Everyone has a political opinion. Even if you don’t vote, you have an idea of what’s wrong, what needs to change and who is or isn’t fit to lead the country.
We’re currently in the middle of Presidential election campaigns. The problem is, few people feel that either of the candidates left are fit for the job. People are frustrated. No, infuriated! And they are making decisions about who to vote for based on their heated emotions.
But in the middle of all the hullabaloo about racism, gun control, immigration, the economy, emails, and spelling, we’re missing a crucial question: can we actually solve the problems causing us to feel so emotional through politics?
America is not a Christian nation. It never has been. At least not in the sense that it has totally yielded control to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Has it had moral times in history? Comparatively. But even its founding fathers lived lives of compromise and selfish pursuits. Most of our history books have simply glazed over their weaknesses and brought out whatever qualities best represented whatever cause they wanted to propagate.
Has America had times in history when it was primarily run and inhabited by believers in Jesus Christ? Again, yeah. But not really. Most of our founding fathers were deists and, while that certainly lent them to make more moral decisions than someone who is paganist, being a deist is far from being submitted to Jesus Christ and experiencing His deep transformation.
Transformation.
The world will constantly try running itself without God. We have Adam to thank for that. When he chose to listen to the serpent instead of trusting in what God had told him about the fruit and life if he obeyed, he ushered in an area where man instinctively tries doing life without God.
As long as man denies God as Creator he will degenerate into chaos because nothing makes sense outside of God.
That’s the problem America faces today. Far too long, our leaders have tried leading a nation under the banner of “trusting in God” or being a “Christian nation,” while at the same time trying to create their own code of morality (and adjusting it when personally convenient). I can’t think of any party or any specific president who hasn’t at some point justified living differently than God’s design because of the political advantages it created.
What’s worse, however, is that this conveniently rearranging morality isn’t exclusive to political leaders. Why are people frustrated? Because the church in America has not been what God intended for it to be.
Christians in America have gotten caught up in the pursuit of personal pleasures and neglected the God-given calling to reconcile the broken to Himself. We value our health and wealth more than Jesus. We place our identity in our jobs, titles, family, spirituality, education, personality, clothing style, church affiliation (or lack thereof), humanitarian causes, personal gifting’s, sports, and so much more instead of looking to Jesus and pursuing a humble life of knowing Him deeply and helping others know Him better.
When we lack a sense of meaning we numb ourselves with pleasure. That’s natural. Nobody likes to feel like they’re not valuable. But why don’t we return to our Creator? The only One who can instill true identity and purpose? The One who calls out the unique reason we walk on this earth?
When our personal stories, the dreams and goals we have for life, get catastrophically changed we try picking up the pieces and recreating something that fits within our control. And again, I get that. What else are we supposed to do when our lives fall flat? But why don’t we return to our Creator? The One who is writing a story far beyond our own. One which our personal journey fits squarely into even when we think it’s completely destroyed.
Whether we go through doors on Sunday morning or not, we are incredibly busy trying to do life without God.
But nothing satisfies. Nothing is working.
Presidential elections only expose the temperature of where society is already at. And if the church is supposed to be a thermostat of society, we’ve completely fallen off the wall.
God is creator. The only place of meaning and satisfaction is in aligning ourselves with His design.
It doesn’t guarantee freedom or protection from pain and death. But political freedom and physical protection is not what this world needs. Obviously. America had that. Many soldiers have given their lives “protecting” the rights and freedoms of Americans. Yet, they are continually being taken away no matter how loud we speak, are vehemently we argue on Facebook.
God raises up whomever He will (Dan. 4:17), which means that every empire has a clock counting down its hours. It is time that disciples of Christ quit worrying about politics and return to their Creator.
You know the best way to get a noisy crowd to quiet down? Just start giving someone your full attention? The person you were talking with will look to see who you’re looking at, in turn quieting down and giving him their attention. As that ripples through the crowd, everyone soon gives their full attention to that one person.
That’s how we transform society.
Paul encouraged the church at Corinth that as they gaze on Jesus Christ they would be transformed into His image (2 Cor. 3:18). The reason American society isn’t being transformed is because few people in America are fixing their attention on Christ. We’re too busy arguing over whether we should have the freedom to carry arms. We’re too caught up in stocks and bonds. Too focused on making sure that America will always be the utopia of family life and freedom we learned about in our colorful history books. Few are taking their family to the foot of the cross, to the entrance of the tomb, and remembering the work of Christ.
And very few are going next door and leading other families in doing that as well.
Could there come a time when we may need to directly resist government in standing for truth and preventing the murder of innocent people? Absolutely. Jesus said we should not be surprised when we face persecution (Matt. 10:16-25). But He says we are not to fear those who have the power to kill our bodies, but cannot touch our souls. Rather, we are to fear him who has the power to destroy both body and soul (Matt. 10:26-28). And the one that can do that will try getting us scared of those who kill our bodies but can’t touch our souls so that he can destroy us in hell.
But none of that would have to happen if we had been gazing on Christ all along. Because of our failure to live as God designed, even as Christians, we now have to fix our mistakes. Only, we still try doing it without God. Rather than spending our time and energy trying to right things politically, we need to spend our time and energy reconciling those who don’t yet know their Maker.
“. . .if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. . .” -2 Corinthians 5:17-18 ESV
What are you doing to bring reconciliation in your part of the world? Share in the comments here.
