Larry Craig and Accountability
I regard [tag]accountability[/tag] as an extremely important, even critical value. Not that it’s more fundamental than others logically, but it helps hold people to such values as they profess and as are expected of them by law and custom. If people are not expected to uphold the values they profess, then there is little point being concerned precisely what those values are.
Senator [tag]Larry Craig[/tag], who hopefully won’t hold that title for long, has fallen afoul of this value of mine. He wanted to avoid public scrutiny, so he plead guilty. Now he wants to pretend that his pleading was improper. Is it possible that in some way a United States senator did not understand precisely what he was doing? I see two options. Either he knew what he was doing, and now he’s trying to avoid the consequences, and thus should not be a Senator because he lacks integrity, or he didn’t understand his own situation, and thus should not be a Senator because he’s too stupid.
Having said this, I think there is a stronger reaction to Craig’s action largely because of the involvement of homosexuality, which is not fair. Senator [tag]David Vitter[/tag] has more to answer for morally, in my view, even though he has not been convicted, nor has he displayed the same level of stupidity that Craig displayed. I think much of this case doesn’t look so good from the police side. But if a U. S. Senator can’t take responsibility for his own actions who can we expect to do so?
We are told that Senator Craig might decide not to resign if his guilty plea can be vacated (Source: MSNBC.com). I think that is ridiculous. We have a serious need for leaders with integrity. What we’re getting is loud claims and no accountability.
I can’t help but consider it a failure of the church to raise moral individuals within society that we have the kind of leaders that we find ourselves with. It seems the church is too often only concerned with attempting to assert itself on some political position or the other rather than tending to the conditions of the individuals within. When it engages at that level, it fails to make an impact. It’s not our political system that needs what Christianity has to offer, it’s the people in the system.
I agree with you. It seems to me that we are abandoning the gospel, which might well transform our society, in favor of a few laws that have no chance of doing anywhere near as well.
I do not mean that Christians should have no political involvement. But I would suggest that our primary activity as the church should be to transform lives, one at a time, according to the gospel commission.