Justice
The Obama Scandals: Character is Destiny
It has been stunning how the growing scandals within the Obama administration have multiplied and widened over the past few weeks. It’s true that second term presidencies are often tainted by scandal during the final four years. Think Ronald Reagan and Iran-Contra in the late eighties and Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the nineties.
But those scandals were relatively minor and confined to one area of either policy or personal conduct. In the case of the Obama scandals, they seem to be popping up everywhere in numerous area of foreign and domestic policy.
I was tempted to title this column “The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost” (to use the infamous phrase of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright). But that would overlook the central truth of it all.
In all of our lives, character is destiny.
I’ve thought a lot about the subject of character over the past few decades because I came to realize many years ago that I needed a lot more of it in my own life.
This coming week I’ll be in Texas speaking at an Hispanic Discipleship School. One of the subjects that they asked me to share on is the development of godly character. I wrote a book on that subject in 1992 with a provocative title–If God Has A Plan for My Life, Why Can’t I Find It? You Have a Destiny. The book is a study in 2 Peter 1:2-11 where the apostle describes seven building blocks of good character:
- Moral Excellence or Virtue
- Knowledge
- Self-Control
- Perseverance
- Godliness
- Kindness
- Love
Peter says that if we possess these qualities and they are growing in our lives, then we will be fruitful and successful both in this life and the next.
Good character produces a good destiny (and reputation).
There are many other character qualities mentioned in the Bible that emanate from the being of God Himself. In Galatians chapter five, Paul first lists a grouping of bad character traits: (5:19-21)
- sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness and orgies.
Then he turns around and gives the famous “fruit of Spirit” listing of great character attributes: (5:22,23)
- love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
In the first list, a person chooses to develop bad character by not imitating the character of God but rather spiraling down into a self-centered world of narcissistic choices.
Paul’s second group is the opposite. A person recognizes their need for God in their life and invites the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to produce good character in them. They are being born again and cooperate with God’s amazing grace.
Good character is the totality of moral traits that we find in the Godhead. We human beings aren’t known for growing it in great abundance. It takes the invasion of God into our lives to soften and humble proud, selfish hearts and re-make them into the image of the Holy.
Character growth–being full of the Spirit of God–should be a supreme goal of our lives.
Paul follows up his teaching on character in Galatians 6:7, 8 where he soberly brings in the destiny part:
“Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever you sow, you will reap. The one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
This is the original context of the chickens coming home to roost comment. You reap what you sow. If you have good character then good consequences will ultimately come to you (though not always immediately). On the other hand, if you have bad character (i.e. do shady, selfish, or evil things) then bad consequences (though not always immediately) will be visited upon you.
And so we come to the Obama scandals. Some things have been “sown” in this present administration. For a time they were hidden or beneath the surface. But now they have come to light and the consequences are beginning to set in.
Benghazi
Many people on the street are still not aware that this small Libyan outpost was the scene of a brutal terrorist attack on September 11, 2012 when four brave Americans, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were viciously murdered.
Why has half of America never heard of Benghazi? Because during the 2012 election, the mainstream media in America chose to not cover this story to quietly aid in President Obama’s re-election.
That’s bad enough, but the greater story is that, from the very beginning, the Administration did not choose the necessary character quality of honesty to report the tragic Libyan events. We now know that the White House and State department circulated a bogus story about the deaths being attributed to a spontaneous uprising or related to an anti-Muslim video.
Benghazi is now a burgeoning scandal, similar to Watergate, in that there was a failure of leadership coupled with an orchestrated cover-up to limit damage to the president. In Nixon’s case, documents were stolen. In Obama’s case, security was neglected and four people died.
Time and many hearings will tell how close this gets to the president himself. But there is no doubt that the administration is now reaping the results of a well choreographed lie.
Truth or honesty is vital in all of our lives. Don’t get too high and mighty pointing your fingers at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. What about your own life? Any cover-ups, misstatements of the truth, or episodes of dishonesty? Do you always tell the truth or do you embellish it at times for personal gain?
We all have a Benghazi-type incident in our closet. The present administration needs to come clean on theirs. How about you?
The IRS
Benghazi is the most lethal of the various scandals because it led to the death of four people. But the biggest scandal now being uncovered in Washington, D.C. is the monstrous perversion of the IRS to intimidate and harass faith-based and conservative movements in this country to silence their voice.
This took place through the non-profit division of the Internal Revenue Service where a different set of principles and tactics were used to suppress conservative voices over the past two years. I’m sure you’re aware of the story by now and it should send tingles up every American spine.
