All Politics Come Up Short
This post is a bit different.
A lot of things go unsaid here. Right now I want to say something about how I don't say anything about one of the things left unsaid.
So far I have not revealed any of my political views on this blog. This has been very hard for me to do, and I'm always tempted to say something about politics. I link to a lot of blogs which discuss Christianity and politics.
Here's a glimpse of my mood about politics:
Suppose we lived in a world where there was no crime. Suppose this world had a clean environment. Let's suppose people paid no taxes and yet got a number of excellent government services. Everyone agreed with the foreign policy one hundred percent of all the time. Imagine unemployment did not exist in this utopian nation.
This is simply the best politics can promise us. And you know what? It has a major flaw. It is totally incapable of giving anyone the desire to get out of bed in the morning. No one is going to wake up and say, "Ah! There is no crime ... my life is worth living!".
We think these accomplishments will add value to life, but I am convinced they do not!
Certainly politicians do the best they can -atleast some do, I don't know for sure which ones. At the same time there is this vanity to politics that cannot be separated from it. So often a person can understand public policy but fail to understand their own personal life.
To me, that is a terrible loss.
People express to me their fear or gladness that a certain person is in office. Usually my response is political because I have strong political views. But sometimes I step back and wish to tell them, "Don't you know there is nothing new under the sun?".
Maybe that means I don't have strong political views.
In any case I find that however firmly I believe about a public policy issue, there is something stronger inside me that says, "It doesn't matter!!".
Don't get me wrong: it's okay for Christians to get elected into office. In fact I do my best to make sure it happens (yes, I vote). I think these leaders should do their best to express their Christianity through the policy they inact.
What is the line to be crossed? Simply this: when they say, "I am a Christian because I voted in such and such a way".
Eternity is infinitely more interested in one's opinion of how one should live personally, and not how the public is to be governed. We will each have to answer for the policies we hold ourselves to, and not the policies the government holds its citizens to.
I believe this distinction is profoundly important. People were constantly misunderstanding Jesus Christ for this very reason. They wanted to make him the King of Israel and then -much later- the King of their priorities.
Jesus makes the distinction between giving to the state what is the state's and giving to God what is God's. A distinction is not necessary except when two things are different. In this case Jesus separates the exterior world of public policy from the inner world of our hearts -which belong especially to God.
Personally I believe conservatives are tempted to say politics and obedience to God are identical because they want to give themselves a solid pat on the back -just for assenting to a bunch of ideas. Liberals are tempted to keep their obedience to God totally out of politics so they can get votes from those who openly approve of sin.
When one stands naked and alone before God, neither political conviction is advantageous.
Two writers who I have great respect for are Camus and Sartre. I firmly believe their failure to fully understand what it means to exist is related to how political they became. Sartre as a matter of fact gave up existentialism entirely so he could focus on communism.
I don't say that as an attack on communism. I say that as an attack on the failure of politics of every kind to explain to us who we are and what meaning we can find in an otherwise meaningless world.
What topics tempt me the most to write about? Abortion and homosexuality. Even though I have arrived at my opinion on these topics on the basis of what I find to be mere devotion, I realize that having the best view on these issues is very different from living a life of devotion.
And it kills me because inside me is a voice saying, "You are withholding your views on abortion and homosexuality because you want approval from men." And so, as a matter of conscience I sometimes post on other people's blogs what my true feelings are.
The most I can say here -in this place of mere devotion- is that one's views about homosexuality and abortion should be based soley in devotion to God however despised they are by men. Devotion, when it becomes serious, is obedient.
Having the best view on abortion and homosexuality is a triumph in understanding God's law. God has demanded that his servants are to live righteous lives, but understanding God's law is not the same thing as understanding the power of the Gospel.
One final thought: Jesus noted that the pagans love to hold power over one another. So too, the democrats love having power over republicans and republicans love to hold power over the democrats. A person cannot discover what it means to be born again by having power over others.
It is supremely a matter of how much self-control a person has.
A lot of things go unsaid here. Right now I want to say something about how I don't say anything about one of the things left unsaid.
So far I have not revealed any of my political views on this blog. This has been very hard for me to do, and I'm always tempted to say something about politics. I link to a lot of blogs which discuss Christianity and politics.
Here's a glimpse of my mood about politics:
Suppose we lived in a world where there was no crime. Suppose this world had a clean environment. Let's suppose people paid no taxes and yet got a number of excellent government services. Everyone agreed with the foreign policy one hundred percent of all the time. Imagine unemployment did not exist in this utopian nation.
This is simply the best politics can promise us. And you know what? It has a major flaw. It is totally incapable of giving anyone the desire to get out of bed in the morning. No one is going to wake up and say, "Ah! There is no crime ... my life is worth living!".
We think these accomplishments will add value to life, but I am convinced they do not!
Certainly politicians do the best they can -atleast some do, I don't know for sure which ones. At the same time there is this vanity to politics that cannot be separated from it. So often a person can understand public policy but fail to understand their own personal life.
To me, that is a terrible loss.
People express to me their fear or gladness that a certain person is in office. Usually my response is political because I have strong political views. But sometimes I step back and wish to tell them, "Don't you know there is nothing new under the sun?".
Maybe that means I don't have strong political views.
In any case I find that however firmly I believe about a public policy issue, there is something stronger inside me that says, "It doesn't matter!!".
Don't get me wrong: it's okay for Christians to get elected into office. In fact I do my best to make sure it happens (yes, I vote). I think these leaders should do their best to express their Christianity through the policy they inact.
What is the line to be crossed? Simply this: when they say, "I am a Christian because I voted in such and such a way".
