Appoint Us a King

Appoint Us a King
1 Samuel 7: 15- 8: 20

Almost every day, television and the newspapers report the cost that ordinary people pay for their government. Sometimes the cost lies in expenditure that may be inevitable. Representatives have to be paid salaries and expenses and need buildings to meet in, and perhaps these meeting places need to be reasonably impressive lest the state or the central government look unimpressive. A fundamental task of government is maintaining the country’s independence and thus maintaining an army. The desire to attract able people into government means paying them salaries higher than ordinary people earn. Further, legitimate expenditure shades into more questionable luxury, and legitimate expenses shade into cheating on expense accounts. The problem is not only a financial one. As I write, the news is full of reports of a governor’s aide’s involvement in a sexual assault and of the governor’s crossing a line in the way he sought to protect his aide. It is hard to face the reality that these phenomena are not mere isolated exceptions. They are endemic to the way politics works...