A Portrait of Grace

Our daily broadcast today features a fascinating conversation with my dear friend and colleague Tim Goeglein. Tim is currently serving this ministry as our Vice President of External Affairs.

Prior to joining the Focus team, Tim was with President George W. Bush for seven and a half years. He knows Washington – but even more importantly, he knows and appreciates the gift of God’s grace and forgiveness. Today’s discussion is a beautiful story from that era about redemption and a remarkable turn of events.

I’ll share just a short excerpt of our exchange with you here:

Tim: I love what I did because I love President Bush and I love my colleagues. But it’s just the case that “pride goeth before the fall.” And I came to see—and let me just say before I am specific in this regard—that the capacity for self-deception is very large.Jim: Yes.Tim: And I learned that firsthand. And I found that in all of the speaking, the meeting, and the presenting that I was doing on behalf of the President, on behalf of the President who I loved, in behalf of an administration that I held in very high regard, I would not have said it at the time but I was becoming a very prideful person.

And all of the time that I was working in the White House I was writing columns for my hometown newspaper. The News-Sentinel. I wasn’t writing about politics but I was writing about all the other things that I love. About the arts, music, sports, philosophy and books and this sort of large world that was my internal world; quite apart from life on the Potomac.

And as time went on I always wanted to be the one who was saying it better than anybody. I wanted to be the person who was sort of unassailable in that regard. But no one is unassailable. And no one can always summon exactly the right language. And so over time I began to plagiarize some of my columns.

And it’s aptly true that what begins as a small thing can become a much larger thing. With some people, that’s power. With some people, that’s money. With some people, that’s sex. You know, we are all vulnerable.

I’d invite you to click here to listen to our entire conversation. You’ll also want know about Tim’s terrific new book, Man in the Middle: An Inside Account of Faith and Politics in the George W. Bush Era.

It’s Friday! A good weekend to one and all.