As a nation, politics seems to be simultaneously our favorite and least favorite topic of conversation. You don’t need me to tell you why. Political discourse is fraught with pitfalls on all sides. As a pastor, it is my calling to offer the good news the gospel has for politics to the people in my church. Throughout my ministry, I have tried to pastor my congregations through political seasons in a way which leads them to adapt certain attitudes and apply them with certain actions. These attitudes and actions are informed by the gospel, which I believe tells an infinitely better and more hopeful story for politics than what we are used to hearing on social media and the evening news.
ATTITUDES
1) Acknowledge only King Jesus reigns
In 1986, I worked for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in Amsterdam as a driver for the speakers. In my time there, I learned that the morals of Amsterdam wax and wane according to the U.S. presidency. At least in my adult life, I have gained the strong impression that Christians, like Amsterdam, often think they can only live for Christ to the degree they are pleased with their President. If you find you are overly excited about the outcome of an election or overly depressed about the outcome of an election, your view of Christ is too small. We should not make nearly as much of the U.S. presidency as we do.
As Christians, our hope is not in a political party but in King Jesus, who remains on the throne despite any bizarre political events. If we are ever to engage in politics in a way which honors God and is constructive for society, we must first remember that politicians are not the ultimate authority. In the end, Jesus wins, along with all those with him. No matter what happens in an election or to this country, “The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. . . He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. . . Before him all the nations are as nothing” (Is. 40:17, 23, 28).
2) Remember King Jesus’ method and means for accomplishing his mission
Chuck Colson is an apt example of someone whose perspective on politics was transformed by his experience of the gospel. You may remember him as Richard Nixon’s special counsel and someone who had a major hand in orchestrating the Watergate scandal of 1972. Colson’s downfall eventually led him to faith in Jesus. This once immensely powerful man would go on to say that the most important political book he ever read was The Political Illusion by Jacques Ellul.
Ellul is a lay theologian in the Protestant Reformed Church of France and professor of law and history at the University of Bordeaux. In this book so important to Colson, Ellul argues that the modern politicians have created the illusion that they have power to change or reform society. While it is true that they have power to maintain a justice system and protect citizens from internal and external threat, they have no power to change society because they cannot change people. In fact, Ellul argues, the politician’s lack of power to do any more than maintain government is revealed in his great concern for public opinion. In other words, the very people who think the politician has so much power are the ones the politician is most afraid of.
When I was pastoring a church in St. Louis, the chairman of the Republican Party of Missouri took me aside during an election season and said, "I know you are getting beaten up for not yielding the pulpit to politics, and I am here to beg you to continue not to yield it." He was the chair of the Republican party with a Masters in Political Science from Rutgers, but he was the first to admit nothing he was doing could change this world. Only the gospel of the church of Christ can change hearts. We must pray and be active in politics, but we must not pin our hopes on political movements and so become enslaved to them.
The apostles in the New Testament were guilty of this misconception. No matter how many times Jesus emphasized the spiritual nature of his Kingdom, they were still focused on a political one liberated from Roman oppression. The requests for favor in a political kingdom were not new. James’s and John’s mother made one such request for her sons shortly before Jesus entered Jerusalem (Mt. 20:21). Even the apostles were prone to put their hope in politics instead of Christ! We all do. Remember, Old Testament Israel wanted a king so they could be like other nations, which in the end meant putting their trust in earthly leaders rather than God.
In our sin, it is against our nature to trust in what we cannot see. Invisible realities like God, like the true power of his Kingdom, and like the secret purposes of his will are not as attractive to us as things we can objectify. We prefer political intrigue and personalities and power because we think those forces really get us somewhere. But God’s strategy is to work powerfully in ways no one in the world recognizes as powerful, wise, or truly practical.
If real power to change society is not found in the political realm, where is it found? In the Holy Spirit which enables the Church corporately and individually to preach, teach, and share the gospel, which transforms people who can transform society.[1]
For example, while we are tempted to think nothing can happen in China because they live under communist reign and nothing can happen in Africa because they are not politically significant and nothing can happen in Latin America because they are not wealthy, God has been growing his church in those places to the point that they have become the Christian epicenters of the world with mission efforts going out from them to the ends of the earth.
God uses his Spirit to change the hearts of people. The ministry of the church takes the good news of the gospel to people through word and deed, and those people ultimately bring the change politicians cannot.