Eternity is infinitely more interested in one's opinion of how one should live personally, and not how the public is to be governed. We will each have to answer for the policies we hold ourselves to, and not the policies the government holds its citizens to.
I believe this distinction is profoundly important. People were constantly misunderstanding Jesus Christ for this very reason. They wanted to make him the King of Israel and then -much later- the King of their priorities.
Jesus makes the distinction between giving to the state what is the state's and giving to God what is God's. A distinction is not necessary except when two things are different. In this case Jesus separates the exterior world of public policy from the inner world of our hearts -which belong especially to God.
Personally I believe conservatives are tempted to say politics and obedience to God are identical because they want to give themselves a solid pat on the back -just for assenting to a bunch of ideas. Liberals are tempted to keep their obedience to God totally out of politics so they can get votes from those who openly approve of sin.
When one stands naked and alone before God, neither political conviction is advantageous.
Two writers who I have great respect for are Camus and Sartre. I firmly believe their failure to fully understand what it means to exist is related to how political they became. Sartre as a matter of fact gave up existentialism entirely so he could focus on communism.
I don't say that as an attack on communism. I say that as an attack on the failure of politics of every kind to explain to us who we are and what meaning we can find in an otherwise meaningless world.
What topics tempt me the most to write about? Abortion and homosexuality. Even though I have arrived at my opinion on these topics on the basis of what I find to be mere devotion, I realize that having the best view on these issues is very different from living a life of devotion.
And it kills me because inside me is a voice saying, "You are withholding your views on abortion and homosexuality because you want approval from men." And so, as a matter of conscience I sometimes post on other people's blogs what my true feelings are.
The most I can say here -in this place of mere devotion- is that one's views about homosexuality and abortion should be based soley in devotion to God however despised they are by men. Devotion, when it becomes serious, is obedient.
Having the best view on abortion and homosexuality is a triumph in understanding God's law. God has demanded that his servants are to live righteous lives, but understanding God's law is not the same thing as understanding the power of the Gospel.
One final thought: Jesus noted that the pagans love to hold power over one another. So too, the democrats love having power over republicans and republicans love to hold power over the democrats. A person cannot discover what it means to be born again by having power over others.
It is supremely a matter of how much self-control a person has.
Labels: The System
7 Comments:
I am not a big fan of politics and faith being combined, actually I find it to be detrimental for one party involved - faith. People start seeing politics and faith so tied, they blame the faith for the problems within the world (ex: colonialism), not the politics as much (knowing little about political foundation and knowing more about faith foundation).
I just see this as an un-holy union compromising the views of the believer and allowing us to look 'evil' (which if we are gonna letter of the law Paul also speaks against in 1 Thessalonians). The problem is we 'look' more than evil, we partner with an entity which we cannot account for.
Hey man, just stopping by to let you know that I frequent your blog and enjoy it very much. I just started scoping out some of the blogs you're linked to, and I dig that one, what is it? disjectamembra? cool stuff.
take care,
Jathan
Societyvs,
Your view is not without its priests and poets. I do have some sympathy for it: the pilgrims left England because they felt the government was getting too involved in their spiritual lives.
On the other hand, there's a lot of governments where the leaders do not fear God. I'm thinking of China, Cuba, Cambodia, the French Revolution, and the USSR. The product is always lots of dead bodies and economic hysteria.
People think that what made America a success was its constitution, but I disagree. A lot of other countries have adopted a form of our government, but to no avail. Our founding fathers were mostly religious, but even the ones who weren't had their own personal principles they made an effort to live by.
So basically I think our leaders should be religious, but they should not try to run the church from the state. In some form the public takes account (even if only a glimpse) of their contributions, but they must first remember that someday they must account themselves to God and to their conscience.
Again, politics cannot give anyone meaning in life.
Hi Jathan,
Thanks for stopping by again. The guy behind disjectamembra is a Bible school professor who really seems to care about his students -even the pesky ones like me. That's my opinion atleast. He can also be funny and insightful.
For a hilarious read, check this out.
"On the other hand, there's a lot of governments where the leaders do not fear God. I'm thinking of China, Cuba, Cambodia, the French Revolution, and the USSR. The product is always lots of dead bodies and economic hysteria." (JB)
And this differs from the making of the America's in what way exactly? Just cause God made it into the legislation? The histories of Britian, France, and Spain are some of the bloodiest things on record - even with their belief in God. Germany wasn't altogethet athiest either in one of those world wars. It really makes no difference of a politics claims God or not, they simply act out in indifference to human civility for the sake of flag and country.
That being said I am refrencing the past (more or less) and out current day structures are not like that. Unless you include the whole Middle East fisaco right now and America's dealings with countries much weaker than them in a such a brute way - Latin America, Cuba, the Korea's, Vietnam, etc. And this one supposedly has a Christian president (s). Money and power corrupt, no matter the figurehead.
But I do get the essence of what you mean, we do live in deomocratic countries where we are free to practice our religion, vote, have business, etc. I have to say the system has afforded us some great things - which we lump under freedom. I can't say running for office of any sort isn't appealing but what is more appealing is if the churches of this great state united and did things without gov't help - that would be better.
Societyvs,
You are quite the raconteur. Thanks for keeping me on my toes.
I wrote you a long, long response. I don't mean for that to sound like evidence one way or the other, but basically to spare the few people reading this blog (two of which are you and I ;). Especially since you concede the main thing I was getting at in your last paragraph.
I agree the Churches are better off without government interference ... and leaving politics out of the sermons. Perhaps this blog would be better off if its primary contributor stayed out of political discussions a little more ;)
Diana:
I am reminded of that verse in Luke 7 where Jesus says those who are forgiven little love little. Perhaps it is because they know what it means to pass from having an evil life to a good life.
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