How to Survive American Politics

I grew up singing it in an old gospel hymn at my little home church in Russellville, South Carolina. It was the verse my siblings and I memorized when our parents decided we should have a verse for every letter of the alphabet. This one was the “I” verse. “I know whom I have believed in and I am persuaded that He is able to guard what I have entrusted to Him, until that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12b) This translation is my own, and the bold print words hopefully remind us to focus on what is key in this verse. Know and persuade have a bit of a cognitive – “I looked at the testimony” – sense to them, and believed and entrusted – “I trust what I know” – takes us where God wants us. “Without faith, it is impossible to please God.” (Hebrews 11:6) “That day” is how we survive everything, including American politics.

Our political waters – waters that impact not only the United States, but always have global implications – are roiling with conflict, moral outrage, doom and gloom if a particular point of view doesn’t win, self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and even violence. Sadly, I can say all of that and no one can say which side of the political divide I am writing about, because both sides have more guilt in these areas than either side cares to own up to! So this isn’t “how can the Republicans survive the Democrats” or “how can the Democrats survive the Republicans.” Rather, it is “How can those ‘in Christ’ survive and impact the world until that day.”

I once heard the late Fred Craddock say that one of the greatest challenges of preaching in the 21^st century was the fact that “there is an awful lot of almost Bible out there.” I don’t remember that he applied it to this topic – but what N.T. Wright has described as “the myth of progress” could well fit into Craddock’s category. Early Christians don’t seem to have believed in progress, if by progress we mean that we humans are smart enough, creative enough, powerful enough, and rich enough to fix all our problems. Our politicians all try to convince us that they can muster all of this in the name of real progress.

Early Christians clearly believe that to be “in Christ” is to be in the best possible place in this world, and they even believed that as they were marched before all kinds of tribunals and into all sorts of arenas of death. I’m confident Paul believed that the gospel could transform communities. His comments about women and marriage in 1 Corinthians 7, for example, were upside down from the cultural norm. The number of women he sees as colleagues in ministry is also against his cultural norm. Of course, he was following Jesus on that issue! His comments about slavery, as complicated as they are, seem to be a bit of a time bomb set off in communities all over the Roman Empire that would eventually make things better.

But . . . what I can’t find is the idea that we can make all these changes in culture and make it exactly what God wants it to be on our own. That’s the “myth of progress” that isn’t a part of the gospel record and challenge, but may in fact be the “almost Bible” of our day that has created the turbulence that characterizes our generation. It could be why so many people see the church has having such little relevance.

I recently heard Esau McCaulley, who teaches at Wheaton, use the phrase “over-realized eschatology” as a way of talking about our challenges. He was particularly talking about racism, but I think that phrase has broader application. We could spend a while defining the term, but at the end we might simply say it means that we sometimes assume that things are better than they are and quit worrying about them. In the context of racism, we might say “Good grief, we passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. We have fixed racism.”

Two things are wrong with that idea. First, a modicum of cultural awareness would make it rather clear that racism is still an issue that we need to work on,joining God in His mission to renew and restore creation to its God-intended purpose. Second, for Christians to think such actions work betrays the fact that we believe “the myth of progress” and we have handed over to government what is uniquely our domain. Racism is a sin. While laws and regulations can help us outwardly behave better – the simple fact is that only Jesus can deal with the sin issue. At least that is what early Christians believed.

One more thing, and please read carefully. If I want to “survive American politics” I need to get focused on “until that Day.” Early Christians did believe that a day was coming when God would fix everything. Read Romans 8:18-25 – even creation groans in anticipation of that Day! As Paul says to Timothy, what we hand over to God is safe – in good hands, not because God must protect us, but because He sees us as worth protecting – until that Day.

I hope this doesn’t sound like “give up, don’t be involved, let the world go, who cares.” But I do hope it sounds like the real answer is in Christ. I don’t think that is Pollyanna, pie-in-the-sky kind of thinking – but rooted deeply in what we know and have been persuaded about who God is and our willingness to believe in Him and entrust Him with our very lives.

I want to try and not let the roiling waters of political nonsense get the best of me. I hope you do, as well.