Thursday, January 29, 2009

Liar (liar) if were keeping score

Yeah, I hate that band, but the lyrics seemed an appropriate title for this post. Upon reading the Portland Tribune this morning, I found myself a little upset. For those of you who don’t live in Portland, our mayor was found to have lied about his sexual relationship with a younger male. Originally he claimed there were no relations, now he is claiming that they did have sex, but it was after the boy was 18. Technically nothing (by the information we now have) is illegal about this, but the mayor did lie. This article was basically saying that everyone lies, doctors, lawyers, politicians....so we shouldn't be too hard on this guy. I don't know what kind of society we now live in where we are OK with people lying to us, that we merely accept it. I mean I am not going to be the first to cast a stone here, I am guilty of lying too; but it shouldn’t just be excused. There is a difference between forgiveness & repentance and just excusing someone. Arghhhhhh!!!!

Bible Study kind of kicked my butt last night (in a really good way). I have been making myself physically sick with anxiety about a few personal relationship issues. Friends always quote the "be anxious about nothing" verse, but I feel like it is over used. Well last night that verse was put into a whole new light for me. We learned about the 2 aspects of Faith: faithfulness and trust. We learned that the opposite of trust isn't untrust, but rather anxiety: we are not only not trusting God, but essentially replacing Him with fear. And God has not given us a spirit of fear but a spirit of power, of love and a sound mind. His Power will give me strength to have a difficult conversation. His love will help me do so in a way honoring to Him. The sound mind that he offers helps me from being neurotic. I feel a lot more equipped. Please pray with me that I encompass all of these things, especially tonight and the weeks to come.

3 comments:

Rachel said...

Trusting is the hardest thing for me to comprehend. Every time I'm feeling anxious and fearful about the future or what have you, I think of situations in the past that I had no control over that ended up way better than I could've ever imagined. It feels like a weight is lifted. It's hard to preach the gospel to ourselves, but we have to! Thanks for posting.

Corrigan Vaughan said...

I think if it were any other time, this Sam Adams thing wouldn't fly. But in a time of such immense crisis for Portland, and for Oregon on the whole, people are willing to forgive much in order to avoid the enormous issues that would come with his leaving office.

Emil said...

@ cor- i am not in disagreement that we would be screwed if he stepped down, i dont think he needs to. my point is that the general public is believing it is ok to lie without consequence. take clinton for example....he didnt need to step down, but there were consequences for his action (impeachment). the public showed that they didnt believe it was ok to lie. now, this mayor releaizes that he can lie about anything and there wont be consequences because our economy is struggling. im not ok with that.