Rumors of Another World: What on Earth Are We Missing? by Philip Yancey

Author:Philip Yancey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian
ISBN: 9780310565963
Published: 2009-05-17T23:00:00+00:00

Three straight hours one morning I sat in front of a television and listened to a U.S. president confess his sins: Bill Clinton was giving testimony before a grand jury. For months the press had leaked juicy details about his dalliance with a twenty-one-year-old intern named Monica. Both the president and his wife had initially denied the reports, only to be forced to amend their statements as evidence — taped phone conversations, letters, gifts, a soiled dress — piled up. Now the president of the United States sat before a camera and subjected himself to legal scrutiny.

For Americans who lived through the Watergate scandals, the drama had a painfully familiar plot: wrongdoing, denials, a web of deception, solemn declarations that turned out to be lies. Europeans rolled their eyes at the naiveté of Americans who judge public leaders by their private acts. Republican politicians gravely insisted the central issue was perjury, not sexual immorality. Like an avalanche gathering force as it slides down the mountain, the scandal swept aside other current events. The most private of Bill Clinton’s acts became the most public, resulting in the second impeachment in American history.

Eventually, of course, Clinton weathered the storm and served out his term. Some people remember him as the Comeback Kid, able to rebound from every crisis. Some remember him as Slick Willie, the politician who prevaricated about marijuana, Arkansas land deals, presidential pardons, and the definition of the word sex. I remember a single image: the most powerful man in the world, pale, flinching at some of the questions, staring at the video camera like a wild animal frozen in headlights.

“I am so sorry,” he said, fully conscious of the trauma he had caused his family and nation, and of the stain on his own historical reputation. The leader of the world seemed its least free citizen, a slave of passions, a man humbled by his inability to control basic urges.

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