If the pollsters are correct, and my interactions with people on both sides of the great political divide tend to suggest they are, very few people are hopeful about the political realities which countries all over the globe – not just the United States – are facing now. I hardly think that in a relatively brief post around Independence Day in the United States, I have solutions to all the tensions.
I do, however, hope that a few reflections – mostly noting what people far brighter than I am have said over the years – might give followers of Jesus a bit of a pause when it comes to the quick condemnation of the other side (whichever side it may be); our culture’s seeming inability to have civil conversations; and our all-too-frequent use of our favorite excuse: “they did it first.”
A brief quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together has become a vitally important reminder to me. The political and spiritual worlds in which these words were written were hardly pleasant. Here’s what he said: “If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty; if on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Jesus Christ.” (page 29) A beautiful piece of calligraphy containing these words hangs on my office wall.
Elton Trueblood, who taught at Earlham College in the United States and was a popular writer about the Christian faith in the mid-20th century, wrote words that speak to one of the great challenges of what it means to be a follower of Jesus – perhaps even more so in our day. The New Man for Our Time was published in 1970. Think back a moment to the tension and conflict of that period. Among the great thoughts expressed by Trueblood is, “In short, one party seeks to express and to celebrate fellowship with God, while the other party is concerned with fellowship with men, especially with those who are unfortunate.” (page 22) He talked about this issue with language of “activism” versus “devotion.” Were he writing today, he might say “those who insist that attending one more Bible study will solve our problems” versus “those who say only volunteering at a food bank will solve our issues.” Here’s what he has to say about it all: “Ostentatious antipiety is no better than ostentatious piety.” (page 22) And then, “The merely active person is not truly active, while the merely devout person is not truly devout.” (page 24)
A significant part of the tension in our culture has to do with government – what role does it play in the life of a believer? For some, the government must enforce moral dictates of the Bible, most often expressed in talk about the Ten Commandments being in the public square (or public-school classrooms). Oddly, one almost never hears, “Let’s put the Sermon on the Mount in the public square!” For others, the government has nothing to do with public morality, but it must focus on civil and human rights – but in a way not connected to faith.
Both those primarily focused on activism and those primary focused on devotion can find ways to use (maybe abuse) what Paul says in Romans 13 about government. John Howard Yoder wrote an amazing book in 1972 (second edition in 1994) titled The Politics of Jesus. In speaking about Romans 13, Yoder says that followers of Jesus would do well to read Matthew 5-7 and Romans 12-13 alongside one another. He insists (correctly, I think) that they “are not in contradiction or in tension.” (Page 210) To read Romans 13 as a stand-alone text from the rest of Romans 12 and 13, Yoder believed, is to entirely miss the point. A very reassuring thing he says in this context is, “They both call Christians to respect and be subject to the historical process in which the sword continues to be wielded and to bring about a kind of order under fire, but not to perceive in the wielding of the sword their own reconciling ministry.” (page 210)
In an essay titled “Our Politics Are Too Small,” (found in Surprised by Scripture), N.T. Wright reminds us that “the central message of all four canonical Gospels – in their very different ways – is that the creator God, Israel’s God, is at last reclaiming the whole world as his own, in and through Jesus of Nazareth.” (page 168) In further developing that idea, he says, “the whole point of the four canonical Gospels is that the coming of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven is not to impose an alien and dehumanizing tyranny but rather to confront alien and dehumanizing tyrannies with the news of a God – the God recognized in Jesus – who is radically different from them all, and whose justice aims to rescue and restore genuine humanness.” (pages 168, 169)
I would never preach a sermon with this many lengthy quotes! Perhaps I shouldn’t have written a devotion which such an array of thoughts from others. But we truly are living in a political and cultural context where the temptation to be hopeless can raise its ugly head in the most unexpected ways, and soon, we find ourselves running down rabbit trails to end in a place where giving up seems to be the only option.
I hope that if you are still reading, you will think about the potential of hope, not just on the macro level of national politics, but on the more micro level of who you can vote for to fill state and local offices. And I hope that, as Yoder suggests, you and I will never think than any politician can do our “own reconciling ministry.”
Who knows? If we can do that, then we might give up the incessant condemnation of those with whom we disagree, might give up the name-calling routines so often on display in public contexts, and even quit using the “they did it first” nonsense as our excuse for our own bad behavior.
When that happens, we become partners with Jesus in restoring “genuine humanness.”
Image by Cornell Frühauf from Pixabay
Wye Huxford 