The Clinton-Lewinsky Morality Play
By William E. Hull
[Dr. William E. Hull preached this sermon, in two parts, on January 31 and February 14 this year in the Mountain Brook Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama. He is University Professor at Samford University.]
During the Middle Ages, the drama of the Mass gradually moved out of the sanctuary to a platform in front of the cathedral doors where guilds would present Mystery or Miracle Plays for the benefit of illiterate peasants.
Eventually someone thought of putting wheels under the platform and rolling it from the church yard to the street comer or marketplace (which led to the plays being called pageants, the French word for “rolling platform”). Here, liturgical theatre based on Scripture evolved into what were called Morality Plays, didactic allegories in which virtues and vices were personified in dramatic form.
Our nation, and indeed our world, has spent the past twelve months preoccupied with a morality play being acted out in Washington, D.C., featuring the President of the United States. The combination of a zealous prosecutor, a partisan Congress, and an obsessive media have conspired to make this sex scandal the most intimately known and widely reported immorality in the history of the world. No time or expense has been spared to ferret out the tidbits in mind-numbing detail. After more than five years and fifty million dollars, we now have a 445-page Starr Report with a 3,183-page Appendix supported by an 18-box truckload of “documents”, plus an well-nigh endless videotape of grand jury testimony. With the further benefit of widely viewed House Judiciary Committee hearings, resulting in more than 6,000 pages of sworn testimony, little doubt remains as to exactly what happened in this sordid episode.
Since the Clinton-Lewinsky Morality Play is likely to be the most widely discussed “pageant” of our lifetimes on that vice which the Middle Ages called “concupiscence,” the libidinous cravings of sexual appetite, I propose that we utilize it both to illustrate the way in which sin actually works and thereby to clarify some of our confusion over the deeper meaning of this public tragedy. My purpose in making this painful probe is neither to condemn nor to exonerate Mr. Clinton, but rather to fortify ourselves lest, we, too, be overtaken in a fault (Gal. 6: 1).
I. Sin Thrives In a Culture of Permissiveness
The initial reaction of most people to the scandal was one of shock and chagrin. The first question which I heard most frequently was the outraged cry, “Could you believe that something so disgraceful, so shameless, so repulsive would ever happen in the White House?” Most people seemed to be blindsided by the scandal as if it had suddenly come out of nowhere and taken them completely by surprise. So often was I greeted with expressions of incredulity that I finally was forced to respond, “No, I am not in the least surprised. In light of the dominant drift of American society for an entire generation, my only surprise is that something like this did not happen sooner and more often.” We have been sowing the seeds of this bitter harvest since the 1960s, and it is folly to expect a crop failure!
Shrugging off the sterner duties of the Civil Rights struggle at home and of the Cold War hostilities abroad, the current generation combined a narcissistic individualism with a consumeristic hedonism to launch a sexual revolution determined to sweep away the carefully constructed sanctions of the centuries. The “Playboy Philosophy” solemnly argued that we were somehow abridging an inalienable right to personal enjoyment if we did not permit — yea, encourage! — “consenting adults” to do whatever they pleased if it provided them with immediate pleasure. Soon our movies, television screens, novels, magazines, music, and computer monitors were filled, not just with titillating sexual innuendo, but with pornographically explicit depictions of sex on demand, at a moment’s notice, the kinkier the better, all in the name of liberating a repressed selfhood buried under layers of puritanical legalism. What happened in the White House is exactly what happened in movies from “Last Tango” to “Basic Instinct,” in television series from “Dallas” to “Dawson’s Creek,” in books from Madonna on Sex to the best-selling The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Love Making, and in magazines from “Penthouse” to “Hustler.”
