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can’t touch what really ails us. Any healing of the nation that doesn’t get at the
underlying spiritual cause of its troubles will only be palliative at best. A cure,
not just political hospice care, is what we need.
The truths of the Lord’s Word are the medicine that can revitalize our civil
order. But they must be freely accepted, understood and applied. Then they
become “rational truths by which those who are in evils and falsities are led to
think soundly and live becomingly.” Such truths are the “leaves for the healing
of the nations” that grow on the tree of life (love to the Lord) in the holy city
New Jerusalem. (Revelation 22:2; Apocalypse Revealed 936)
How differently the speeches of the candidates would affect us if we
perceived in them a love of truth! Real truth, not “talking points” drilled into
them by “focus groups” and pollsters. And what about the country they seek
to lead? If the people as a whole were more concerned with and affected by
spiritual truth, would they not be more deserving of leaders who were similarly
concerned and affected?
There is a lot of dissatisfaction among the people with the quality of the
candidates, but a deficiency in political leadership probably reflects a deficiency
in the people as a whole. No political leader can make the people good and
wise, but good and wise people will produce good and wise leaders.
“In people who love truth because it is true, theological issues dwell on the
highest level of the mind; moral issues are located on the middle level, below
theological issues; and political issues dwell on the lowest level, below moral
issues.” (Apocalypse Explained 852--section 186)
We need to think and act on all three levels, while keeping in mind their
relative importance. The spiritual (meaning especially love of the Lord and
thought enlightened by His Word) flows into and forms the moral sphere by
which spiritual principles are brought into actual life. The two higher degrees,
the spir itual and the moral, then flow into the civil and give it its vitality and
quality.
In the true order of things, political issues are the lowest of the three great
categories of human thought and life. They are important, though, because
human beings were created to live in communities, and are thus by nature
political creatures. We are not just political creatures, however, and must avoid
becoming so caught up in political enthusiasms that we lose sight of the deeper
issues of human life. The body politic then becomes soulless.
The purpose of a nation’s civil order is to provide a foundation to support
the spiritual and moral planes from which the civil is derived. The abstract
principle of “justice,” for example, needs courts, presided over by wise and
honest judges who look to that principle, and police officers to enforce the law,
if justice is to become a reality in the world.
Political matters are important because the civil plane is the ultimate (in
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