Put not your trust in the deceitful words: "This is the temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!" Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds; if each of you deals justly with his neighbor; if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the orphan, and the widow; if you no longer shed innocent blood in this place, or follow strange gods to your own harm, will I remain with you in this place, in the land I gave your fathers long ago and forever.
But here you are, putting your trust in deceitful words to your own loss! Are you to steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, go after strange gods that you know not, and yet come to stand before me in this house which bears my name, and say: "We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again"? Has this house which bears my name become in your eyes a den of thieves? I too see what is being done, says the LORD. (Jeremiah 7:1-11)
“Put not your trust in the deceitful words.” No truer words have been spoken. This was part of the LORD’s message to Jeremiah, and they are a message just as relevant today, about 2,600 years later. We put our trust in deceitful words to our own loss!
Perhaps even more relevant, will our house become a den of thieves? The July/August issue of The Atlantic magazine has an article entitled: “The Industry That Ate America: The long and lurid history of lobbying” by Franklin Foer. Setting aside my disdain for ex-President Trump, I highlight what is dead wrong for any political party to pursue: a plan to fire every federal civil service employee and “to install roughly 20,000 loyal civil servants across agencies. Project 2025 leaders have called those loyalists – “conservative warriors." They have called them an army of “weaponized conservatives” [from PBS NewsHour July 9]. Why is this a serious problem and relevant to Jeremiah’s “den of thieves” remark? Whether “weaponized conservatives or liberals,” that corruption should be an anathema to every American citizen.
The Atlantic stated: (begin) “For eager beneficiaries of government largesse – not to mention for their equally wolfish facilitators – a second Trump administration would represent a bonanza, unprecedented in the history of K Street. Trump’s plan to overturn a bureaucratic ethos that has prevailed since the late 19th century – according to which good government requires disinterested experts more loyal to the principles of public stewardship than to any politician – opens the way to installing cronies who will serve as handmaidens of K street. The civil service, however beleaguered, has acted as an imperfect bulwark against the assault of corporate interests. Its replacement would be something close to the opposite. The hacks recruited to populate government departments will be primed to fulfill the desires of campaign donors and those who pay tribute to the president; they will trade favors with lobbyists who dangle the prospect of future employment in front of them. This new coterie of bureaucrats would wreck the competence of the administrative state – and the wolves of K street will feast on the carcass of responsible governance.” (end)
[Note: K Street is a major thoroughfare in the United States capital of Washington, D.C., known as a center for lobbying and the location of numerous advocacy groups, law firms, trade associations, and think tanks. In political discourse, "K Street" has become a metonym for lobbying in the United States, the same way Wall Street in New York City became a metonym for the financial markets of the United States, since many lobbying firms are or at least traditionally were located on the section in Northwest Washington which passes from Georgetown through a portion of Downtown Washington, D.C]
Jeremiah warned us of a den of thieves. Jesus did the same. Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those engaged in selling and buying there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, “It is written: ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of thieves” (Matthew 21:12-13).
Let’s heed Jeremiah and Jesus to prevent a den of thieves.
Deacon David Pierce
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