“But that is all fiction and fantasy,” some would respond, “whereas the Clinton thing really happened!” Which is exactly the point: sin uses the symbolic to shape a sense of what is permissible human behavior. It is naive to suppose that we can spend decades saturating the subconscious with the assumption that “anything goes” and then not expect someone to act out the lurid images etched in their imagination. I have long been intrigued that Jesus characterized his contemporaries as an “adulterous and sinful generation” (Mar. 8:38). The question naturally arises how a “generation” could ever commit adultery, since that is an inherently intimate act limited to only two individuals. But a generation can become imbued with the spirit of adultery, the essence of which is gratification without obligation, and, once the generation becomes adulterous, it is only a matter of time until individuals behave accordingly. The Apostle Paul diagnosed this dynamic using different imagery when he described those who “were dead through the trespasses and sins in which they once walked… living in the passions of their flesh, following the desires of body and mind” (Eph. 2: 1-3). Why did they become “by nature children of wrath”? Because they “followed the course of this world” which he likened to “following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience” (v. 2). What this first century language suggests is that there is a sort of hostile atmospheric layer hovering over us, a spiritual “radiation belt” filled with evil influences that contaminate the very air that we breathe. In other words, we can allow demonic forces to gain dominion over that invisible canopy of meaning under which we live. If you prefer more modem terminology, Paul is saying that our morality is powerfully influenced by the prevailing mood, the social mores, the established customs, and the latest fashions that define what is permissible to the reigning power structure. Let me give you a recent local illustration of how context shapes conduct. This month our community celebrated Martin Luther King Day with an outpouring of support that far exceeded the attention that will be devoted to Washington and Lincoln on their holiday next month. But only a generation ago, our community greeted Dr. King with a firestorm of hatred, clapped him into jail, and tolerated not a hint of support for his cause from the white citizenry. Obviously the morality of the civil rights movement has not changed over the past forty years. What has changed is that a generation ago it was socially permissible to oppose civil rights whereas now it is socially permissible to support civil rights, and that contextual shift has totally changed the personal conduct of many individuals in our community.
The Enlightenment promulgated a myth of the individual as an autonomous moral agent acting on the basis of pure reason. A few scholars still cling to that lofty ideal but, as we saw when German intellectuals caved in to Hitler, most people most of the time follow the consensus of the crowd as it is shaped by what Paul called the “principalities and powers.” Sad to say, we have allowed our culture to become not only careless but reckless, not only greedy but gratuitous, not only promiscuous but prurient, not only vulgar but voyeuristic. Havingsown the wind, let us not be shocked when we reap the whirlwind (Hos. 8: 7).
II. Sin Works Its Subtle Seductions from the Top Down
I can already hear some protest: ‘But this tawdry liaison took place in the Oval Office and involved the highest elected official in the land,” as if we should expect better of those at the top than at the bottom of the pecking order. I know the stereotype, reinforced by many an earnest revival testimony, that sin flourishes among reprobates in the gutter whereas decent folk use education and culture and religion to put all of this unseemly stuff behind them. But the Bible will not have it so; if anything, its stands our cherished illusion on its head by insisting that no one is more vulnerable to temptation than those at the pinnacle of public leadership.
You knew, of course, that I could trot out King David and his wretched affair with Bathsheba to make this point, but remember that his son, Solomon, did no better with his huge harem of pagan wives (1Ki. 11: 1-13). Regarding their successors, listen to this roll call: Jeroboam in the North did evil above all that were before him, provoking God to anger and causing him to “utterly consume the house of Jeroboam as a man burns dung until it is all gone” (1Ki. 14: 9-11). Rehoboam in the South led Judah to commit more sins than all their fathers had done, introducing male cultic prostitutes into the land (1Ki. 14:22-24). Ahab and his infamous queen Jezebel were so evil that in death the dogs devoured their flesh and licked their blood (1Ki. 22:37-38; 2Ki. 9:34-37). As the Biblical text characterizes the reign of each ruler, a steady refrain is heard again and again: “he did evil in the eyes of the Lord, just as his fathers had done” (e.g. 2Ki. 13: 2; 14:24; 15:9; 15:28; 17:2; 21:2: 23:32; 24:9). Even in the theocracy of ancient Israel, where the king was supposed to act like God’s son, exemplary rulers were the exception rather than the rule.
Nor has the situation improved a great deal over the centuries. There is credible evidence that George Washington carried on a long affair with the wife of a friend, while DNA tests have further implicated Thomas Jefferson in the paternity of children born to his slave, Sally Hemings. In our day, of the eleven presidents from Roosevelt to Clinton, six or seven appear to have committed adultery either before or during their term of office. Nor are leading clergy exempt from this pitfall. Even now, the president of the National Baptist Convention USA is on trial with his acknowledged mistress for racketeering and grand theft. One of the most brilliant preachers in Southern Baptist life was ousted from his prominent pulpit after admitting to a four-year affair with the wife of his youth minister. What many pastors would regard as the most desirable church in our denomination saw its bright young pastor self-destruct shortly after beginning his ministry there because of an affair with a member of the congregation.
