I’m no huge fan of Christianity Today magazine but the following article is worth the read. You should note that in regards to the kingdom of the Left (the civil world), according to this author we want virtue over policy. Better to have a man with backbone and poor policy, than a man with no spine and great ideas. Especially with our American system of checks-balances, the poor policy usually works itself out. But a leader without virtue isn’t corrected by any amount of legal wrangling. This goes for both sides of the political isle. Policy is only good insofar as it compliments a virtuous character.
Contrast this to the leadership of the Christian church, that is, the pastoral office. Here our policy is everything. The policy (Gospel) is inherently good, despite the lack of virtue of the office holder. The opposite of political office is true. Policy must come first and virtuous character compliments it. In both cases, hypocrisy results from incongruity of policy and virtue. But where policy is born of virtue in civil leaders, with pastors virtue is born of the policy of the Word of God. The first is guided by reason and the second by faith. The first is imperfect due to sin and the later perfect due to its divine utterance. So the hypocrisy of the latter is more grievous because it doesn’t offend man’s character but offends God and His Word.
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