I’m telling God, not you.
That seemed to be Mike Huckabee’s message to the people of Arkansas when he was governor there. Here’s an item from the February 19, 1999 issue of the Arkansas Times:
What the people don’t know won’t hurt me.
In an interview with the Arkansas Baptist news magazine, Gov. Mike Huckabee elaborated on his statement that he had resolved to “trust God more and people less.”
The magazine said: “Citing ‘the classic Baptist phrase to trust the Lord and tell the people,’ he noted, ‘I’ve found you can still trust the Lord, but you better not tell the people everything. Too much information can hurt you more than not giving information.”
Huckabee went on to say that being guarded was “the reversal of everything I have practiced and been led to believe.”
When Jimmy Carter ran for president in 1976 as an evangelical, he looked voters straight in the eye and promised, “I will never lie to you.” Will former pastor Huckabee proclaim, “I will not tell you everything”?
And my pal Robert Wright of Bloggingheads.tv wonders (as he sits in my office) if this Huckabee statement represents the intersection of Baptist theology and the neocon-Straussian concept of the noble lie. In any event, how noble of Huckabee in this instance to ignore a Baptist injunction for the sake of his own administration.
