Even if you do not live in America, you are undoubtedly aware of the fiscal and political crisis that is currently unfolding in the halls of Washington, D.C.  Regardless of where people stand on it, I suspect everyone agrees that it is a mess, a massive, seemingly unresolvable mess.
     I will not pretend to offer a specific solution to this crisis, but for me one of the most troubling dimensions of the issue is that people on both sides are claiming that they are promoting their positions because it, they insist, is the most Christian thing to do.
     To this I say:  how do you know?  Although I believe that there are reasonable and credible ways to divine what the Bible is saying, I also believe that, in the end, we do not live in a perfect world.  We live in a world overwhelmed by its own foibles, a world that is unbearably capricious and frustratingly finite, a world that, for these reasons, does not lend itself easily to black and white solutions to very gray problems.  We tread a fine line between intellectual interpretation and subjective mystery, mystery whose parameters are simply beyond our ability to fully grasp.  Even if we think we do, we only rarely know what is precisely right at every moment every day of every year.  We cannot see beyond who we are.
     Walk carefully, conclude cautiously.  As the apostle Paul notes, "We walk by faith, not sight."
     I wish the president and Congress well.