The IRS is the second largest and probably the most feared agency of the US government. It can destroy lives through both taking away our time and confiscating our resources.
The IRS must possess the character qualities of justice or fairness. It must treat all American equally with respect before the law.
To read just one example of IRS intimidation, click hear to hear Dr, James Dobson’s story.
The IRS scandal could bring down the present administration because the IRS touches the lives of nearly every American. If one group can be abused, so that another. That should trouble all of us.
But this scandal should also be a wake-up call of character for us individually. Do you treat all people and groups fairly, or do you carry a self-oriented bias? Are you fair with everybody or do you show favoritism to some?
Let’s clean up our act and be fair and just. Good things follow the sincere pursuit of justice.
The Associated Press and Fox News
The third major scandal swirling in Washington, D.C. involves the Justice Department collecting the phone records of hundreds of AP reporters supposedly to suppress the leakage of government secrets. But by nearly admission, the DOJ went way too far in snooping on reporters, and not focusing on the government leakers themselves.
In the case of James Rosen of Fox News, the Department obtained warrants for e-mails, phone records, and even monitored the phones of Rosen’s parents because they suspected Rosen of being a “possible co-conspirator” in violations of the Espionage Act. Even the Washington Post condemned this blatant abuse of the government spying on “its enemies.”
The bad character traits here are prejudice and concealment. The opposite good character trait is transparency–something that President Obama pledged his administration to when he first took office.
Again, all of us can relate. Got any secret sins that you’ve tried to conceal from others or a Holy God? While we’re rightly pointing the finger at some of our government officials, we’d better be pointing them simultaneously at ourselves.
SUMMARY
A major reason for the current Obama scandals–and there appear to be more than the three mentioned here–is the cancerous growth of government beyond accountability and control. Lord Acton was right when he said that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Erick Erickson of Redstate puts it this way: “The more power any government has, the more power it will abuse. The more money it spends, the more money it will mis-spend. Dysfunction and corruption grow on government like mold on otherwise perfectly good bread. It has nothing to do with party or ideology – it has to do with human nature.”
The Obama Scandals are revealing character flaws within the Administration that will affect its future, its destiny. You reap what you sow. The chickens do come home to roost. Even if it is overlooked or suppressed in this life, it will be fully exposed in the next because the God of the Universe operates by perfect honesty, justice, fairness and transparency.
If the president wants a good personal and public legacy, then he needs to clean up the scandals surrounding him through the practice of godly character. Proverbs 28: 15, 17 tell us, “You can’t whitewash your sins and get by with it; you find mercy by admitting and leaving them.” And “Among leaders who lack insight, abuse abounds, but for one who hates corruption, the future is bright.”
If he tries to sweep them under the carpet or run out the clock on them, he may dodge a bullet temporarily, but not altogether.
1 Timothy 5:24 tells us, “The sins of some people are obvious, leading them to certain judgment. But there are others whose sins will not be revealed until later.”
Character is destiny. You can no more escape that truth than you can escape death itself.
So choose wisely to develop godly character. And choose leaders who will do the same.
A Dred Scott Moment in American History
This is an important week in American history–and I want you to feel its significance. I especially want you to pray for nine very important human beings as a result of your understanding.
I’m sure many of you remember the name of “Dred Scott” from the history books–but you may not recall the magnitude, the infamous nature of the name in American history.
The Dred Scott Decision was handed down by the United States Supreme Court on March 6, 1857 by a 7-2 vote stating that people of African descent brought into the United States and held as slaves (or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves) were not protected by the Constitution and were not U.S. citizens.
The decision was tragic–and flat-out wrong. It led to the Civil War and the death of 600,000 precious lives–all because nine US Supreme Court justices didn’t have the clarity to “judge righteously.”
This week we are faced with another Dred Scott moment. The US Supreme Court is hearing three days of arguments over Obamacare. African-American rights aren’t at stake here–but the rights and future of all of our citizens.
We don’t need another Dred Scott. We need nine individuals to do the right thing.
Those individuals, of course, are the current members of the United States Supreme Court. In recent “man in the street” interviews, I’ve notice how few people even know their names, let alone understand the power that they wield. Here the current US Supreme Court justices, in bullet form for emphasis:
- Chief Justice John Roberts, 57. Nominated by George W. Bush and sworn in 2005.
- Antonin Scalia, 76. Nominated by Ronald Reagan and sworn in 1986.