ACTIONS
1) Honor the emperor, fear only God
Both Peter and Paul lived under the oppressive rule of the emperor Nero. Nero was a man who ruthlessly persecuted the Christian church, and eventually (if history is correct), killed both Peter and Paul. Nero burned Rome and blamed the Christians for it. He sewed them up in animal skins and turned wild beasts on them. He lit them up as candles to illuminate the Roman sky. Even so, both Peter and Paul called on the Christian church to submit to every authority. They exhorted them to not forget that every authority is established by God. “Honor the emperor,” they said, but only “fear God” (1 Peter 2:17).
In Christian ethics, we distinguish between being submissive to government authorities and being obedient to them. That is, while we pray and work for the good of our society (Jer. 29:7), we should not obey our leaders when they command us to do something against God’s commands or something that does harm to our neighbor (Acts 5:29). Therefore, Christians who disobey their leaders must prepare to submit to the consequences for conscience’s sake as well as with the hope that their defiance will bring constructive change. Martin Luther King, Jr., exemplified this principle. You can hear it expressed well during an aggressive line of questioning from a Southern journalist:
Tom Wicker: Dr. King, you said a moment ago that Alabama was a state that gives respectability to the resistance and defiance of the law. You listed an observance of the law by local agencies in the south as one of the cardinal aims that you were seeking. Yet, on March 9th you had the second march on Montgomery in violation of a federal injunction not to march. You said that order was unjust, and John Lewis, one of your colleagues said that the negroes had a constitutional right to march, injunction or no injunction. Now, was that in keeping with the spirit of non-violence and restraint that has always characterized your movement, and could you explain your reasoning in defying the court order that day?
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Well, let me say two things to that Mr. Wicker. First, I did not consider myself defying a court order that particular day. I consulted with my attorneys before the march, and they stated that they felt it was an invalid order and that I would not be in contempt of court, violating the court order if I led the march to the point of having a moral confrontation with the state troopers at the point where the people were brutalized on Sunday. So I still don't consider that breaking a court order or breaking what I consider an unjust law.
On the other hand, I must be honest enough to say that I do feel that there are two types of laws. One is the just law and one is an unjust law. I think we all have moral obligations to obey just laws. On the other hand, I think we have moral obligations to disobey unjust laws, because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. I think the distinction here is that when one breaks a law the conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly, not uncivilly, and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty. Any man who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail in order to arouse the conscience of the community on the injustice of the law is at that moment expressing the very highest respect for law.
Tom Wicker: Well, I can sympathize with a good deal of that, but it seems to me you get into a very difficult point here at which one man's conscience is set in fact above the conscience of society, which has invoked the law. How are we to enforce law when a doctrine is preached that one man's conscience may tell him that the law is unjust when another man's conscience [doesn't] tell [him] that?
Martin Luther King, Jr.: I think you enforce it and I think you deal with it by not allowing anarchy to develop. I do not believe in defying the law, as many of the segregationists do. I do not believe in evading the law, as many of the segregationists do. The fact is that most of the segregationists and racists that I see are not willing to suffer enough for their beliefs in segregation, and they are not willing to go to jail. I think the chief norm for guiding the situation is the willingness to accept the penalty. I don't think any society can call an individual irresponsible who breaks the law and willingly accepts the penalty if conscience tells him that that law is unjust.
I think that this is a long tradition in our society. It's a long tradition in biblical history. Meshach and Abednego broke an unjust law and they did it because they had to be true to a higher moral law. The early Christians practiced civil disobedience in a superb manner. Academic freedom would not be a reality today if it had not been for Socrates, and if it had not been for Socrates' willingness to practice civil disobedience. And I would say that in our own history, there's nothing that expresses massive civil disobedience any more than the Boston Tea Party. And yet we give this to our young people and our students as a part of the great tradition of our nation. So I think we are in good company when we break unjust laws, and I think those who are willing to do it and accept the penalty are those who are part of the saving of the nation.
