Like Father, Like Son

[HKHaugan]

Like Father, Like Son 

Ultimately when we speak of truth it is not about common sense or worldly wisdom or intellectual accomplishment or balanced emotionality.  No, it’s not about those things.  Truth starts with spiritual understanding.  The very concept behind the word itself is spiritual.  Truth is derived spiritually and sourced in its author who is God.  When Jesus said He was the way, the truth and the life (Jn.14:6), it was a declaration different from anything the world had ever known.  Truth was not a human concept that people attain to, a realization that is intellectually and experientially arrived at.  Truth is a person whose words are alive and reflect not only how God thinks, but the way we were created to think.  Truth is thinking like God which is exactly what Jesus did…and does…and will continue to do.  He doubles down on that when He says, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father (Jn.14:9) and when He exclaimed, “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was, I Am (Jn.8:58)!”

 If you’re like me  I dread political conventions with all the rhetoric that is full of promissory notes never paid, ranting and raving about they are going to do to give you stuff, plus a lot of personality build-up based on emotional descriptions of the warm fuzzies like kissing babies, the warm affectionate embraces of parents that raised them, the fishing trips where they bonded and so on.  All that is exploited to present a person who can be trusted to do the job because of their emotional acceptability.  The press loves that kind of stuff.  The reason?  They know they can manipulate and control people who base their lives on making a ‘good appearance.’  Politicians smile a lot.  I hope people can see through that stuff.  

 But let me say that there was something that did grab my attention.  It was the comments of the talking heads whose job is to analyze and comment on what has been said.  In this case it was the CNN reporters giving their take on the speeches of the two sons of the President and their characterizations of them plus talks made by a black senator and the former governor of South Carolina, a woman born of Indian parents.  The latter two were carefully handled without critique for obvious gender and color purposes.

  It was the remarks the ‘talking heads’ made about the two sons that got me to go back and look at what they said.   The sons were holding up their father as someone whose policies they believed were giving the nation a necessary boost.  They were strong voiced and emotional in their delivery.  One could hardly not be impressed by their sincerity.  But the critics began their evaluation by stating that anyone could have given those speeches because they were just political themed.  The four subtly negative commentators were nodding in agreement.  Secular minds have a secular agenda laced with a secular cynicism.

 What struck me was these were two sons of a prominent father who were successful and passionate about their father and what he had done.  My experience of watching and being a father is that children do not usually stand up in front of millions of people delivering the principles and policies of their fathers.  I have seen it in some athletes and occasionally here and there but for two sons to say what they said.  They sounded exactly like their father and delivered like their father and spoke in a way that showed they lived what their father wanted them to be.  Now here’s the point.  They didn’t have to do that.  It was not forced on them.  To me it was apparent they made the choice to speak for their father themselves.  Yet the critics missed that point.  The sons believed the principles upon which their father based his life.  It wasn’t the time for soapy melodrama.  That does not mean the father and the sons were perfect, but the principle is clearly what Jesus presented in His life, His love for His Father and living as His Father’s Son. He believed in His Father, He trusted His Father and He was motivated by the Spirit of His Father’s love wherever He was.  Jesus was always about doing His Father’s will.  All of us were created in the image of God to be like Him and when Jesus is in our lives, when He is the focus for our thought and behavior, we know the Spirit is there moving in us with the same dynamic. 

 When your mind and heart are spiritually oriented you see things in the world in a spiritual context. Even in political conventions and other least expected places.  Praise the Lord for that.