Respect and Worship in the Right Place

My church recently heard sermons on two of the more practical areas of life and two areas of personal interest: politics and work. These are two teaching areas which can tricky - the first can be prone to the extremes of "If you're a Christian, you should vote for X or Y party given biblical passages A, B and C" or "Sincere Christians stand of different points of the political spectrum, so let's just not talk about it. Now let's have some bagels and coffee." The second can similarly be oversimplified into "Evangelize at work" or "Make sure you tithe". I'm happy to say that Pastor Randy Lovelace handled both topics with great wisdom and humility and I certainly found areas for introspection.

On the politics front, Pastor Lovelace made the very good point that in light of the charge to "Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king," (1 Peter 2:17) we're often prone to overemphasizing the place of government, and in the same vein, overemphasizing the political identity and affiliations of others. If we believe that government is truly the hope of our world, our country and our lives, we'll naturally obsess about the state of our government and obsess over the need to enact change through government or the leaders whom we elect. Pastor Lovelace astutely noted that there's a danger here of flipping the charge and instead "honoring God, but fearing the king (or applicable government leader)". At the extreme, this becomes a failure to recognize God's sovereignty and has the effect of not only idolizing government, but viewing people in the church as primarily "politically right or wrong" (correlated with snap-judgment around Christian devotion or maturity) as opposed to brothers and sisters in Christ, which leads to unnecessary disunity.

This also frees me to respect the authorities who God has placed over me in our government, even if I'm in strong disagreement around their position in certain issues. I can pray for them with the knowledge that God is sovereign and ultimately God will judge. Now what I won't address here (which is highly complex) is the actions of someone like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a revered Christian and church leader who plotted to assassinate Hitler (and was executed for it). It's a complicated answer, one which I've discussed with both Pastor Lovelace and my former pastor, Charlie Drew. For the answer, feel free to buy Charlie Drew's book on Faith & Politics - actually, wait for the upcoming edition which will directly address this question (half-joking).

The more healthy alternative to knee-jerk judgment and all-consuming faith-flavored political rage, of course, is to dialogue about these topics and humbly understand other perspectives (besides our own) on how one honors Christ through the political process. Yes, Christians are called to do justice and love mercy, and to pursue this we should use all means - including the political process and our right to vote. We should rightfully stand for what we believe is right and true and act accordingly. But what clearly becomes a matter of conscience is the appropriate strategy to pursue that justice, whether that be the punishment of lawlessness, alleviating poverty, ensuring the sanctity of life or stewardship of the earth.

These aren't necessarily new ideas, and I've had other posts that have dealt with this here and there. But it's good to remember that while the schism of partisanship seems to get larger and more bitter day after day, this is something that needs not happen in the Church. Our shared belief in a redemptive God of justice Who will, in His time, make all things new should help us help us to dialogue without hating each others' guts.