David Bowen helps us think about this practically, saying, “We must always submit to the governing authorities. We must not always obey them.”[2]
2) Be informed by multiple sources but guided only by scripture
We must take action as biblically-minded people to form our perspective biblically. This feels counter-intuitive, because we wonder how an ancient text like the Bible can have anything relevant to say to our modern circumstances. In fact, it is precisely a source far removed from our circumstances that we need. The reason many are filled with suspicion about what we read, hear, and watch is because it is impossible for any news source to be truly unbiased. While the Bible does not specific instructions for every conceivable situation in life, it provides abiding principles which can apply to every conceivable situation in life. We must gain information from all sides and then critique it by scripture.
3) Get organized in doing good
You and I must fix our eyes on the throne of Jesus Christ and realize the good of our neighbor, and indeed our whole country, does not depend on the President but on the Church of Jesus Christ living out the principles of the gospel. Even if Adam and Eve had not sinned, there would have been a political structure; God had ordered society and given roles to Adam and Eve before the fall. Regardless of the state of a citizen’s politics, he or she should be political in seeking order which blesses creatures and stewards the creation. Politics is the right ordering of society for human flourishing, or to put it another way: the proper, patient, and merciful treatment of God's creation and all his creatures.
Perhaps we need to speak of Christians’ responsibility to get “organized” rather than get “political.” The greatest Kingdom accomplishments in politics have never occurred by Christians becoming a majority in government. They have always come by Christians organizing themselves into little platoons and bringing change from the bottom up.
How to get organized
Most every initiative bringing real change to the quality of life in our city and nation was initiated by one person meeting with at least another, identifying a problem, asking what resources each one had, recruiting other resources needed, then executing a specific action plan to solve the problem. There are many in Memphis who do this very thing. Following are examples from some whom I’ve pastored in the past.
- Concerning the low graduation rate in their town, they did not wait for politicians to fix it. Some Christians sat down together, prayed, planned, and founded Heritage School, creating an opportunity for families living in poverty to affordably provide their children with quality, gospel-centered education. Others sat down, prayed, raised money, recruited volunteers, and began tutoring in the projects.
- They did not wait for the government to fix a healthcare system, which effectively shut out the poorest members of their society. Two men prayed together, planned, trained, raised some money, and built a clinic with nearly a dozen providers seeing thousands of patients per year. They modeled this, in part, after work that men and women are doing here in Memphis at Christ Community Health Services.
- A small group of people partnered with a bank to help people caught in cyclical poverty become homeowners.
- A handful of people partnered with the city to tear down condemned homes.
- A group of women started a fitness class in the local library to address obesity and diabetes.
- Some men partnered with local judges to coordinate people doing community service for cleaning up downtown and to hear the gospel.
Politicians didn’t start any of these things—ordinary people did. Politicians may help make initiatives even more effective, but when Christians organize to do good, they bring shalom to a City.
In order to consider how to bring the good news to bear on our city, we must start by answering the question, ‘What is good?’ In our next post, we will explore what the Bible defines as good. What may be surprising to many is that the Bible’s definition does not neatly fit into any political ideology or agenda.
Those with whom we organize ourselves for good do not even necessarily have to be Christians. In fact, we double our efforts when they are not, because they will “see our good works and glorify our father in Heaven” (Mt. 5:16). Francis Schaffer has informed my understanding of this concept tremendously:
I have two words which I would recommend to anybody… and they are “ally” and “co-belligerent.” An ally is a person who is a born-again Christian with whom I can go a long way down the road… now I don’t say to the very end, because I’m a Presbyterian and I might not be able to form a church with a strong Baptist… but we can go a long way down the road – and that’s an ally. A co-belligerent is a person who may not have any sufficient basis for taking the right position but takes the right position on a single issue. And I can join with him without any danger as long as I realize that he is not an ally and all we’re talking about is a single issue.[3]
Finding allies and co-belligerents enables us to organize with others to bring the good news to bear on the city and the nation. Click here to read "Political Allegiance and the Common Good."
[1] See anecdote in Boice, Acts, 26 as well as Robert Nisbet’s review in Commentary (August 1970).
[2] Interview of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by Tom Wickert on “Meet the Press.” Quote and interview from David Bowen in his teaching series “Passages of Protest: 10 Biblical Texts on Social Justice.”
[3] As quoted by Colin Duriez, Francis Schaffer: An Authentic Life in Martin Wroe and Dave Roberts, “Dr. Francis Schaffer,” in Stewart Henderson, ed. and comp., Adrift in the 80s: the Strait Interviews (Basingstoke, UK: Marshall Morgan and Scott, 1986), 31.