Eamonn Clark

Lots of scandals brewing these days. I have written about bad priests before, but here are a few items worth considering today for those who are at their wits end and feel ready to abandon ship.

Adam was born in a perfect state of grace and innocence. He chose with a perfect human freedom to depart from God.

Moses was a wrathful, disobedient murderer.

The first King of Israel, Saul, was a greedy, sacrilegious murderer.

The second King of Israel, David, was a vain, adulterous murderer. He was the best of the Kings.

The third King of Israel, Solomon, was an exceedingly greedy, idolatrous, womanizing slave driver.

Most of the rest of the Kings were monstrous, with only 5 unequivocally good ones. Manasseh, King of Judah, was the worst of them, despite a conversion late in life. He was a genocidal maniac whose zealous idolatry led him to desecrate the Temple with an Asherah pole and to sacrifice his own children by burning them alive. Manasseh had the longest reign of any of the Kings – 55 years. It was his evil which led to God’s choice to allow for the Babylonian captivity.

Judas was a lying thief who sold Christ into death.

Peter thrice anathematized himself out of fear of a slave girl while standing next to the imprisoned Christ whom he had only moments earlier sworn his undying allegiance to in the hopes of ushering in a worldly messianic kingdom.

Some of these men were repentant. Some were not. The examples could be multiplied, but the point is that we are not to put our trust in princes, as the Psalm says (146:3), even when those princes are appointed by God and specially blessed by Him… Though they sit on the seat of Moses and we must do what they say, we must not be like them. (Mt. 23:2) And their personal holiness or lack thereof matters naught for the holiness of the grace of God.

We are doing better than ancient Israel, and we are doing better than the Church of that first Holy Thursday.

The ship has always been in a storm… It has always been guided by the imperceptible winds of providential grace and always will be until the end. (Ps. 107:27, Mt. 14:22-33) So don’t jump off – there is no telling if you will be swallowed by Jonah’s whale or by the Leviathan instead.