Well, I have really struggled to know what to say about the completely open dementia that’s afflicting the head of the executive branch. President Biden is obviously in one of the stages of Alzheimer’s, or some other form of cognitive decline – anybody who has watched him over the past two years knows that that’s the case. And when Americans went to the voting booth, they KNEW that President Biden was going senile and they didn’t care because Trump was such a no good, nasty, terrible threat to democracy – an existential threat, the likes of which meant that literally anybody was preferable over President Trump. Well, we got what we asked for – anybody but Trump!
And many people are talking about how they feel bad for Joe Biden. And, to be honest, I really don’t feel all that bad for him. I mean, I feel sad that one of the effects of living in a fallen world is that, everyone, if they live long enough, will begin to go senile – including me – someday, if I live long enough, I’ll be standing at the pulpit preaching and I’ll completely lose the thread and they’ll have to retire me, because it happens to everyone. Every human being, if they keep living long enough, will experience dementia. And I watched several family members with Alzheimer’s and there are people in my church who are suffering and it’s sad. But it’s not a tragedy. And that’s a distinction with a difference.
It’s a tragedy that people who used their minds for the glory of God lose their minds. Yes, Christians too experience dementia if they live long enough – this is the common fate of humanity; just like Christians experience physical breakdowns. It’s a tragedy when people who used their minds for good lose their minds. It’s a tragedy because something excellent is lost.
It’s not a tragedy that Joe Biden is going senile. It’s sad, sure. But it’s not a tragedy. Our President spent an entire career lying, flip-flopping and blowing with the wind. He was the eminent politician; he said what would get him elected. He was in the Senate – ironically senate and senile come from the same Latin root, but we’ll have to leave that for the moment – he was in the Senate from 1973 to 2009, when he became Vice President, and in that time he only cosponsored one significant piece of legislation – the 90s crime bill, which he now repudiates! He supported the murder of babies in their mother’s womb; he’s supported eliminating religious freedoms; he’s now supporting gay marriage and transgenderism, and lying about how he’s always supported these things. The man is a weathercock – he will point whichever way the wind blows. He is the consummate empty-suit. He hasn’t used his mind for anything other than scheming and power-grasping and now he has no mind at all – he wasn’t using his mind for the glory of God, only his own glory, and now he has no mind to use. It’s sad. But the justice of God is always sad.
And the justice of God is sad when it falls on Christians too. I too will experience dementia and my body falling apart because of sin – both Adam’s and my own! And right now Joe Biden is experiencing the justice of God – it’s God letting sin run its own course. And when sin runs its course sin always sells the rope that hangs you. Sin is the worm in the apple you put there yourself. Sin is what turns fruit to ashes in your mouth. Sin is the delicious poison you brew for yourself and force yourself to drink.
Joe Biden used all his mental powers to reject God and gain power, and now that he has it he can’t enjoy it because his mind is leaving him. If this were fiction we’d call it poetic justice. And here, the oft quoted words of Muggeridge come to mind:
“So the final conclusion would surely be that whereas other civilizations have been brought down by attacks of barbarians from without, ours had the unique distinction of training its own destroyers at its own educational institutions, and then providing them with facilities for propagating their destructive ideology far and wide, all at the public expense. Thus did Western Man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over--a weary, battered old brontosaurus--and became extinct.”
As Romans 1 says, sin is always its own destroyer. It MUST be, sin must destroy itself because it is opposed to God who is the Way and the Truth and the Life – and anything that opposes God is a dead-end, deception, and death! And sin’s self-destruction is always poetic justice. The man whose greed is never satisfied; the fornicator who becomes impotent; the drunkard who dies by drink; the self-loathing narcissist.
And CS Lewis is so brilliant on this topic. At the end of The Magician’s Nephew there is a conversation between Aslan and Polly and Digory, because the White Witch ate fruit from the Tree of Youth – which confused the children because Aslan had promised she would loathe even the smell of the fruit of the Tree of Youth and would hate it. So, Polly and Digory try to figure out what will become of the Witch.
