A moment’s thought reveals to us the chaos produced without this one simple and basic rule.

When it comes to human nature, most are poorly informed of the one simple rule that governs all human behaviour, and must be taken into account in any process of governing: that is our total depravity.

This very definitely goes against the grain, especially as it suggests that we have nothing good in us. But it simply means that everything we do is somehow infected with sin; we act with mixed motives and engage in undesirable fantasies.

Society assumes the ultimate good in all, a mistaken notion that contributes as much to society's ills as sin itself, by applying incorrect notions. Sin is regarded as a correctable defect rather than a terminal disease. Compare the name of Canada’s prison system: Corrections Canada!

By contrast the Bible teaches that we are all infected by sin and need inward cleansing by our Creator. The first line of defence for our children is a commitment to Jesus Christ, responding to their recognised need of cleansing and forgiveness; first as an initial experience of salvation, and then as an ongoing need in daily life.

Unfortunately, these are so basic that we take them for granted and forget to clearly instruct our children of them—as my father forgot to inform me of the first rule of the road.

The Real Gift

Things as gifts are too often apologies for gifts. A true gift is a gift of ourselves and things make a poor substitute. That is not to say that gifts given as remembrances at Christmas, birthdays and other anniversaries are not meaningful, but the presence of the giver has greater worth.

Two of our daughters live a distance away from us, and they send us cards on our birthdays with wonderful and welcome sentiments, but it is the phone call, the desire to speak with us, to be with us for a while, that we appreciate most.

The gift as a substitute for love is probably seen at its most destructive in the relationship between parents and children. The absent father, whose work precludes sufficient time with his children, but showers them with gifts and money, may well leave his children empty and rebellious. Too often they become the “spoiled brats” that plague our society to the astonishment of their parents who “gave them everything they wanted.” Everything, that is, except a gift of themselves—time with their children.

The real gift is time: time to listen or play, time to give advice, rejoice in accomplishment or complete a task together, time just to “hang out” and simply be together. Our time is a real gift because it is limited and thus our most precious commodity. The minutes or hours we spend with and for another is time we will never have again and cannot be replaced.

The years that our children are with us, difficult and interminable though they may seem at the time, eventually pass all too quickly, and it is the time we failed to be with them that may haunt us the most.

Blog excerpted from Happy Together:Daily Insights for Families from Scripture, by Ann and Bryan Norford. 
Available on Amazon

Governing by Financial Folly

What a great idea for financially strapped families. Every time the family can’t pay its credit card debt, the bank obligingly raises the limit to give them more spending money. Easy fix. Until the monthly interest builds up to more than the family income. What then?

This is the problem the USA faces, and “raising the debt ceiling” is the same as raising their “credit card limit.” The Democrat penchant for bigger government and the increased spending that supports it—especially Obamacare—consistently raises the US debt to more than their “limit.”

Debt, and a government that consistently increases the debt, is the major crisis facing the States. The Republicans need to attempt drastic action to stem the debt tide—but not the current or similar games that could make the problem worse.

Unfortunately, the US government policy of debt accumulation to achieve their desires is an example most American households copy. So, until some sanity prevails, the majority of Americans will vote for a government that approves their financial foolhardiness by example.

If the world’s economy is largely dependant on the United States economy, the current course of US financial policy will spell disaster for the world—perhaps worse than a new world war might do! Perhaps we voters need to be the example, and rein in our personal debt.