There are actually people who think that the prize for being godly is money. The goal of declaring the gospel is gold. Christian leadership is a byproduct to their true heart’s desire: wealth and influence among those who are wealthy and influential. Such leaders “demand the food allowance of the governor” because they see themselves as special, and because they have lost sight of the Saviour. Let’s be careful therefore that we do not fall into the trap of seeking entitlement because we can. It truly is the canary in the mineshaft of where are hearts are when it comes to love of God or love of money. 

There’s something ugly, something character revealing, about the politician who squeezes absolutely every inch out of their entitlements. Those who make sure that every dollar of those things that they can technically claim is used up, and who spend the time to do so.
Every few years there are outcries about some entitlement scandal in which a politician has to resign or pay back money in light of their, shall we say, creative attempt to prove that the holiday they had on the Gold Coast was for “research purposes”, or that the apartment they rented in the city was actually their regular abode when they were working in Parliament, even though they owned a home nearby.
It was indeed these “second home” expenses that brought down many a politician and resulted in jail terms for some during the 2009 expenses scandal in the UK. There was outrage among members of the public when they discovered the manner in which so much tax payers money was being used to fund profligate lifestyles of those who were already on a good financial wicket.
For many of the UK’s best known politicians it was either embarrassing, or career-ending. It was clear that these politicians who were elected to serve had forgotten that, and had become self-serving instead. Technically they appeared not to be breaking any of the rules, but in reality they were exploiting loopholes in exactly the way the self-righteous leaders of Israel exploited moral loopholes in Jesus’ day, whilst still adhering to the letter of the law.
And perhaps too – indeed most likely – these pollies had grown a sense of entitlement. I mean, it’s a tough job being a national MP, right? Late nights, lots of travel, trying to keep constituents happy. And then there’s the press! Oh my goodness, the press!
You can see how they got there. Increment by increment.
Contrast that behaviour with that of Nehemiah in the book that bears his name. He was the Old Testament leader of Israel who returned to the burnt out, broken down capital city Jerusalem to rebuild it after the exiles had started to trickle back from the Persian Empire. Nehemiah was used to living near luxury, as chapter one tells us his job was cup-bearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes.
Having returned with the king’s blessing to rebuild the city, and having been made governor, Nehemiah sets about the task in the face of opposition without and within. There is external opposition from neighbouring nations who threaten to kill the rebuilders. And worse than that, there is still a persistent sin in Israel, with internal opposition in the form of political intrigue by those opposed to his national/spiritual building program.
But to make matters worse the wealthier people of the land have started to fall back into the practices injustice and oppression that was part of the reason Israel ended up in exile in the first place. We read in Nehemiah 5 how Israelites were selling themselves into slavery to pay their debts to their Jewish brothers, and how the wealthy were hoovering up all of the land and vineyards, which according to the Law was not permitted, as the LORD had allotted inheritances to each family, and that it could not be permanently sold on or acquired. Nehemiah puts a stop to it all.
But more than that. Nehemiah does not call for a standard he is not willing to maintain himself. As the governor of the nation he had the right, like many of the political leaders of our day, to draw from the allowance of the governorship to feed himself and his entourage. In other words, not to be out of pocket, and with the always present temptation to line those pockets, with taxpayers money.
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Society has changed radically, even in the last five years. If Christians do not understand where all this is coming from and have not been taught to assess this movement biblically how will they know what to say? 

Why we need to open our eyes.
The Catholic writer Noelle Mering gives a helpful and succinct definition of ‘Woke’. She writes: ‘The term woke refers to the state of being alert and attuned to layers of oppression in society’. It is about being on the side of those who are or who see themselves as marginalised and discriminated against. Does that ring any bells for us? Surely, it reminds us of Jesus.
But then it gets subverted. While it began specifically and rightly with racism in mind, it has since broadened its scope to take in other areas where there is now commonly considered to be oppression – including questions of gender, transgender and sexual orientation. This becomes not just a mixed bag, but a can of worms for Christians. As just one indicator of how ‘Woke’ has been mis-focused, it is worth noting that although it is meant to be fighting for justice in society, as far as I know, it has little or nothing to say directly about poverty. The kinds of oppression with which it is concerned are quite selective in a 21st century, libertarian kind of way.
Why do pastors need to be teaching God’s people from Scripture on this subject? And why is it a very urgent matter? Let me give you three reasons.
Woke Power
The Woke agenda is now calling the shots in vast areas of our nation’s political, cultural, educational and working life.
That means that many of those in our congregations are having to confront ‘Woke’ issues in their daily working lives. Many Christians are expected, for example, to join in ‘gay pride’ week at the supermarket where they work. Is that okay? The pervasive influence of ‘Woke’ means that many parents are finding their children coming home from school having met up with a biological girl who is presenting as a boy – and vice versa. How is a parent to handle this?
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Written by A.W. Workman |
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
When the city of man begins to creak and groan we may naturally feel a good deal of fear or disorientation. I don’t think there’s any way around this. But this creaking is also an opportunity for humility, for renewed faith in the New Jerusalem, and for identification with the historical and global Church. In this way, no matter if the cracks get worse or if they get patched, we will be able to maintain hope, to serve our brothers and sisters and even the perishing, and to point to what is coming.

Eating out just hasn’t felt worth it these past couple months that we’ve been back in the US. While restaurants in the states are open again, most are understaffed and alarmingly expensive. The lack of staff usually means pretty poor service, and even the quality of food usually strikes us as not what it used to be. Hearing others in the US voice similar sentiments means it’s not just those of us who have been living overseas who notice these differences. The food service industry is creaking, trying to lurch back to what it was before the pandemic. There is this sense that—convenience though it is—we can’t count it like we used to.
Food service is not the only system struggling to regain its pre-pandemic efficiency. International air travel has still not recovered either. We’ve never had the kind of travel difficulties that we’ve experienced over this past year. Even business behemoths like Amazon seem past their, ahem, prime. More seriously, crime has also skyrocketed in many American cities, with the understanding in some places that if you are the victim of certain crimes, you are on your own.
The strange thing about all this for highly-educated millennials like us is that we’ve hardly ever known the systems around us to get worse, perhaps with the exception of our elected government. By and large, we’ve only known the infrastructure and services offered in the West to (eventually) get faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly. This was also the worldview of our parents’ generation. Progress in the systems we rely on for life necessities or conveniences has been assumed. The pandemic and its aftermath have challenged this assumption and, whether temporary or long-term, the systems around us are showing their weakness.
Systems don’t last forever. The prophecy of the twelve eagles was right—Rome would fall. The Roman legions would leave places like Britain in 409 and never come back. Which meant the structures of empire that the Romanized residents of Londinium (London) relied upon would have slowly but surely broken down. A thousand years later the Portuguese would successfully sail to India – thereby causing the economic collapse of the Central Asian silk road. Trade routes that were kept safe by the wealth and power of regional regimes would become frequented by violent robbers and be slowly abandoned by the caravans. Empires rise. Empires decline. At some point a certain generation realizes that things are breaking faster than they can be repaired, and life is likely going to get a lot worse before it someday gets better.
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