Daily Devotional : Living Freely - why open government is good for everyone

1 Peter 2:16 Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. (NIV)

Our town, Knoxville, Tennessee, has been rocked by the corrupt practices of our local government. Our local newspaper, the News-Sentinel, has at last lived up to its name by bringing a law suit against the Knox County commissioners who made backroom deals with regard to replacement commissioners. According to the Sentinel’s law suit, these commissioners broke the Sunshine law by ensuring that their own people, and in some cases, their own family members, were awarded the vacant seats. We even ended up having a convicted drug dealer representing some people in our county. How corrupt is that?

For some people, this was major news. They didn’t think that our local government was capable of this kind of wheeling and dealing. For me, it was old news. You may remember that I was a regular guest of the morning radio show “The Voice” hosted by Lloyd Daugherty and Kelvin Moxley. We had been talking about this level of corruption in local government eighteen months before the newspaper decided to take up the cudgel and try to oust the backroom boys. We raised these issues on a regular basis and became a thorn in the authority’s side. We stopped broadcasting because some mysterious buyers purchased the station and turned it into a sports radio channel. It seems to me that we were making waves, so some groups were happy when we were no longer on the air.

Now these issues have come to the surface and the whole town is reeling from it. Our trust in our local commissioners has hit an all time low and it will probably take one or two elections to properly oust the backroom shenanigans and replace it with open government. Perhaps, in due course, our county commissioners will gain the respect of the people, and use their power not to cover up shady dealings, but to live as servants of the people they represent.

I guess this is an unusual devotional this morning because it deals with politics instead of faith, but in God’s world there is no separation. All of us are accountable for what we do with our freedom and our faith. Let’s hope and pray that we can all do a better job of choosing our representatives in the future, and that they will do an excellent job of representing their constituents.

Prayer: Lord, we pray for those who are in authority above us through being elected to represent the people in government. We ask that You will guide their hearts and minds to freely, fairly, and openly make decisions on behalf of our community. Grant them the courage to oust corruption and to stand up to those who would take false advantage of their privileged positions. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.