Reaping What You Sow

This post has been written for the Biblically impaired (read: knee-jerk fundamentalists).

Fundamentalists who re-elected President Bush should be familiar with this saying: "A man reaps what he sows" (Galatians 6:7). Unfortunately, the rest of us have to reap what they are busy sewing as well. It's kind of like my favorite bumper-sticker: "Jesus loves me; everyone else thinks I'm an asshole." Amen, bumper-sticker. Amen.

What I'm talking about is the latest, most blatant abuse of power and public trust thus far by an administration that has already cornered that market. Karl Rove as the Valerie Plame leak? And now a Cheney aide as the second leak? (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050718/ap_on_go_pr_wh/cia_leak_investigation)

Watching the Sunday morning news, it seems evident (and not surprising) that most people are not aware of the facts of this story. Plame is the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was the top US Diplomat in Iraq at the start of the Iraq war. The CIA sent Wilson to check out intelligence that the government of Niger had sold yellowcake uranium to Iraq for nuclear weapons. The chief rationale for the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 was that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Of course Wilson found no such evidence and even criticized the Bush administration for its lack of evidence to go to war. He was silenced, and his wife's name was leaked, even though she was a CIA agent. Knowingly leaking such a name is considered treason. How did her name get out? It turns out Rove and Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff, apparently had something to do with it.

Criminal or just plain stupid? Probably a lot of both but I'm going to with-hold judgment until all the facts are in. Honestly, it's been all I could do to keep from commenting when Rove's name surfaced. I suppose it would be too much to expect that Bush be true to his word about firing the leak(s) once they are found, and being as diligent about catching criminals among his own staff as he is about killing Iraqis.

I suppose in some way this is how every church works, isn't it? The sinners in their midst, the yeast infecting the entire batch, goes overlooked while chosen canvas society looking for the next heathen to convert. Much like the Pharisees I suppose who were convicted by Jesus of traveling over land and sea to find a convert only to make them hell-bound (Matthew 23:15).

And every good church needs its tough-talking minister to lead the confused sheep around. And that role is played nicely by our president, George Bush. Unfortunately, Bush, like many ministers I've worked with, is in it for himself. He likes the attention and the power, but when it comes to making decent, pragmatic decisions, it rarely adds up.

So, we can probably add this to a growing bushel of fruit produced by this hard-core Christian president and appointed staff. But most who vote for him are unwilling to recognize it as it really is. They have surrendered their higher-thinking for rhetoric that makes them feel good. They sew the wind, and we all reap the whirlwind. (Hosea 8:7)