Truth in politics and Samoa today

Dear Editor, 

As a country founded on God, we have faced one of the most challenging political dilemmas of our time. We stood our ground with what we believe is right and what is truth and moral, but as a Christian nation, we must not forget that morality is not of ourselves but of God alone. 

Between the political arena and the spiritual arena, one thing that is most valuable is the truth.

 A famous British former Prime Minister, Winston Churchill once said, truth is the most valuable thing in the world that is often protected and hidden by the bodyguards of lies. 

Andrei Sakharov, a Russian nuclear physicist said and I quote: “I’ve always thought that the most powerful weapon in the world was the bomb and that’s why I gave it to my people, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the most powerful weapon in the world is not the bomb but it’s the truth.” 

We have seen where politics has taken us today, politicians established laws that even contradict and undermine the core of our Constitution governed by our customs and our Christian beliefs. We have witnessed how politicians can bend and guard the truth so that all we see is just an illusion of it. 

If the most valuable thing in the world is the truth, and the most powerful weapon is the truth, how important is the truth on the platform of this political arena? 

Truth is the most imperative and so critical in our time and we need to turn the lights out, because when somebody whose mind bends towards deceit and a lie, the darkness becomes the light. 

We as church members and church leaders need to rise up and demand the truth to be spoken and that by which the politicians live, and that we ourselves as Christian and leaders live by the truth.

If we abide in His words then we know the truth and then the truth sets us free. It is time for us to ask our political leaders, truth, because without it, we lose the most powerful weapon, without truth we lose the most valuable thing and we must live that by example in our lives. 

We can call ourselves a nation of laws, the laws are seen as the root of our government, the trunk is the political infrastructure and the branches is the outworking and culture but what is, that hold the roots, the roots cannot hold themselves and that is why we need a rich Moral Soil to hold the roots together. 

That moral soil is the voice of us Christians especially our church leaders that has to be heard in the political realm and that moral soil absorbs moral reasoning so we can distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil. 

Back in history, Moses was given hundreds of laws but Jesus himself reduced it down to two most important of all and that is:

1) love your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength, 

2) love your neighbor as yourself, so there will be a vertical dimension that is between man and God and the horizontal dimension between one man and the other, unfortunately all we hear in politics today is horizontal, choking each other sideways and forgetting that God’s vertical dimensions has been left out in the dark. 

One of our Cabinet Ministers said that he did not consider the Bible when drafting the law but here’s the problem as King Solomon said, everything is pointless and empty under the sun if you lock God out, and we all end up chasing after the wind, all is pointless and empty. 

There is no doubt that our government is becoming more powerful than ever, so much powerful that even threatening its own citizens has become a norm to them.

All powers corrupt but absolute power corrupts absolutely because all man with power wants more power and because of that the darkness in their mind becomes the light of their heart. 

That is why politician needs the voice of the righteous, if the church does not rise up and stand with truth, love and concern they (government) will always get intoxicated with their own knowledge and power and sooner the day will come of which the entire political structure will collapse. 

If we as Christians and Christian leaders do not honor our commitment to our family, our country and to what God has called us to do we all end up in doing the same thing by chasing after the wind, that is why we need that moral strength to be embedded in our soul and to let our political leaders recognized that we are rooted in the bedrock of the unchangeable one, God himself. 

 

S. Matautia

Samoa Observer

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