Why is it that “the higher they rise, the harder they fall”? Those at the top are often surrounded by excessive adulation, resulting in a sense of pride which makes them cavalier regarding the threat of temptation. Like Icarus in the Greek myth, they soar higher and higher, only to have the hot sun of celebrity melt the wax in their fragile wings of ambition and send them plummeting into the sea. So often and so easily do they exercise power without challenge that they begin to assume that they can control and even conquer whatever they may want. Any resistance to their aggressive impulses only whets the competitive desire to bag one more trophy, whatever the cost may be. Often the price seems small indeed since, for every leader seeking a moment of surcease from the incessant burdens of office, there is always at least one seductress available who is more than willing to trade her favors for the chance to be on intimate terms with power.
Jesus knew how hard it is for those with riches to enter the Kingdom of God (Mar. 10:23), whether they be rich in money, talent, reputation, or status. Contrary to popular opinion, the more exalted the position, the more susceptible its occupant is to temptation. Prominent leaders in any profession must realize that evil would rather corrupt their integrity than that of some obscure subordinate with little influence. So what are those to do who have been privileged to drink deeply from the cup of success? I suggest three
strategies:
(1) Practice servant leadership involving bottom-up consent rather than top-down coercion, avoiding pride and overconfidence like a plague.
(2) Surround yourself with people who will keep you honest by warning candidly when danger signs arise.
(3) Never succumb to the view that your burdens are so heavy or your accomplishments are so great that you are entitled to nibble on forbidden fruit.
III. Sin Always Disguises Its True Character
At the heart of the prosecution of Mr. Clinton was the issue of perjury: Did the President himself lie or influence others to lie on his behalf? Attorneys on both sides have argued about the precise meaning of simple statements, such as to “engage in sex of any kind.” When this exhaustive inquiry resulted in a host of unresolved discrepancies, deliberate ambiguities, and apparent deceptions, they then fell to arguing about just how vague, misleading, or evasive one’s testimony must be in order to constitute perjury. Fearing charges of “neoPuritanism” or even “sexual McCarthyism,” some were willing to divide the question right down the middle and say of the impeachment proceedings, “This trial is not about sex, it is about lying.”
Unfortunately, reality cannot be divided into such neat categories because evil by its very nature, is deceptive. In other words, there is no way to sin without lying or to lie without sinning. That is why the epistle of I John equates immorality with darkness and says plainly that “while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth” (1Jo. 1: 6). Lust, for example, is a lie because everything about it falsifies the true meaning of sexuality in human experience. Merely to carry out his brief indulgence, the President had to deceive not only Ms. Lewinsky but his wife, his secretary, his Secret Service agents, and his closest confidants, not to mention himself. Long before any depositions were taken, the deed itself was a lie waiting to be discovered. Concupiscence and camouflage are Siamese twins joined together at conception who cannot be separated because each requires the other in order to survive.
This becomes evident as soon as the sin is exposed to public view. Immediately euphemisms are employed in a vain effort to mask its true character. President Clinton had an “inappropriate relationship,” Henry Hyde had “youthful indiscretions,” Dan Burton had “a relationship from which a child was born,” Helen Chenoweth had “a relationship that [she] came to regret,” Bob Livingston “on occasion strayed from [his] marriage.” In all of these sanitized confessions, note the careful effort at damage control. The problem was that of a mismanaged interpersonal relationship needing therapeutic repair. There was hardly a hint either of violating a moral covenant or betraying a transcendent commitment. Contrast the psalmist’s anguished cry, often attributed to David in the aftermath of his affair with Bathsheba, “Against thee, and thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight” (Psa. 51: 4).
When we try to disguise “sin” by the addition of a single letter into “spin,” the subterfuge may succeed for a season but is doomed to eventual failure because of the power of pretense to proliferate. Always it takes at least two lies to keep one lie alive, so that the deception quickly multiplies like a Ponzi scheme until it crashes under its own weight. Nixon would concede only that he had “made mistakes” in handling the Watergate break-in, but dodging the issue was itself a mistake that metastasized a “third-rate burglary” into “a cancer on the presidency.” Like a deadly virus that has not been diagnosed, sin that is suppressed begins to spread silently, infecting innocent and guilty alike, until what began as an isolated illness ends as a social epidemic.