- Anthony Kennedy, 77. Nominated by President Reagan and sworn in 1988.
- Clarence Thomas, 63. Nominated by George H.W. Bush and sworn in 1991.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 79. Nominated by Bill Clinton and sworn in 1993.
- Stephen Breyer, 73. Nominated by President Clinton and sworn in 1994.
- Samuel Alito, 61. Nominated by George W. Bush and sworn in 2006.
- Sonia Sotomayor, 57. Nominated by Barack Obama and sworn in 2009.
- Elena Kagan, 51. Nominated by President Obama and sworn in 2010.
Memorize those names: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Alito, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Let’s not be part of the uninformed.
These people are far more important than the following list of nine: Snookie, Gaga, Adele, Tiger, Kobe, Brad, Angelina, Bono, and Bieber.
However, what’s ironic (and a major problem in our culture) is that though I gave you just “one word names” in the second list, most of you probably know all of the people–but we don’t know the first or last names of our US Supreme Court justices who just might determine our national fate for years to come.
It’s true that most of the time, Supreme Court justices are fairly inconspicuous. Normally, the states and national Congress pass laws with little controversy so the judges can stay out of the limelight.
Not now. A liberal president–Senate–and House of 2006-2008–gave us a horrendous boondoggle of a bill that contained 2700 pages, created numerous new bureaucracies, would explode the national debt–and most importantly, takes away a number of our God-given liberties.
We need the Supreme Court on this one–and we don’t need them to give us another dreaded Dred Scott decision.
The justices are hearing arguments this week on the future of Obamacare–the massive progressive takeover of healthcare in this nation–representing one-sixth of the economy. At stake in the ruling are a number of complex and nuanced issues, but the heart of the matter is whether the Federal Government, under the Commerce Clause, has the right to force Americans to buy anything– including insurance.
If the justices get this wrong, it probably won’t start a civil war, but it could be the final straw in the coffin of our economic undoing.
A few days ago, we quietly “celebrated” the two-year anniversary of one of the worst laws in American history– The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act popularly known as Obamacare. No one has done a better job of capturing the essence of that ignominious event than John Hayward, one of my favorite columnists at the National Review.
Here is his astute analysis.
(By-the-way, Human Events puts out an excellent Daily Events e-mail of the best blogs or columns that saves a lot of time and reading. You can sign up for Daily Events here.
ObamaCare’s Lonely Birthday
He’s just a bill, sitting here on Capitol Hill
By John Hayward, March 23, 2012
“This week marks the second birthday of ObamaCare, among the greatest legislative disasters in American history. By even the most conservative estimates, its costs are more than double what we were originally promised.”
“It’s going to strip 20 to 50 million Americans of their health insurance, as overwhelmed employers decide the best course of action is dropping coverage altogether, with the resulting fines increasingly viewed as a wise investment to escape ObamaCare’s clutches. The President’s infamous promise that ‘if you like your plan, you can keep it’ has become a bitter joke, of the variety often traded across the Siberian snow.”
“ObamaCare has been causing health care costs to rise, and it will actually reduce our supply of doctors. It has already destroyed thousands of jobs, and it will soon unleash a fresh avalanche of job-killing taxes on job creators. It has destroyed religion and conscience, forcing Catholic institutions to pay for birth control, and even dropping an abortion surcharge upon everyone enrolled in plans that cover elective abortions.”
“Even as it devours American prosperity, liberty, and health, great festering chunks of spoiled legislation have been dropping from ObamaCare’s flanks. The CLASS Act is gone, as are some of ObamaCare’s most instantly repulsive feeding mechanisms, such as the scheme to force American small businesses to submit millions of 1099 tax forms every year. The House just voted to disable the death panels. Enraged Americans have watched Obama’s Health and Human Services Department issue thousands of ObamaCare waivers to politically connected businesses and labor unions.”
“The Supreme Court is on the verge of striking down the very heart of ObamaCare – the individual mandate that gives Congress limitless power to force Americans to purchase politically approved goods from selected private firms – as the Constitutional outrage it so clearly is.”
“Meanwhile, lopsided majorities of Americans favor the complete repeal of ObamaCare, and have consistently done so for years. It might be the best sustained polling ever seen for a policy preference. The latest Rasmussen poll has Americans favoring repeal 57-39 percent. Strong support for repeal reached an eight-month high in the wake of Obama’s war on the Catholic Church.”
“The Heritage Foundation has launched an online petition demanding ObamaCare repeal. If President Obama could somehow be persuaded to repeal the law, it would become, by a huge margin, the most successful job-creation initiative of his presidency.”
