False-telling politicians are depicted as absolutely useless and downright dangerous. In an arid environment where thirst is great, there is nothing worse than coming upon an expected stream of fresh water and finding that is has dried up. The trek and energy wasted can be insurmountable.

False-telling politicians have clever plans and shows, seeking to water those who thirst, but their water is bitter and dangerous. The real, needed water is absent.

The people of God need to be watered and fed with the precepts of his incredible word.

In Peter’s day, the real, sincere people were often overshadowed by uneducated, whimsical and manipulative people called “politicians” who claimed and propagated ideas, using rhetoric and sensationalism to move the people in debauchery. Those were the people who led in the downfall of the Roman Empire. Goodness was ridiculed while sin was upheld. Virtue was scoffed at while indulgence was sought by conniving men.

Those manipulative politicians scorned knowledge, goodness, virtue and the real people who proclaimed them.

Socrates, who was ethical in knowledge and confronted the loose mores of his day, was accused of immorality and corrupting others; then, he was sentenced to death. He was virtuous when the governing leaders were living extremely non-virtuous lives.

The Jews and Christians were attacked for the same reasons. They stood for virtue and morality in a society that abhorred it.

How little has changed since 400 B.C.

Phillip Webber Sr., Lisbon