It is amazing to contemplate just how disunited we become in the darkness. The Clinton caper involved just one other person, but after only a year its fallout filled both houses of Congress with partisan bickering, prompted an outpouring of angry accusations in the media, and exacerbated the culture wars that already divide our nation into hostile camps. No wonder Paul said that the “works of the flesh” such as “immorality, impurity, and licentiousness” are accompanied by “dissension, party spirit, and envy” (Gal. 5:19-2 1). Some seem to fear that debauchery in the White House will somehow corrupt the morals of the nation, particularly its youth, but my concern is that the congressional response has done even greater damage by further polarizing our people and poisoning the spirit of civility so essential to the leadership of any democracy.
By contrast, consider how goodness unites us. The Congress did not wrangle over the testimony which it received from Mother Teresa or from Billy Graham. The pundits who verbally crucified Jimmy Carter when he was President do not now second-guess his missions of mercy to the ends of the earth. Even Protestant-Catholic tensions are transcended when Pope John Paul II tries to relieve the miseries of a repressive regime in Cuba. We usually discount the political impact of goodness, but Paul said that its fruits include “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). I cannot think of anything that America needs more in this troubled hour.
This initial probing of the anatomy of sin, particularly as portrayed in the Clinton-Lewinsky Morality Play, has confronted us with a succession of surprises. That the President of the United States would actually engage in such despicable behavior while on duty in our highest office, then try to cover his tracks with endless evasions, has shown us just how seductively evil insinuates itself into the recesses of the imagination, there to wreak havoc long before anyone discovers its devastating consequences. But even when due allowance is made for the stealth and stubbornness of sin, surely that does not excuse the culprit from accountability for his actions. Both Mr. Clinton and his detractors are agreed that he is “solely and completely responsible” for his failures. That being the case, we reason, let us determine exactly what happened, pass judgment on its merits in accordance with the rule of law, administer appropriate punishment for any infractions committed, and thereby put the matter behind us. It all seems so simple once sin is forced out of hiding and exposed to plain view. Sad to say, however, this is not when things get easier but actually become much harder to resolve, as we shall see by looking now at each of these strategies for dealing with sin.
IV. Sin Distorts Our Efforts to Pass Judgment
Once the indefatigable labors of Special Prosecutor Starr revealed much more than we ever wanted to know about this unseemly episode, the Congress responded by activating the impeachment mechanism provided in the Constitution to determine if “high crimes and misdemeanors” had been committed. A prolonged investigation by the House Judiciary Committee led the lower chamber to adopt four articles of impeachment which were duly forwarded to the Senate for trial. At this point, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court asked each senator to raise his or her right hand and “solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God.”
At last, it seemed, judgment could begin on the bedrock of a sworn duty to apply objective law in equitable fashion. Henry Hyde, chairman of the House managers charged with prosecuting the case, appealed to the sanctity of such an oath as the law’s last line of defense. In a brief introduction, he remarked to the Senate:
“To guide you in this grave duty, you’ve taken an oath of impartiality. With the simple words, ‘I do,’ you have pledged to put aside personal bias and partisan interest and to do impartial justice.”
After citing Thomas More, who died rather than swear to what he deemed an untruth, Hyde concluded that the significance of an oath taken in public service “will never be the same after this. Depending on what you decide, it will either be strengthened with its power to achieve justice, or it will go the way of so much of our moral infrastructure and become a mere convention full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
So what did the Senate decide to do? It promptly decided to do exactly what the House had done, namely, to caucus and then vote a straight party line on almost every issue involved in the impeachment process. Without attempting to assess the merits of either position, we must ponder what this pattern of response might mean. Does one party somehow have a monopoly on moral judgment while the other party is bereft of ethical insight? Does being a Democrat or a Republican affect one’s ability to understand the plain words of the U.S. Constitution? To be sure, legal experts may sincerely differ on debatable questions such as what constitutes the threshold of impeachability, just as Biblical scholars often disagree on the meaning of some ambiguous Biblical text, but is there any reason why these largely historical and hermeneutical issues should be decided along political party lines? The answer to such questions is painfully obvious. The oath of impartiality enshrines a noble ideal, but disinterested neutrality in judgment seems impossible to sustain even in the Senate of the United States.
The situation is no better in the wider national debate. Our newspapers, periodicals, and talk shows have been filled with endless editorializing, but the pundits are in hopeless disagreement even though the facts of the case are not in dispute. To move from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times is to visit two vastly different worlds of opinion, while our local papers easily balance a pro and a con piece on the op-ed page written by commentators of equal erudition, insider information, and political sagacity. These defenders of a free press are sworn to report the news without fear or favor, but their fierce independence seems not to have made them any more impartial than our elected representatives in Congress.