“Oh – Aslan, sir,” said Digory, turning red, “I forgot to tell you. The Witch has already eaten one of those apples, one of the same kind that Tree grew from.” He hadn’t said all he was thinking, but Polly at once said it for him. (Digory was always much more afraid than she of looking a fool.)
“So we thought, Aslan,” she said, “that there must be some mistake, and she can’t really mind the smell of those apples.”
“Why do you think that, Daughter of Eve?” asked the Lion.
“Well, she ate one.”
“Child,” he replied, “that is why all the rest are now a horror to her. That is what happens to those who pluck and eat fruits at the wrong time and in the wrong way. The fruit is good, but they loathe it ever after.”
“Oh, I see,” said Polly. “And I suppose because she took it in the wrong way it won’t work for her. I mean it won’t make her always young and all that?”
“Alas,” said Aslan, shaking his head. “It will. Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire; she has unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess. But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
The point Lewis is making here is one of the fundamental precepts of Christianity which is that sin turns the object of desire into an object of dread. Sin always corrupts desires and then robs us of our ability to enjoy our desires. And, frankly, I don’t think we Christians really understand desire at all; I think that that’s an area of theology that needs massive work – so if you’re a young person interested in theology – maybe think about doing work on desire because we need it; we don’t understand it. And we don’t understand HOW our desires become dreadful – we just know that they DO.
Joe Biden got what he’s wanted his whole life – he’s attained the object of his desire – and it brings him no satisfaction. His joy is turned to mourning and his gladness to sorrow. And that’s what sin does, it inverts the promises of God. And please don’t mistake me – I’m not just picking on Biden – all power-hungry people, including Donald Trump, come to find that the power they attain is a misery to them. And, incidentally, it’s a misery to everyone else! Douglas Adams famously quipped:
“The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
People who want power should never be given power – and I think that that’s, as a general rule, a pretty good one. But, again, while it’s a misery to be ruled by the power-hungry, it brings no joy to them. Because the truly power-hungry, like all greedy people, are constantly scheming to hold on to power. They are never at mind’s rest. They’re always worried about coups and counter-coups. They can never stop plotting and scheming. Tolstoy talks about this, when describing Napoleon. He says that the king is history’s slave. Plato in the Republic says that kings, especially foolish kings, are slaves.
The great irony is that every human being on earth is desperate for power – we all want it. Yet we don’t know what it is, where it comes from, or where it’s going, and when we get it we find out we’ve got the wolf by the ears – we can’t let go and we can’t hold on, and it isn’t a particularly pleasant place to be!
I've come to the conclusion that we really don't know what power is, we have no clue; yet people talk about it all the time -- and we're like a whole kingdom of blind people talking about the sun -- we feel it, but we haven't the slightest idea what it is.
But I digress. My point is that Joe Biden needed a script for the press conference because he’s losing his mind. And in that I see something very sad, but in no way unique. He is become a living metaphor for the way sin robs us of satisfaction and prevents us from enjoy attaining our desires. Joe Biden spending his whole life trying to be president and then not being present once he’s become president is a picture of sin.
And this is not just something that happens to unbelievers. It isn’t just the lost who give in to sin and experience misery because of it. Christians, real born again believers, we too often learn to our sorrow that whenever we get what we want through sin, then it doesn’t bring us pleasure.
Solomon learned this. When he tried to live in sin, when he made an experiment of living without God, what did he find:
17 So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 18 I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. 19 And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. 20 So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. 21 For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. 22 What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? 23 All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
24 A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, 25 for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? 26 To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (NIV)
And did you catch that at the end? Who gives happiness? Who gives us the ability to enjoy what we have? God. Solomon says, without God who can find enjoyment? Brothers and sisters, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, how healthy you are, how powerful, how smart, how successful, it doesn’t matter what pleasures you run after – no matter how much tasty food you eat and sweet drinks you drink, how much alcohol or drugs you consume, no matter how many orgasms you have or how much beauty you surround yourself with – without God you cannot enjoy them. The shine will come off the apple, the rose will wither, the law of diminishing returns will take hold and you’ll find that satisfying every desire will bring no joy, just an increasing dread of eternal misery.
Sin turns desire into dread – not just for the sinner but also for the saint. Only God gives happiness. We’d do well to remember that and to live by it.