The buzz in the Canadian political realm since Wednesday morning this week has been the election defeat of the Liberal party at the polls in Toronto’s St. Paul’s riding. But what’s so important about St. Paul’s? It’s just an area of 14 square kilometers with under 120,000 people in the midst of a busy city. Yet, the result is significant. St. Paul’s has always been a barometer of Liberal voting habits. People in that riding vote according to the party and not the local politician. And St. Paul’s has been a Liberal stronghold since 1988; its loss represents a serious crack in the support base that the Federal Liberals had relied on. What has interested me in this entire saga has been the reaction of the government to their loss at the polls. Various ministers including the Prime Minister stated that “they had heard the voice of the people“. What follows, however, is finger-pointing and blaming of the Conservative party, and layer upon layer of reasons and excuses for doing poorly. It isn’t surprising that observers were quick to point out that such “hearing” is unfortunately empty. It has not resulted in any changes to several really bad political attitudes and decisions. Foreign policy is still poorly managed, the economy is still teetering at a freefall into debt, taxation has increased dramatically to cover expenses and promises made overseas, and society is falling apart at the seams from notoriously bad decisions like drug legalization, immigration missteps, and inclusivism policies. “It appears to be a collectively parroted response,” wrote one analyst. “There is doubt that they hear the voice of people if there is nothing done towards making the changes asked by the people.“
That last phrase caught my attention. I wonder if the same thing could be said about our response to God. How often do we hear God speak in His Word or by His Spirit in our daily affairs and we come away struck in our consciences but short on our change of behaviour? If you counted the number of times “I have sinned” is uttered in Scripture, you will discover more than half of them belonging to people who confessed their wrong but persisted in their wrongdoing. When John was baptizing by the waters of the Jordan, he emblematically declared all of Biblical opinion, “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8). Over the next few weeks as we listen to the political rhetoric that comes out of Wednesday’s results, let’s not miss the tug of God on our hearts saying, “Do what My Voice tells you to do.” And it’s not to win votes with the world. It is to obey the heart of God, to live holy and righteous in our present age, to watch our tongues when we choose to open our mouths, and to govern our actions according to His Word. Let’s hear His Voice, and let’s do what He says.
Just Church
“The vision of Just Church is to establish a church in just the way Christ called the church to be – true to His Word, loving Him, loving one another, and loving the lost.”