Perhaps the last best hope for dispassionate judgment are those scholars committed to a critical sifting of all the evidence by the highest canons of scholarship, most especially professors of religion whose disciplinary field is political ethics. Such a group recently issued a “Declaration concerning Religion, Ethics, and the Crisis in the Clinton Presidency” signed by some 150 members of their guild. But when they invited dissent to their carefully reasoned case, colleagues of equal academic and religious reputation reached strikingly different conclusions using the same biblical and theological norms.1
Consider the implications of this confused situation.
Whether the approach be legal, journalistic, academic, or religious, all of which have erected the strongest possible bulwarks against partisanship, we have not come close to reaching a consensus about how to adjudicate a squalid scandal that everyone agrees was tragically wrong. Why should this be? Because we are not the innocent judging the guilty but are all ensnared in our own complicity with sin that, according to the New Testament, results in futile thinking (Eph. 4:17), foolish hearts (Rom. 1:21), and darkened understanding (Eph. 4:18). This is precisely why the Scriptures warn so strongly against judgmentalism (Mat. 7: 1-2; Rom. 14:13; 1Co. 4: 3-5; Jam. 4:11-12); for, as Paul put it, when we pass judgment upon another we condemn ourselves, because we, the judge, are doing the very same things (Rom. 2: 1).
This does not mean that we should give up every effort to render moral and legal verdicts regarding human conduct. But it does mean that we should proceed with extreme caution, recognizing that our own self-interests are always at play. Just as President Clinton confessed to “a critical lapse in judgment” because of his lust for Monica Lewinsky, so does our lust for power, wealth, reputation, or influence corrupt our ability to judge wisely.
Before we are tempted to rush to judgment, certain that our conclusions are beyond challenge, perhaps we should notice how often history reverses the verdict of the moment, especially when rendered in a fit of partisan passion.
V. Sin Frustrates Our Attempts to Administer Punishment
If we are unable to render impartial judgment based on findings of fact, is it any wonder that we are equally divided over what constitutes appropriate punishment? Some would drive Mr. Clinton from office by demanding his immediate resignation or convicting him of criminal acts. Others would publicly censure him, perhaps with a sizable fine for damages, while yet others are certain that he has already suffered enough and should finish out his term as president without further legal harassment. The arguments for each of these options have been debated endlessly and need not be detailed here. Suffice it to say that some wanted to “send a message” to a profligate culture while others feared a puritanical inquisition. Some believed that President Clinton epitomizes a derelict political process while others are sure that Prosecutor Starr represents a legal system gone berserk. Some are convinced that Mr. Clinton has squandered his moral authority while others are equally adamant that his efforts for racial justice and world peace far outweigh his private failings.
As I ponder the briefs for this or that punishment, I see opportunism everywhere: “How can I as a Republican benefit from destroying this man?” versus “How can I as a Democrat benefit from protecting this man?” To be sure, opportunism plays a large part in contemporary politics, but as a moral foundation it is shallow and short-lived at best. To borrow the rhetoric of the old-time revival preachers, is it not time to ask, “Who cares for this man’s eternal soul?” In the Bible, punishment is viewed as a chastisement or discipline designed to bring the recipient to maturity (Heb. 12: 7-11), whereas weseemed far more concerned with how Bill Clinton’s punishment would benefit us than with how it would benefit him!
A remedial approach to retribution does not mean that the Bible is somehow “soft on sin.” Indeed its moral rigor towers above our bland ethical relativism, as may be seen from two of its most sobering convictions regarding punishment. First, Scripture couples a warning against a vengeful spirit with the confidence that punishment can be “left to the wrath of God” who will repay whatever vengeance is required (Rom. 12:19). This is not the promise of “hell fire damnation” in the afterlife, for Paul had already shown in Romans how the “wrath of God” is a present, active process at work in our world dealing with “all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). Regardless of how the American people deal with President Clinton, we can be certain that God is dealing with his sin in accordance with the divine will.
