politics and faith

What concerns me about the American church's efforts in politics is that we've essentially got it all ass-backward. We're trying to get people to be righteous by telling them where their sin is, where they fail to measure up to God's standards and so on. We're trying through political might to make America a Christian nation.

It's something I've given a lot of thought to lately, as I've struggled to understand what the Cross means to me personally, and what it should mean to the church as a whole.

Might is the opposite of the approach Christ took. He could have been born to Caesar, or he could have reclaimed the throne of David, but instead he took the route of a morally questionable birth in the podunk town of Nazreth, and made his ministry out of giving selflessly to other people. When Satan offered him the crown of Caesar, Jesus refused. He didn't seek power, or glory, or anything of the sort. What he sought was our hearts, and by seeking those, he made a revolution more profound than anything else I can think of.

That's no exaggeration either. The gospel literally has found its way to cultures so utterly removed from first-century Israel that there would appear to be no points of commonality, and yet it has found those points, established itself as a native religion, and transformed those cultures toward the likeness of Christ.

I've said before and I'll say again that there is nothing wrong with Christians being politically active. But the gospel is not political, and when political or legal changes become the thrust of our ministries and start taking priority in our attention and energies, we've stopped serving God and started serving ourselves. The power to transform society, to renew the mind and to reconcile men to God is just not found in a political program. Those things are found ONLY in Christ.

I suppose that's one of the reasons I find it annoying when the Religious Right acts as though God is on the side of the Republican Party, or tries to take ownership of Christ as a conservative based on the values we believe he had. The truth is that God is not on our side, he is on his own side, and we need to be with him. As for Christ, I'm convinced more and more that he isn't conservative or liberal. He's a social radical who worked outside the system more often than not.