King Cyrus.
Caesar.
Nebuchadnezzar.
If you've read your Bible at all, you'll know that these are big-time political leaders found in the Old and New Testaments. These are just a couple. There are dozens more. What's unique about these fellas and their political counterparts is that they were pawns in God's huge, providential hand. God was always working through and against world politics to bring about His purposes for His covenant people.
The use of the two prepositions in the above sentence is massively intentional. Politics is never an end or a goal. It is a means. I know that we will always wrestle until "the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ" [Rev 11.15], but why do Christians live like one tiny slice of the political pie is the end all. Further, if you don't see eye to eye with them, you are often deemed a lesser believer in their mind.
Let me repeat those prepositions again. God works THROUGH and AGAINST world politics. That is the biblical paradigm. I don't feel as if many believers live like it is. Yes, render to Caesar what is Caesar's [Mk 12]. Yes, submit to authority [Rom 13]. But please, don't rush to the polls as if you are doing God a favor. We must be upstanding citizens, but we are strangers and aliens here [1 Pe 1 and 2] and our true citizenship is in heaven [Phil 3]. We have to live like that is true.
2 comments:
This is a good post. There are people on both sides (republican and democrat) acting as if their candidate and their platform are God's chosen. It simply isn't true. The success or failure of America's economy is simply a tool which God will use to further his kingdom.
I hear a lot of people saying we should try to figure out who Jesus would vote for and then they give reasons why Jesus would vote for McCain or Obama or Baldwin or Barr or Nader. I'm not yet convinced that Jesus would actually vote. He reluctantly paid his taxes. He, along with his early followers, seemed to have little concern for whomever was in political power. If anything, he made it clear that his purpose was not political... his kingdom was not of this earth.
But if he were to vote, he wouldn't be interested in which candidate would be the most moral or which one would change the moral direction of the US, like so many people suggest. I think he would vote for whomever would allow for the greatest expansion of the kingdom of God, wittingly or unwittingly.
In other words, if a government making Christianity illegal would best foster the growth of the kingdom, I believe that's what Jesus would do with his votes. If a government that was on a slippery slope to being a communist dictatorship were best for the kingdom, that's who Jesus would vote for. I cannot say that with certainty, but his purpose was not to further the kingdom through political or governmental means. I think he would have the same bones to pick with James Dobson and Tony Campolo.
nice, bro. i love this:
"he would have the same bones to pick with James Dobson and with Tony Campolo."
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