“Of course, that won’t happen… but it’s interesting to note that Obama doesn’t seem very eager to talk about his “signature achievement” any more. It’s swirling down the memory hole, along with those nostalgic sepia-toned photo-ops of the President touting Solyndra as one of the greatest successes of his trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ bill. “
“Give Obama another month, with a few more points shaved off his poll numbers, and he’ll be claiming ObamaCare wasn’t his initiative per se. Actually, he’ll start doing that the moment Mitt Romney secures the Republican nomination. Isn’t it funny that the sole political value of this towering legislative triumph lies in convincing voters that RomneyCare is just as bad?”
“The Republican National Committee does what the Obama Administration refuses to do, and commemorates the second anniversary of this melancholy bill with a video birthday greeting. Raise a glass of your favorite government-approved healthy beverage (soon to become a mandatory purchase, under the next wave of “individual mandates”) and celebrate ‘ObamaCare’s Lonely Birthday.'”
Well said.
Obamacare, from its inception, was an act of tyranny–a liberal dream to control the lives of three hundred million Americans. It doesn’t matter what the motivations were for such a bill–and maybe some were sincere. But the practical truth is that Obamacare will be the back-breaker of the American economy and the coup d’etat of sinking America into a European style social democracy.
If you like the future of Greece, or Italy, or Portugal in their present state–that’s the direction Obamacare takes us. It kills the free spirit of the American experiment in liberty.
There are only two final ways to resist the tyranny of Obamacare.
The first is to pray that the Supreme Court justices will see the light to either strike down the individual mandate in the legislation or the entire legislation. It is likely that Anthony Kennedy will be the deciding vote in a close Court decision. Pray for Justice Kennedy (and all the rest).
If the Court gives us another Dred Scott disaster–and it’s happened before in history–we do not need to pick up arms and go to war, but rather win at the polls in November. This is the final realistic option. We must elect a God-fearing, Constitution-honoring conservative majority in both the the US House of Representatives, the United States Senate, and also a US president committed to abolishing the law.
If Mitt Romney gains the Republican nomination, he is committed to doing so. (So are the other Republican contenders.)
But our first stop this week should be to watch the Supreme Court proceedings, pray for the presenters and the justices, and await their decision–which may come sometime this summer.
This is a Dred Scott moment in our history.
May our leaders choose wisely while we back them up in prayer.
Sobering Lessons from the Firing of Joe Paterno
I must admit that Coach Joe Paterno–a football coaching legend at Penn State for the past forty-six years–has been a hero of mine for decades. When he became PSU’s coach in 1965, I was just entering my junior high school years when sports was very important to me.
Coach Paterno made a deep impression. He seemed to be fair, disciplined, a man of integrity and faith, and he produced a great football program. In 2011 he became the winningest coach in all of Division I football history. In an age of slick and arrogant coaches, Joe Pa seemed to be the “Gold Standard” of steadiness and grace.
So when I heard he’d been fired because of some child abuse charges being leveled at a former assistant coach, I inwardly reacted like many Penn State students did. I thought to myself, “Discipline the offender but spare Coach Joe Pa!”
But I was wrong. Joe Paterno needed to go.
Here’s why–and many other things we can learn from the Penn State fiasco.
There was one primary reason I was wrong about Coach Paterno’s firing. I didn’t have the facts. You will never have good judgment about a person or event if you don’t know the truth.
For a few days I sympathized with Coach Paterno and felt that he should stay. Why should a legendary coach be punished for the sins of an assistant? We’d been told in the beginning that Coach Paterno had done his legal obligation. We were also told that he was not under investigation.
So I thought “Just let him finish out the year and then he can step down gracefully.”
One day later the Penn State board of trustees fired him.
How could that be? Was it fair, or just a knee-jerk reaction to an unpleasant situation?
Then I read the state grand jury report–in its entirety. I found it on-line and it came with a disclaimer that the contents of the report were graphic and needed to be looked at with caution.
They were right to warn us. The report turned my stomach.
But the truth set me straight: Joe Paterno needed to be fired.
If you have any doubts, here is the link to the damning realities that took place at Penn State from 1994 to 2009. Before you go there, let me lay out the basic scenario for you.
On November 5, 2011 former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, a one time heir apparent to Coach Paterno, was arrested and released on $100,000 bail after being arraigned on forty criminal charges. The grand jury report states that he raped and abused young boys between the age of ten and fourteen from at least 1994 to 2009.
