Playing Politics

Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.  ~Plato

As you are probably picking up I am enjoying engaging with the book of Ecclesiastes.

More and more I am gaining insights for almost every area of life.

This year I have discovered that though my favourite television show is “the West Wing”, I am actually pretty hopeless at the game of politics.

In Ecclesiastes chapter 8 Solomon gives three principles for effectively managing the political game of life:

Principle number one: Respect Authority

Obey the king’s command, I say, because you took an oath before God. ³ Do not be in a hurry to leave the king’s presence. Do not stand up for a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. ⁴Since a king’s word is supreme, who can say to him, “What are you doing? Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm” (Ecclesiastes 8:2-5(a))

So the first principle is to respect those who are in authority and to do this in a few ways:

• Intentionally spend time with them, don’t be in a hurry to leave them. Cultivate a relationship.
• Don’t worry them with stupid things. (Leo McGarry in the West Wing saw his main job as keeping the “Knucklehead stuff” off the President’s agenda
• Don’t presume to sit in judgement over them, setting up an authority conflict will just cause pain for you.

Principle number two: There is a right time to speak up

the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure. For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a man’s misery weighs heavily upon him.

Solomon says the real skill of politics is to read the moment. There will be things that “weigh heavily upon” you, but that doesn’t make the time right to raise those things.

I see the clearest example of that in Nehemiah, who waited months after hearing the news of Jerusalem being in disrepair to raise the matter with the king. Because he waited and did the work of preparation, he was ready to communicate in a way the king could hear, and was ready with an answer when the king said “so what do you want me to do”?

It’s one thing to know what’s wrong, its a whole different thing to know how to make it right.

Principle number three: nobody has any real power anyway

Since no man knows the future, who can tell him what is to come?No man has power over the wind to contain it ; so no one has power over the day of his death. As no one is discharged in time of war, so wickedness will not release those who practice it (Ecclesiastes 8:7-8)

As if to bring the point of the whole book home, Solomon lists some of the things that no person in any position of power can control:

• The future
• The weather
• When you will die
• The wickedness of people

Basically Solomon is saying, keep politics in perspective. No matter how powerful someone is, they still are just a person and it is God who is actually in control.

From this perspective politics makes a lot more sense.

I’ll leave the final word to Plato:

Mankind will never see an end of trouble until… lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power… become lovers of wisdom.  ~Plato, The Republic