It’s been a big news week. Oh, yeah, that stuff about the former president and the other stuff about the current president’s son.  But I am talking about important stuff.

While the pundits and the politicians have been busy pushing our ideological buttons, God was doing some wonderful things off-headline.

The same day social and mainstream media went berserk with news of former President Trump’s conviction, I heard from a pastor friend far away that his call to a new congregation is now public.  It’s his story to tell, but I say “thanks be to God” to all involved.  And the day testimony began in the Hunter Biden gun trial, another pastor friend took a next step towards a position that will be good for his entire denomination. Again, his story to tell, but what good news!

Sociologists tell us that in a healthy society religion provides its citizens with a sense of purpose and well-being.  As we have become less religious in a formal sense, we have turned to politics to fill the void. It doesn’t work.  Political zealots far outnumber religious zealots in our time.  You might go to your local pub and have a lively discussion about the five points of Calvinism, but a discussion of the Trump verdict or the Hunter trial could turn ugly quickly.

Whether we get our news from a paper headline or a digital feed, we can’t avoid emotionally fraught or frightening rhetoric from the failed and false religion partisan politics has become.

Fortunately, the Bible knows all about our tendency to “exchange the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man (and then even more foolishly) birds and animals and creeping things.” (Romans 1:23) Our emotional and spiritual dedication to politicians and policies is a contemporary manifestation of the old sin of idolatry. The Psalmists remind us

It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD
than to trust in princes.  Psalm 118:8–9

and

Put not your trust in princes,
in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
on that very day his plans perish. Psalm 146:3–4

Of course, the trials of the former president and the current president’s son grabbed all the headlines this week.  It’s all the princes’ courtiers could think about. In the meantime, God has been at work building his church and spreading his gospel.  It may not make the papers or the news feeds, but it is the big news of the week.  And it is important stuff, far more important than that other stuff.