High Horses and Humility

Our president recently attended the National Prayer Breakfast. When speaking to an audience, it is not the best idea to insult and lecture those to whom you are speaking. This, however, is precisely what the president chose to do.

“Prayer Breakfast.” What comes to mind when you think about those words? I envision like-minded people gathering together to thank God for His blessings and to ask for continued guidance and protection. This, and enjoying fellowship over a morning meal.

If I were in attendance, I certainly would not expect to hear an invited speaker tell me to “get off my high horse.” But that is indeed what the President told them to do.

It’s quite remarkable that he would choose to make such a comment to his guests (who did not participate in the Crusades hundreds of years ago, by the way.) This was his response to the recent reports about the extreme brutality coming out of the Middle East within the past week?

The President made the statement that many Christians, basically, are guilty of the same atrocities as those who are committing them today. People are beheading innocent civilians, burning men alive in cages and capturing children to kill them–if not to sell them into slavery, in 2015.

He told his audience that we should not get on our “high horse” because, to be honest, we are morally equivalent because of the Crusades that occurred–a thousand years ago. We are morally equivalent because “many atrocities have been committed in the name of Christ.”

The truth is, many people throughout history, in the name of whatever religion, have indeed sometimes used it to promote a particular cause. Whether the cause was good or evil depended on the leadership.

This is why leadership is so important.

No follower of Christ would commit atrocities in His name, nor would they make excuses for those who do. It is when we follow fallen men, with perverted ideas of what is right, that religion, justice and truth become perverted as well.

Therein lies the problem. We are in the midst of a time when “truth” no longer exists. We are now told to find our “own” truth.

Perhaps we do need to descend from our “high horse”–the one on which we ride thinking that we don’t need the daily, personal leadership Jesus Christ.

Where do you find truth?

Who is your Supreme leader?

God or man?