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Our political system is beginning to fail us badly because of our own failure to recognize how our system is manipulated by politicians to exploit us. We have far too many who vote for a candidate because they believe promises that are either “spun” to fit the audience or made with little intent to keep them.

Politicians have figured out that voters either vote based upon party affiliation or because their promises sound good. The problem is that they often make promises knowing they cannot be kept. They also know that few voters really take the time to learn about the issues or analyze whether the promises are realistic.

We have recent examples of this including oil shortages (a problem politicians have manipulated for over 40 years and never fixed) and our recent economic disaster.

People must realize that we have to live in the world the politcians create for us! If we fail to make good choices and we vote based upon “promises” without thinking them through, we deserve the terrible things that will result from our lack of forthought.

The lesson is “Learn all you can about issues and think for yourself rather than depending upon party affiliation or promises designed to lure us to sleep.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, a great thinker who died almost 150 years ago speculated about the political problems facing America. He said, “The American Republic will endure until the politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”

Think about what has been happening for the past year as we prepare to vote in a few weeks. de Tocqueville had it exactly right! We are being “bribed to death” by both parties – and getting almost nothing in return!

“Life Hurts, God Heals” is a great program at Morningside Church. We work with kids who are having problems with their lives and help them learn how to cope with them with God’s help. This Fall was the first time it’s been run at Morningside and though we’ve had some great results, a program like this can always be improved. I want to track what is happening and keep a list of what I think can be improved. At the end of this session the team can get together and see what changes can be made to make the program even more beneficial and attractive to kids who need help working their way through their problems.

It seems like America has changed, often in a bad way, since I was young. Things that used to matter don’t. Things we thought were wrong are now considered normal. The problem is that while much of the change seems harmless, it’s not. Example: Marriage used to mean much more than it does now. These days it’s kind of like “dating”. If you don’t like everything about it, you simply move on. The problem is that you keep moving on. The best times in many relationships comes after the couple faces and deals with difficulties and finds out they can depend upon each other.

Another example is the media. Freedom of the Press was established in the Constitution so that the media could be a watchdog of sorts to expose things that were simply wrong or inconsistent with the law or our values. Today the media is an advocacy group. The problem is that people have difficulty finding a reliable source to get an honest description of what is really going on in the political world and society in general. Now, for the most part, people simply pick a side and stick with that side regardless of what it does, what it stands for and where it takes them. You can’t really deal with a problem correctly unless you know the truth – and you can’t know the truth without a good information source. In today’s world, that’s hard to find.

Those are only two examples.

Why does this matter? Simple. People’s values are being diluted because they don’t seem to matter as much anymore. We are letting politics become the reason we do things and, as we find out almost every day, politics is a poor excuse for good values.