the church politic

The gospel inevitably touches on political matters, but it itself is not essentially political. The church politic fails for the very reason that the church is not supposed to be a political entity, but a spiritual one.

If we retain a focus on Christ, we will change society because we'll be changing the building blocks of society, even if we never get involved in the political arena.

What I'm saying is:

• The church can be content to be a Sunday-morning phenomenon (with extra services, radio shows and what have you thrown in). This is one of the pitfalls we often fall into. It leaves us with a message but no audience.
• The church can see the Sunday-morning option as no option at all. "By making ourselves irrelevant and uninvolved with the larger society, we forfeit leadership in our society to people with no desire to honor Christ," the reasoning goes. "Therefore we must reinsert ourselves and bring Christ back into the schools, the courts, the legal system." This often gets us focused on gaining power and results in us reminding ourselves and the world how evil the world is and how much more righteous we are. We have an audience now, but no message, and soon we don't have an audience either.
• The church can be involved with people on an individual basis, helping them buy food, pay the rent, repair their property, provide for their children, find ways to live peaceably, and so on. We not only have Christ's message, we also have people's full attention.