Second, Scripture recognizes the bitter paradox that sin itself punishes most those who serve it best. This is vividly pictured in the one-word metaphor of “wages” in Rom. 6:23.f2 The term referred in the ancient world to subsistence pay which a soldier received for serving in the military. With biting irony Paul says that sin makes grandiose offers to entice recruits but ends up doling out only a “minimum wage” on payday. Since “wages” are paid continuously for as long as we serve sin, this “death” of which the apostle speaks is not merely the cessation of life viewed as a final penalty, but is that experience of emptiness and helplessness and wretchedness that haunts sinners every day that they live without a fresh infusion of the life-giving power of God.
Whatever pain Mr. Clinton may feel from the humiliations heaped upon him for his gross misconduct, it cannot compare with the bitter dregs which he has already tasted from the dreadful cup of poison served up to him by sin. Consider: here was a man who parlayed his extraordinary political skills into two decisive electoral mandates at a time when a robust economy and the moderation of Cold War tensions offered unprecedented opportunities to lead the American people. With a little luck and a lot of statesmanship, William Jefferson Clinton could have taken his place in history as one of our greatest Presidents, but, instead, he finds his record forever tarnished by a third-rate scandal that, if anything, gives indiscretion a bad name. Having taken the measure of Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, and Linda Tripp, we can only shake our heads and sigh, “Seldom has so much been lost for so little!” Every time the President asks himself, “How could I, like Esau, squander so great a birthright for so miserable a mess of pottage?,” he dies another of the thousand deaths which are his to endure for as long as he lives.
When Richard Nixon was in the depths of his despondency over Watergate, he spent one of his last evenings in the White House with Henry Kissinger raging against his defeat. The Secretary of State took his measure of the shattered President in terms reminiscent of our time: “To have striven so hard, to have molded a public personality out of so amorphous an identity, to have sustained that superhuman effort only to end with every weakness disclosed and every error compounding the downfall — that was a fate of biblical proportions.” 3 Near midnight, Nixon suggested that they pray together in the Lincoln Bedroom. As an obviously distraught President knelt, Kissinger recalled a passage from Aeschylus:
Pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop
upon the heart
until in our despair
there comes wisdom
through the awful
grace of God.334
VI. Sin Refuses to Depart Once Its Dirty Work Is Done
Already our morality play has demolished two glib assumptions about how to deal with sin:
(1) that if only we know all of the facts we will thereby render impartial judgment; and
(2) that once we determine the legality of a matter we will, on that basis, administer equitable punishment.
Now we must examine a third assumption, namely, that by inflicting appropriate retribution on the guilty we will bring closure to the ugly episode. The two words heard most frequently as the nation has wearied of the Clinton scandal focuses the problem for us: how do we put sin behind us so that we can move beyond it?
If the recent impeachment proceedings represent the climax of a formal effort to render judgment and inflict punishment, then we may ask if this is to be the end of the affair? Special Prosecutor Starr shows no sign of wanting to close shop, which means that he might exhaust every effort to bring Mr. Clinton into criminal court, either before or after he exits the White House, for a trial which, with appeals, could take up to six years to complete. Regardless of whether this eventuated in the imprisonment of a former President, would the agitation stop there, or would it continue to inflame national passions well into the next century? Indeed, would the death of Mr. Clinton even farther into the future finally put the matter to rest? If we may learn from the prince of philanderers in the modern White House, remember that the most scathing attack on John F. Kennedy’s sexual exploits did not come until thirty-four years after his death with the publication in 1997 of Seymour Hersch’s The Dark Side of Camelot. This is only to say that sin does not willingly disappear “behind” us once sentence is passed on its victim but continues to feed on the carcass of its conquest until every shred of decency has been devoured.
This stubborn refusal of sin to let us move “beyond” it raises in acute form the question: How, then, do we cleanse the stream of our national life once it has been contaminated with moral pollution? When Gerald Ford inherited the presidency from a disgraced Richard Nixon, he quickly realized that he could not focus the nation’s attention on its most pressing agenda as long as it was bitterly divided over the endless legal wranglings in which an embittered Nixon was embroiled with Special Prosecutor Jaworski. His only solution was to “grant a full, free and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States” committed during his presidency. Ford took this action at great political risk, not for the sake of his predecessor, but for the sake of the country. As one of his military aides, Major Bob Barrett, told him: “We’re all Watergate junkies. Some of us are mainlining, some are sniffing, some are lacing it with something else, but all of us are addicted. This will go on and on unless someone steps in and says that we, as a nation, must go cold turkey. Otherwise, we’ll die of an overdose.” 5
So, who will step in with the cleansing word to keep us from becoming a nation of Lewinsky junkies? The paradox of pardon and punishment — indeed, of pardon as punishment — is especially difficult for decent religious folk to accept, as Paul saw so clearly in Romans ch. 1-3. Justice seems to require retribution, while mercy seems to require forgiveness, and we find it exceedingly hard to reconcile the two. Indeed, how can God be both holiness and love in equal measure to sinner and saint alike at the same time? Some clearly want to make Mr. Clinton the scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in our country since the 1960s, but, no matter how severely he might be punished, it would not finally placate his enemies and would serve to embitter his friends.
