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Government
God Help Us
by
David Kuo
Instead, Paul preached the good news — first to the Jews, then to the Gentiles. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and shared God’s love with anyone who would listen. He poured out his life like an offering. And like his master Jesus, he reaped the rewards of such a life: misunderstanding, ostracism, hatred, scourging, stoning, imprisonment, death; perfect peace, daily joy, love unbounded, abundant life, and at the end, we can be sure, the words “well done, good and faithful servant.”
Particularly for evangelicals, who see the early church as the model for how to live a dynamic and authentic faith, Paul shows that one can be salt and light — an ambassador of the shining city on a hill — without setting foot in the political realm. This is decidedly
not
to say that there is
no
role for Christians in politics. Rather, it is to say that we have to make sure our perspectives are correct. We have to make sure we know what we really mean.
RADICAL ENGAGEMENT
How then should Christians engage in politics? Carefully. Very, very carefully and very, very shrewdly. Let me suggest three things.
First, if you are involved in politics don’t make God your political co-pilot.
As the emails I have received suggest, using God to endorse your political passions is a powerful but spiritually dangerous thing. Sure, America has a history of co-opting God and God’s words for its own political ends — a whole generation of biblically illiterate people might be stunned to find out that America really isn’t the first “shining city on a hill.”
Phil Vischer, who conceived, launched, and bankrupted the VeggieTales franchise likes to say that he spent a lot of time praying about where God wanted him to take the business. Ultimately, he decided that God told him to make a full-length theatrical movie. After it bombed and the company tanked, Vischer spent a good bit of time alone with God when he realized something. God didn’t tell him to make that movie; Phil’s ego told him to make that movie. So too, let’s all be careful about claiming God’s endorsement for our candidate, our policy, or even our football team.
Second, practice love.
Few things would be crazier in this day and age than politicians who vehemently disagree on policy by day but who love each other and worship together. At the height of Chuck Colson’s political power in 1972, one of his biggest enemies was a Democratic senator named Harold Hughes. Hughes, a former alcoholic and born-again Christian, was a vocal anti-war, anti-Nixon critic with a special disregard for Colson. The next year, amidst Watergate and his impending corruption charges, Colson became a Christian too. A friend told him he would need good Christian friends, men like Harold Hughes. Colson thought his friend was nuts. Meanwhile, this same friend was also working with Senator Hughes. Upon hearing that Colson had become a Christian, Hughes remarked that he wished no one had bothered to tell Colson about Jesus; Colson didn’t deserve the benefits.
The two men eventually sat down together. Jesus or no Jesus, neither man really wanted to be friends with the other. Finally, Hughes challenged Colson to convince him his new faith was real and not contrived. Colson succeeded. “That’s all I need to know,” Hughes told Colson, “you have accepted Jesus and he has forgiven you. I do the same. I love you now as my brother in Christ. I will stand with you, defend you anywhere, and trust you with anything I have.” The men would become dear friends and ministry partners. We need more stories like these, stories that show the world that our radical commitment to a crazy gospel that tells us to love our enemies exceeds our commitment to politics.
Third, remember politics really isn’t a game.
Several years ago I ran into a friend who had spent years raising money for ministries. He’d gotten very involved in Republican politics. I asked him why. “Oh, wow, I just love the game.” It is easy to see politics as a game. There are clear winners and losers. The field of play is easily understood. And that is the trap. C.S. Lewis nailed it in
The Screwtape Letters
. The senior devil counsels the junior devil about his “client”: “Let him begin by treating patriotism...as a part of his religion. Then let him, under the influence of partisan spirit, come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which the religion becomes merely a part of the ‘cause,’ in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce…[O]nce he’s made the world an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly end he is pursuing.”
Perhaps the most important thing for us to understand is that there is no clear answer to “proper” Christian political engagement. There are no hard and fast rules; this is no color-by-number matter. Of course, Jesus hates hard and fast. He wants relationship. And he wants us to remember that no matter our political passions he will never return to restore his kingdom from an oval office. After all, he began it in a manger.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Which of the developments listed on page x do you believe has had the biggest impact on the nature of faith and politics in the past twenty years? Why?
2. How engaged in politics have you been in the past? What factors have influenced your level of engagement?
3. On page 6, David Kuo asks: “Do we believe that the church is the most important and transformative societal institution?” How would you answer that question?
4. The Bible doesn’t record any political engagement by the apostle Paul (if it existed). How can we learn from his example without jumping to the conclusion that Christians shouldn’t be politically engaged at all?
5. Do you believe your local community of faith is engaged in politics in a healthy way? If not, what do you think should change?
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