January 27, 2010
Political Message
I recently had a conversation with someone who thought that the preacher ought to have a sermon encouraging all of us to become more politically active. He assured me he wasn’t interested in party platforms, but rather that Christians need to make their presence known on the political landscape. I’m still chewing on our conversation. While I agree that believers should exercise their political voice, I disagree with the idea that we should be encouraged to do so from the pulpit. For me this is a case of “...render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” (Matt 22:21 ESV) The worship service belongs to the Lord…and the message from the pulpit should be about the spiritual landscape of our lives.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----With a great deal of respect, I must humbly disagree with you first, then with your conversant next. I spent much time pondering the nature of spirit and spirituality in my younger years. It is hard to grasp what can not be sensed, but from the Bible’s treatment of spirits and the spiritual realm, I concluded that every spirit has character and personality. Although we can not sense the spirit physically to observe these, they are exposed to our minds and emotions as deeply seated meaning that impacts consciousness from the inner direction as much as deliberate thought and feelings impact it from interaction with our physical surroundings. This makes us living souls. How we treat each other, what we do with our lives, and our political inclinations all come from that mix, making politics as spiritual as anything else of our soul. In as much as the Word of God claims ultimate ownership of all existence for God, including Caesar and his stuff, then the child of God must relate to all that exists (Caesar too) in full acknowledgment of God’s ways and purposes. How can this mean there is a portion of the child’s soul that can be sectioned off from the rest of his relationship with God? Neither the spirit from within a person nor his outer surroundings are able to sort politics into any kind of special little category. Politics touches everything. And for the child to claim no ultimate ownership of anything, everything of the child must relate to God‘s ownership. Nothing of the child’s can be sheltered from his understanding of God without upsetting the spiritual foundation of his relationship with God. This is the fundamental principle of worship. Therefore, to maintain the integrity of his relationship with God, he must relate his politics to God in loving Him with all his heart, mind, and soul. As strange as it may seem, politics is then as valid a topic for the pulpit as is any other.
-----Having agreed with your conversant, I must now respectfully disagree with him. Politics is just another aspect of man’s social relationship done in accordance with an understanding of God, or against it. Murder, theft, lying, fornication, and anger are social relationships, as are servitude, benevolence, honesty, sexual purity, and joy. All of these aspects of social relationship are topics for spiritual comparison from the pulpit, why not the differences between Progressivism’s embrace of atheism and conservatism’s embrace of God? If one must worship God in his politics, might he not want to know the Biblical perspectives regarding various political philosophies into which an uneducated mass might ensnare him? I believe the mess we are in today happened because the Progressive revolution convinced the children of God to stay mum in their meetings about God’s political wisdom. The fact that the left wing Progressives hold closely to Rousseau’s philosophy of state ownership of the individual should make the child of God wonder how he could then render himself to God while belonging to Caesar. The right wing Conservative’s outright denial of that aspect of Rousseau requires the state to recognize the individual’s belonging to God, and reject its belonging to the state. This is the most basic level of our political battle. And it is so basic to our spiritual lives why not worship God by giving some attention from the pulpit to His political wisdom?
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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