ELECTING HOLINESS AND HUMILITY

While the nation battles in the primaries to elect a new president, is anyone one looking beyond competence for leadership characterized by holiness and therefore humility?

Holiness directly implies that the president would be cleansed from all sin and endued with those virtues that were also in Christ Jesus.  Is that too much to ask? Holiness also implies that the president would be and remain so renewed daily in the Spirit in his or her heart and mind as to be “perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.”

Does that sound impossible?  It sounds improbable, but not impossible.  Perfection in holiness is not being perfect in skill and abilities, understanding, knowledge, or health, but rather to be perfect in love for God and for all others, mature in faith, hope, and charity.  It is a perfection that is grounded in humility that understands that as a nation we are not sufficient in ourselves to solve our problems and achieve our hopes and desires.  Without the Spirit of God, we can do nothing.  Such humility is a right judgment of self by a president, an awareness of one’s sinfulness and helplessness, and of human nature extending beyond self to the culture.  Holiness in a leader at the level of the nation’s president implies humility that disregards honor of self because he or she knows him/herself and neither desires nor values the applause he or she knows they don’t deserve.  It implies a profound love for God and all others, and it implies that the true focus of all honor and glory is God who is able to raise up servants to do his good pleasure for the nation and the world.

Is that too much to ask?