No, for all of his incredible capacity both to fall headlong into temptation and then to survive its dreadful consequences, Mr. Clinton cannot serve as our scapegoat for he is ensnared in the same sin that doth so easily beset us all (Heb. 12: 1). In the Old Testament, on the Day of Atonement, the solution of what to do with sin came in two parts. First, a goat was to be sacrificed as an offering for the sins of the people (Lev. 16:15-19). Then a second goat was to have the sins of the people transferred to its head by the imposition of hands and driven as an innocent victim into the wilderness, never to return, thus bearing all the iniquities of the people “to a solitary land” (Lev. 16:20-22). This two-fold ritual enacted the drama of sins being both forgiven by the shedding of blood and then forgotten by being removed “as far as the east is from the west” (Psa. 103:12).f6 Now if something like that could happen to the Clinton Sex Scandal, then it would, indeed, be put “behind” us so that we could move “beyond” it.
Do you begin to see how we are being driven by the necessities of our national tragedy into the arms of the gospel story? What if someone took upon himself all the sins, not only of Mr. Clinton, but of his detractors and defenders as well? What if that person were willing to accept all of the punishment that one side wants to inflict on Mr. Clinton and the other side wants to inflict upon his tormentors? What if he offered to take away all of the anger and rancor and contempt that festers in our nation’s soul and never bring it back again? I ask you: would such a person, doing such a deed at the cost of his own life, wring from our grateful hearts a sincere repentance, a true confession, and a firm resolve to live by the better angels of our nature? Or would we spurn such an offer, preferring to let him die in vain that we might continue to enjoy the sweet satisfactions of our self-righteous revenge?
Sceptics will doubtless find this solution frankly incredible, as if by magic an innocent party could suddenly appear to offer his very life for a flawed President and his contentious countrymen. Believers may well resent any attempt to take an act which they have long cherished as the source of personal redemption and apply it to the healing of a political crisis not of their making. But I would remind you that Jesus of Nazareth did appear when no one expected him, that he did expose himself to the deadly crossfire of Jewish and Roman hostilities, and that he did manage to get himself killed by the leaders of both groups because he refused to fan their partisan hatreds. The crucifixion of Christ was a political execution from start to finish in which Jesus died to demonstrate to the warring factions of his day a love that carried the potential of reconciling even the bitterest of enemies. At first his revolutionary way was brutally rejected, but soon there appeared a community of the forgiven in which there was neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. Old animosities had been transcended for enemies had become one in him (Gal. 3:28).
If the whole sorry saga of the Clinton scandal tells us anything, it is that we are incapable of dealing with our sin. We cannot resist it, we cannot conceal it, we cannot remove it. Which brings us hard up against the core conviction of the Christian gospel: only God can deal with sin! He has revealed a word that names the darkness for what it really is. He has raised up prophets willing to rebuke even kings for their moral folly. He has forgiven the sins of every broken and contrite heart. He has called into being a community where evil is actively opposed as an outrage against the human spirit. Most of all, he has sent his Son to make peace in place of party strife by tearing down the dividing walls of hostility between us (Eph. 2:14). We have looked to Washington for answers that will never come. This is a time, not for sullen armistice, but for radical healing, a healing which will come as we turn to “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (Joh. 1:29).
Endnotes
1 Gabriel Fackre, editor, Judgment Day at the White House: A Critical
Declaration Exploring Moral Issues and the Political Use and Abuse of
Religion (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).
2 Hans Wolfgang Heidland, “Opinion,” Theological Dictionary of the New
Testament, edited by Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans,
1967), vol. V, pp. 591-2.
3 ‘Henry Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown, 1982), pp.
1207-8.
4 Kissinger, p. 1210.
5 Gerald R. Ford, A Time to Heal (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 160.
6 ‘Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., “The Book of Leviticus,” The New Interpreter’s Bible
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), vol. I, p. 1112.
