Itching Ears

My political side is up right now. The other day a bible verse came clearly to mind.

It was a phrase – that of “itching ears” from my bible studies. Here is Wikipedia on the biblical origin: “The terms is found only once in the Bible. in 2 Timothy 4. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” Another version puts this as: “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.…”

I was listening to the diverting rhetoric of the Republican party in its attempt not to deal with the straightforward question of the impeachability of an act by our president. Rather than responding to the issue, party members attempted to use unsustainable points of order to strike the entire subject from the record. The act in question? The president’s use of the resources and strength of the American people which had been clearly directed for support of our allies to further his own political agenda for re-election by coercing a foreign power to intercede against his then leading political rival. And this is not the first president who may have acted in violation of the trust of the nation whose laws they are sworn to uphold, but that is no reason not to shine a light and correct a course that has been strayed from. Everyone else has done it is no excuse in the eyes of anyone who has parented. And we are the parents of our president. Our president is elected by, and accountable to, us.

In the ensuing weeks since this event surfaced, we have been subjected, as we have been repeatedly since Donald Trump entered the presidential race for the 2016 election, to verbal assertions that garner inflamed emotional responses utilizing contradictory and insulting verbiage, but are shown, upon analysis, not to be grounded in fact. They are verbalizations tailored to “itching ears.” Itching ears are the hearts and minds of those who are emotionally charged around a subject to the extent that they cannot and will not hear anything beyond their own emotional construction. As millions of Americans suffered economic woes brought upon by a culmination of financially and power-greedy commercial and political actions, the stage was set for those who became emotionally vulnerable as a result of their suffering to cheer along anyone who promised revenge, who derided the perceived establishment and appears to be a champion by supposedly bucking the system.

The problem is this verbiage is shouting to the wind. And speaking of the wind imagery – herein lies another biblical Jobian verse, 6:26 – “Do ye hold words to be an argument, but the speeches of one that is desperate to be wind?” Or: “Do you mean to correct what I say, and treat my desperate words as wind?” And Job 8:2 “How long will you go on like this? You sound like a blustering wind,” or: “How long will you talk and keep saying nothing?” In this time, we must determine who is saying nothing and who is saying something.

For how long did those in political and economic power treat the desperate pleas of our hurting citizens as the wind while they washed theirs hands in wartime enterprises, unbalanced budgets, mortgage schemes and golden parachutes? The stage was set for a blustering wind to come in and appear to wipe them all away. The awful fallacy is that while the honest people who have suffered so much cheer and rant for this piece of wind, that same behavior is flaunted under their noses and disregarded by them because of the veil of words it operates under. This administration is seen to be one of the most shockingly corrupt in our history but is supported by those who love the emotional release of the rhetoric of revenge and heroism. Donald Trump has mastered his style through TV ratings. He has learned that he can create his own reality and get millions of people to join him in something that looks wonderful and has no substance. Like a true actor….

And so itching ears are deceivable ears. When inner rage and injustice surface they lead to revenge. When honest and noble goals and ideals are uplifted, they catalyze change. Reversion is never going forward. Backwards is never as good as it was remembered. And yet that is the vision preached – that we go backward to a time of greatness. A pull toward the sense of emotional calmness and economic security felt in the past. The greatness of yesterday will not fit in the fabric of today. We live in a constant relationship with the happenings of the world and the times. One cannot plunge the whole world into a time machine back to days of different understandings and values. We must go forward, and we can only go forward - whether to greatness or to calamity.

Beware of itching ears that collect only the rhetoric of those with whom they agree.