
- POLITICS
'pɑl.ə.tɪks plural noun. Activities associated with gaining or holding power; frequently seen as divisive and devious. - 2. Activites associated with governing a country, land, or organization; or dealing with relations between one such organization and another.
- 3. Beliefs and principles regarding the gaining or holding of power.
- 4. The academic study of government and the state.
- [Politic
'pɑl.ə.tɪk adjective or verb, politicalpə'lɪd.ə.kəl adjective, politicianpɑl.ə'tɪ.ʃən noun, politicopə'lɪd.ɪ.koʊ noun.]
We kinda have to do this. Humans, y’see,
In contrast
So yeah, there are antithetical ideas at play whenever we talk about God’s kingdom and politics. One’s about surrender, because we humans can’t be trusted with power. The other’s not; it’s about gaining or taking or stealing power, because we imagine we’re the right-minded exceptions who can be trusted with power. Others can’t. The opposition party surely can’t.
How do Christians juggle these ideas? Same way we’ve always justified our possession of power. Same as we’ve always justified not surrendering all our power to God. In brief: “I’m gonna do good things with it! The power’s not gonna corrupt me. My heart is pure.”
In other words, we lie to ourselves. And our fellow Christians. And God.
Humans need governance.
In our fallen world, not everyone’s gonna surrender to God. Loads of humans reject him. Loads of Christians don’t really wanna surrender either.
And these Christians aren’t even sure we need to.
If this claptrap were actually true, you do realize Christians oughta act like Christ way more often than we see. But we don’t. They’re
And of course
James Madison believed, incorrectly, angels are always good—and wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Federalist 51 He’s absolutely right about this, though: If people didn’t sin, there’d be nothing to govern. On New Earth, when Jesus’s kingdom is finally what it was always meant to be, we Christians will be transformed
But we’re so not there yet. Not even close. So what do we do in the meanwhile?
Well, God’s idea was to give us his kingdom on earth. How it worked was he handed down
The reason we have the book of Judges is to demonstrate what happened, time and again, once the nation chose not to follow:
What about taking away the voluntary nature of the Law, and forcing people to follow it? (You know, legalism.) Well that’s been tried too. Usually turns evil. Without grace, and the other fruit of the Spirit,
Which kinda makes it impossible for anything but a
But once again, they’re rejecting the voluntary nature of Jesus’s kingdom. And definitely the love, patience, kindness, and grace.
So can our culture implement the Law? Only if the culture becomes uniformly Christian—which the United States is not, and never has been. Nationalists insist otherwise, and yes there were many times we were predominantly Christian. But we’ve always consisted of
The English colonies were founded in America at a time of cultural civil war between Roman Catholics, Puritans, and traditionalists. Likewise new denominations, like Quakers and Baptists. Some of these colonies didn’t even stay what their founders intended: Massachusetts was founded by separaitists and Puritans, but by the time of the Revolution it’d gone Unitarian. Pennsylvania was founded by Quakers, yet loads of Anabaptists moved in, and the Quakers are to this day outnumbered by them (and the Quaker leadership had to seriously compromise their pacifism before they’d endorse independence). America’s religious differences have always been around. They’re why we need a First Amendment, prohibiting the Congress from favoring any one religion over the others.
So till Jesus implements his kingdom himself, the best system we’ve invented for a pluralistic society is our current system of limited democracy. (“Limited” because we have a constitution, and we’re not allowed to violate it.)
- Make a constitution, spelling out how the government’s to work, and limiting just how far it can go.
- Include an explicit list of human rights. Make ’em really hard to abolish. Make it so we’re absolutely forbidden to violate them.
- Let all the responsible-enough people in society vote. (But educate everybody so they’re not idiots. Well, so most of ’em aren’t idiots. There are always a few. Like the folks who complain, “Why are we paying so much to educate everybody?”)
- Poll the voters regularly. So long that they don’t violate the constitution, go with what the majority wants.
- Just in case the voters do violate the constitution, have the courts referee.
Sounds fair, right?
And yet even with our system of limited democracy, nationalist Christians keep trying to implement the Old Testament’s Law piecemeal. Get Congress to pass laws which reflect
A nation of kings.
About two centuries after
The Hebrews wanted ’em gone. And grew tired of listening to the L
1 Samuel 8.7-9 ESV - 7 And the L
ORD said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. 8 According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you. 9 Now then, obey their voice; only you shall solemnly warn them and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.”
Which Samuel did:
1 Samuel 8.11-18 ESV - 11 He said, “These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. 12 And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. 13 He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. 14 He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. 15 He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. 16 He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men and your donkeys, and put them to his work. 17 He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. 18 And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the L
ORD will not answer you in that day.”
In Thomas Paine’s 1776 revolutionary tract
But Paine missed the fact these aren’t just the evils of living under a monarchy. They’re the necessary evils of every government. Doesn’t matter whether we’ve put power in the hands of a single tyrant, or a house of representatives. When people are given power, they always, always use it to their own gain, figuring it’s part of the perquisites of their job.
King David ben Jesse was probably the best king ancient Israel ever had. The scriptures regularly point to how he was absolutely bananas for the L
What’s the alternative? No government at all? Absolutely not; read Judges again if you don’t believe me. Government is a necessary evil.
Powerful leaders, like a king or dictator, like even a constitutionally limited president, are regularly awful leaders. No king but Jesus is any good. No ordinary human can be trusted with unlimited power. It’s why we Americans insist our Constitution is supreme, and our rulers must have limited power and (for the most part) limited offices. What we’re trying to do, when it comes to politics and government, is minimize the evil. We must never forget when it comes to government, we’re juggling knives, or taming hungry lions. It’s dangerous. We need to be very, very careful about how much power we hand anyone. And obviously we can’t just hand it to anyone; democracies have collapsed more than once because power was granted to the wrong man.
Our trouble, as Christians and voters, is we’ve not been careful about power. We often pursue it just the same as any greedy, self-centered, unregenerate sinner. And we’re perfectly happy to hand people more of it, ’cause they promise they’ll do all the more for us with it. Just like the Hebrews, we’re happy to trade our judges for kings, and ignore the real issues which undermine our country: Our own sins.
In any land where the people have rights, we are its queens and kings. We reign. As Christians the way we reign rightly is to surrender our authority to God: What does he want? Does he want us to invest our time, resources, and worries into the kingdoms of this world, or in his kingdom? Well duh; his kingdom. So what does that look like? Pouring money into politicians, getting out a vote, and trying to change the laws to suit “God” better? Or doing rightly, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God?
Do we put our efforts into making America “great again”?—whatever that means; usually something more racist and patriarchal. Or into lifting up the name of Christ Jesus, being his hands and feet in our communities, loving strangers and the needy, and laying the real groundwork for the kingdom he’ll set up?
How much should we invest in any system our Lord is inevitably gonna overthrow?