Some of the serial sex abuse of minors took place on the Penn State campus and in its training rooms. At this point there are eight victims that have come forward. There may be many more.
All of Sandusky’s victims were recruited through a charity he had established called The Second Mile for children from foster or dysfunctional homes. Instead of helping these kids, Sandusky abused and used them for his own sexual pleasures.
In 1999, Sandusky retired from his Penn State duties but still held emeritus status at the college and had access to the athletic facilities. In the fall of 2000, a janitor walked in on Sandusky having sexual contact with a young boy called Victim 8. The janitor reported it to other janitors but a police report was never filed.
On March 1, 2002, a graduate assistant named Mike McQueary (who was on the Penn State coaching staff until forced to take a “leave of absence” just a week ago) saw a naked boy of about ten years old called Victim 2 being sexually assaulted by Sandusky in the Penn State shower room. McQueary was distraught and reported the news to Coach Paterno the next day.
On March 3, Joe Paterno called Tim Curley, Penn State’s athletics director to his home and reported a version of what his grad assistant had told him. Later in the month, McQueary was invited to a meeting with Curley and Gary Schultz, senior vice president for finances and business. The grad assistant reported what he had seen and Curley and Shultz said they would look into it.
On March 27, 2002 McQueary was informed that Sandusky’s locker room keys had been taken away and that the incident had been reported to The Second Mile (Sandusky’s charity). McQueary was never questioned by campus police and heard nothing about any follow-up until he was called to testify before the state grand jury in December, 2010.
Sandusky continued to seduce and rape young boys in his College Township home from 2002-2009. Finally, a boy named in the report as Victim 1, who was eleven or twelve when he met Sandusky, told authorities through a counselor that Sandusky inappropriately touched him several times in a four year period.
In September 2010 Sandusky retired from day to day involvement in The Second Mile charity.
Last week he was arrested, Curley, Schultz and Paterno were fired, McQueary was put on administrative leave, and the Penn State nightmare exploded on the national stage.
All because of one pedophile monster–who has ruined the lives of maybe dozens of young children–and because no one was willing to step forward and do what was right.
There are many sobering things we can learn from the Penn State debacle and actions that must be taken for the university to move forward:
1. We all must be willing to speak out and go to the police when we see a crime being committed. Child rape is a crime–one that can devastate a child for life. There were many people in the Penn State orbit who miserably failed to do their duty–including Coach Paterno. They may have reported what they saw to superiors above them, but that wasn’t good enough. They may have been legally right, but failed the moral test. We need to speak up against sin so that others cannot be hurt.
2. In our sex-crazed society, we must realize that pedophilia and many other sexual sins are not okay–they are brutal and traumatic to individuals and our nation as a whole. Especially the sexual exploitation of children–which takes many forms today including child trafficking and prostitution. We must repent of our sexual debauchery and especially work hard to protect the children.
3. We must admit that power and profits and not more important than individual lives. Each year the Penn State football program nets over 50 million dollars for the university. The athletic director and the vice president for finance did not want to get involved because they were afraid of losing money and prestige. Now they will lose scores of millions of dollars in future civil lawsuits. Your greed will find you out.
4. It takes a lifetime to build a good name, but it can be destroyed through one lapse of judgment. Joe Paterno is a great coach. But his legacy has now been tarnished forever. No matter how many games he won or the character he exhibited during a half century of coaching, it is all scarred now by one colossal act of mis-judgment. He should have followed up with his superiors. Kids were being raped! He should have gone to the police. Rather, he did his nominal part and walked away. It will cost him his legacy.
5. Penn State should release its entire football coaching staff and start over with a new group. It also might be a good idea to voluntarily restrict themselves from post-season play for a year or two to re-establish credibility in the eyes of the public. Some are calling for the shutting down of the football program for a period of time. That wouldn’t be fair to the current players. They shouldn’t suffer for the sins of Jerry Sandusky. However, there must be a house-cleaning to restore the PSU name and brand. That will take some wisdom, integrity and time.
I am really saddened by this story of sexual abuse and cover-up in the sports world. However, it does give us all a good opportunity to look in the mirror.
Most of us think we are pretty good people, or that we’ve been redeemed by God’s grace. But maybe some are harboring secret sins and moral miscalculations that God’s “grand jury report” will one day make plain to the world (it’s called Judgement Day).
When the facts are seen–the truth will be clear about our lives as well.
Only through Christ can our “good name” (and future) be restored.
(Click here to read the grand jury report on the case against Penn State.)