I spoke at a follow up discussion for the Jesus for President tour. Here are the remarks I prepared for the conversation:
I should start off by letting you know that my hope is best described in Christ manifesting himself through the Church. I’ve gone the traditional political action path and it proved hollow to me. There is no legislation that can love. The checks and balances of programs whether governmental or church-based ensure that the least of these is never served. Programs are incapable of love, people of God love.
The average person walking down the street today sees Christians as hate-filled hypocrites who hate gays and want to outlaw abortion.
Christ says that they will know you are Christians by your love.
My call today is for us to die to ourselves and, instead, become a people of love–costly, difficult, wonderful, painful, relational, messy, uncomfortable, sacrificial, transforming, beautiful, unconditional, love.
We have become mesmerized by the power of this world–the hope of principalities and governments. We have done an analysis and figured out that we should best spend our resources in leveraging the government to coerce the world into behaving as if it were Christian. That goes for both the Christian right and the Christian left.
We have figured out that it is much less costly to comfort our guilt by having the government outlaw abortion instead of seeking to open our spare-bedrooms up and offering refuge to mothers and their babies. We have said that it is much easier to leverage the government to provide healthcare to those in need rather than to assume that cost ourselves as the people of God called to care for the poor. We would rather protest war than to go thousands of miles away from our homes to, as peacemakers of God, stand between oppressors and the oppressed.
We are more interested in proclaiming truth to government than living out truth as God’s people. And guess what? The world has called our bluff. Until we are willing to live by the call of Christ ourselves, we have nothing to say to our elected officials.
My call today is for us to be a prophetic witness of love, first to our brothers and sisters in Christ and then to the world. I don’t know about you, but I have a long way to go in this respect.
A few examples of how this might play out:
In the mid-1800′s, there was a similar amount of abortion per capita as there is today. The church saw that this was a problem and began to open up homes for women and their babies and even their spare bedrooms. The rate of abortion plummeted without any changes in the law.
Throughout the world Christians provide healthcare to those in need, in fact there is a history of similar action in the United States. Think of how many Methodist, Baptist, and Catholic hospitals you know of. These were originally founded by the church.
Christian peacemaker teams today choose the costly path of going abroad to stand alongside people being bombed and oppressed.
You see it is much more important what you do before and after voting than what you do in the voting booth.
If you are called to politics, do politics. Don’t however do politics because you believe that will maximize your impact. Be willing to seek after God and obey, even if that means you are called to do something that in your view will only help a handful of people.
The Holy Spirit deploying the people of God to do the work of God knows exactly where and how each of us fit in bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. It is up to us to make the decision to accept that call–the call that will cost us our life.
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Good words here, Matt! I am sorry I wasn’t able to make it to the debriefing.
I have thought a lot about what is the role of Christians in a democratic government, which was recently sparked even more by a discussion surrounding Rick Warren’s forum on shadowsandsymbols.org. After a lot of discussion, I was finally able to express the bottom line for me in one of my comments there, which relates to your comments above:
“I don’t believe lasting societal change happens through governmental politics or institutions. It happens through grassroots love and caring, which is where I believe is the most effective place for Christians to be engaged.”
You hit the nail on the head in your post: we have by and large abdicated our responsibility towards grassroots Christian love, by delegating to the government, and not only the government, but also to Christian institutions. It’s far easier to write that monthly check my local church or other ministry than it is to actually love my neighbor by bringing them a meal when they’re sick, or watching their kids, or whatever.
Not saying we shouldn’t give financially, of course, any more than saying we shouldn’t be actively engaged in our government, which is a privilege of democratic society. Only that, as you said, we shouldn’t substitute those things for actually loving our neighbor. Christ never told us we could delegate that duty to others, did he?
I too have been thinking about writing blog entry on this subject, drawing together thoughts from blog, email and meatspace discussions I’ve been having on this subject (see wikipedia if don’t know what meatspace is).
Thanks for sharing and for giving more food for thought.
Matt – good post. I think it’s a question for me of doing everything I can possibly do: vote in a voting booth AND vote with my feet, wallet, mouth, etc.
More later.
This is a really late response, but I saw your comment today when I was getting ready to do another post…
I think that doing everything we can possibly do is a trap we fall into all the time (well, at least I do.)
Living in community has taught me a valuable lesson, when someone says their goal is “to change the world,” run.
That’s not to say that I don’t think we are called to change the world–my friends change the world each and every day. It’s rather to say when our goal is to change the world, it’s about us, not God.
Rather, I would say that we are to do no more and no less than that which God has called us to. It’s less about doing all we can and more about doing what God’s shown us. Unfortunately, we often seek to maximize our outcomes, instead of resting in the fact that God’s way is the best way.
For example: A young woman once told me that she felt called to help with HIV/AIDS in Africa, so she was trying to get a job at the UN. My question to her, after affirming her calling to help with AIDS in Africa, was, “Are you going to the UN because you think it’s the best way to stop HIV/AIDS in Africa or because that’s where God told you to go?” The point is that, in the strange upside-down Kingdom that is God’s, we are often called to do things that don’t seem to be the most effective (Joshua 5:13 – 6:27) and trust that God knows what’s best. Perhaps God’s plan for this young woman is to live the rest of her life with one family in a remote village.
There are a myriad of ways that God could use this to manifest the promises of her call–perhaps she providentially discovers a widely available herb that is highly effective in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, perhaps she inspires the village to do something that transforms the entire continent, or perhaps God’s plan is just for her to love this family well.
My point is that I don’t think it’s about us doing what we think is best or us maximizing the work of our hands, it’s allowing God to use us as He sees fit.