God Help Us

by David Kuo

A writer observed: ‘We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.’ I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman.

I grew up with those people.

They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America… who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town.

I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA because I wanted to make my kids’ public education better.

When I ran for city council, I didn’t need focus groups and voter profiles because I knew those voters, and knew their families, too.

Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.

This defense of small town culture, of a small “c” christian culture of families and education and community was pitch perfect — a beautifully written, wonderfully delivered speech. It was the kind of speech designed to invoke Americana passion. And it did. Christian support for Governor Palin was overwhelming and fervent.

I received a very long email from a pastor (excerpted below):

Sunday Night — a burden hit me that would only shake me to my knees — I prayed and wept for our nation. Never has my heart been so broken before God. I literally interceded for [John McCain and Sarah Palin] who do not deserve all the hate against them. The GOD-Haters are going to try everything to stop them, but they will not succeed!...

Monday and into Monday Night — the burden of prayer was so heavy that I was literally shaking and could not stop weeping. I didn’t know that they were coming to Ohio. I prayed and walked and wept and walked. I prayed and prayed and wept and prayed...

Tuesday at 2:00 A.M. — God spoke these words to me - ‘...Go turn the Radio on!’ Immediately the Reporter’s Words were - ‘McCain & Palin’s bus to be in Lebanon later this morning for a 10:00 a.m. rally!’

Immediately on hearing that news, I heard God again... God said, ‘You are to go. You will meet them and give them a message for Me!’

The message was that Governor Palin was a modern day Esther and that she would not fail. The “God-haters” would not defeat her. But what was it that Sarah Palin was really fighting for? Was she really fighting the same fight as Esther? Really? Or was she fighting for the good values that have defined so much of American history?

The answer is the latter. Sarah Palin is not Esther. Frankly, we demean Esther and display a remarkable biblical illiteracy to suggest otherwise. But such is the passion of our deep confusion between American values and the values of Christ.

The other problem with this powerful cultural debate is that it overshadows what we really mean when we talk about Christians and politics. What we really mean is something far more spiritual.

My friend John Scanlon leads a wonderful Bible study in Georgetown on Thursday mornings. Recently we were talking about this matter of Christian political engagement and he began to share something he’d just taught out of Acts. It is important, by way of background, to emphasize that John is a lifelong Republican. He was active in conservative politics in college and met his wife through his activism. His wife, in turn, was one of the leaders of the Christian Coalition at its peak. So when he speaks of politics, he knows what he is talking about. We talked about how Paul interpreted his commission to be Jesus’ apostle to the Gentiles. We discussed the kind of seeds Paul sowed in the hard and thorny ground of the world’s mightiest empire. And then we talked about what it looked like when the kingdom of God began to take root in the kingdoms of this world.

Think of Paul, John asked me to imagine, as one of us — a twentyfirst century American evangelical –airdropped into the orgiastic excesses of Corinth where a thousand prostitutes serviced worshipers at the Temple of Aphrodite, or shipped to the scornful intellectuals of Mars Hill in Athens, or sent to the occultists of Ephesus. In each of these places, a corrupt and powerful few ruled brutally over the impoverished, enslaved, and occupied. How would we — heirs of the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the civil rights movement and who think of freedom as a thing won only by human struggle — seek to reshape that world?

It is a challenging thought experiment. What would we do if we had Paul’s advantages — born into the elite rank of Roman citizen, with a first rate mind and a first class education, and leader of a growing grassroots network of followers literally committed to the death? How would we use them to show others what it looked like to follow Jesus?

Paul did not do many of the things we might have done. He did not convene a summit of the best and brightest to create a ten-year strategic plan for taking the world for Christ. He probably didn’t even bring in a team of marketing specialists or management consultants. Paul did not ask the church to endow an academy to train its youth to take the commanding heights of politics, culture, and the military. Nor did he organize a movement to end stoning or whipping, gain equal rights for Gentiles or barbarians, or even fight slavery. Paul did not end any of his epistles by asking his audience to sign a petition to the emperor appealing for religious liberty and tolerance for Christians.

How nutty. How very, very, first century of him.

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