The Place of Politics in the Church's Game Plan

“Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world.”
“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.”
“Our struggle is not against flesh and blood.”
Therefore… “we aren’t called to be political, we are called to evangelize.”

Each of those lines from the Scriptures are true. The conclusion, however, is a false dichotomy. Though the kingdom is not of this world, it is still operating in this world. And while we’re in a spiritual battle, it’s taking place on a number of physical battlefields.

While the church in the 1st century wasn’t terribly political (though they were more than you might think, as I discuss below), that does not mean it was never going to grow into political influence.

So, starting from the Great Commission, how do you fit politics into the church’s mission?

Honestly, it’s a pretty clear path

Evangelize

This is the easy one. We all agree the Gospel should be proclaimed to all nations. Preach death, burial, and resurrection, and if they believe, teach them repentance and baptism (Acts 2:22-36). No problems here.

After you evangelize, you make disciples.

Longtime readers will know, evangelism and the Great Commission are not synonyms. The Commission requires teaching them to obey all He commanded, and that isn’t just a generic message of “love God, love others.” It’s all of the Bible’s clear commandments, and it’s the Biblical principles that lead to maturity.

This maturity, of course, is not just about keeping a list of do’s and do not’s. It’s also about being able to discern what is good and evil (Hebrews 5:14) and striving to learn what is pleasing to God (Ephesians 5:10). This is where you get into the uncomfortable parts of lives and start letting the Spirit surgically remove the worldliness that is so deeply embedded.

As you make disciples, you begin to build culture.

Christianity, if taught to maturity, will create a uniquely Christian culture. One hallmark of such a culture would be the Christian home, in which husbands are strong, virtuous, caring leaders and providers and wives are kind, submissive, modest helpers. Children will be loved and valued highly and disciplined and trained to be obedient and respectful.

Another hallmark would be the Christian’s workmanship. Christians should be the hardest-working, most detail-oriented, ethical business owners and employees with the best attitudes. Their work should stand out above anyone else’s (Proverbs 22:29).

Obviously, a Christian’s citizenship would also be noticeably different. We would be good citizens and community members, upstanding people who bless others but who will also stand for what is right. Just as Paul exercised his rights as a citizen, so we can exercise ours. And as we do, the positive effects should be noticeable for all around.

The joy, beauty, and warmth of the Christian home and the gathered church family should be obviously different at first glance.

As you build culture, you start to infiltrate the world’s culture.

A depressed, lazy, sick, selfish culture can’t help but see a difference with one that is the opposite of all of those things.

But this doesn’t mean everybody is going to love us. A lot of people like the external trappings of Christianity but still are aghast at the underlying teachings that create such trappings. But at least they’ll be forced to choose between what they know is better and what they feel is more comfortable.

As our culture leavens the world’s culture, we begin to influence power.

Oddly enough, Jesus told His disciples they would stand before governors and kings (Matthew 10:18), and in short order they were doing exactly that. Paul was thrilled to announce that the Gospel had infiltrated the Praetorian guard (Philippians 1:22) and highlighted Caesar’s household among the new converts (4:22).

Paul also preached to Felix, Festus, and Agrippa. We see in these interactions a curiosity toward and protection for Paul and his companions from the rulers, even if the rulers themselves were not converted. If, in the first generation of the church, rulers were already being challenged with the Gospel, why would we expect the Gospel’s advance to stop there? Isn’t it a good thing for rulers and the nations to pay homage to the Son, lest they be shattered by Him (Psalm 2:9-12)?

“But, when you mix religion and politics, you get politics,” someone would counter. That someone is a person who is admitting they are ignorant of 2,000 years of Christian influence and the way the West was transformed by it. When you mix religion and politics, human sacrifice stops, the slave trade stops, mistreatment of women, children, and unskilled labor stops, rights are acknowledged, and the list goes on. The ingratitude it takes to utter that phrase is staggering.

As we influence power, power influences culture.

It cannot be understated how badly most people overlook the effects of social engineering. People don’t just believe what they are logically convinced of. They often believe what they’re encouraged to believe. Many, many people aren’t pro-LGBT because they believe in it, they’re pro-LGBT because there was a full-court press via TV, the internet, and the government to adopt that stance.

The church is not dependent on a king, but righteous people in government hold sway over people, and we should rejoice when they use that power for good to “punish evildoers and praise those who do right” (1 Peter 2:14).

Not even counting Israel’s kings, we have plenty of precedent for this in the Old Testament. The king of Nineveh put on sackcloth and called for all of his citizens to join him in repentance. Nebuchadnezzar, Darius, and Cyrus praised God and/or declared protection for His people. Joseph was yet another example. When God’s people influence rulers, the nation is influenced, too.

As power influences culture, more people can be evangelized

Say what you will about cultural Christianity, but there’s a pretty good chance you’re here, directly or indirectly, because of cultural Christianity. As I often say, nobody in North Korea has my family’s conversion story. What started with evangelism in the book of Acts spread like leaven all over the world, creating culture, which influenced governments, which further influenced culture, which led to my grandmother having a church at the end of her street she could freely attend.

I thank God that all of the people who made that possible over hundreds of years didn’t have the myopic, atomized view of today’s anti-political Christians.

Here’s the problem with the Christians who eschew political action

The problem with the anti-political Christians is, they are also often anti-disciple making and anti-culture building. As I wrote recently, we can’t even build united churches until we’re willing to get into the specifics of living out our discipleship.

But once you get into specifics, you rock the boat with secularized members of the church who might leave if they’re challenged with Biblical principles, and so we build a shallow unity to keep them happy.

And once you externalize those principles for Christians to live out, the world hates it. Rather than accepting that Jesus told us that would happen (John 15:19), we assume we’ve done something wrong if our Christianity makes the world uncomfortable.

And so, we shut our mouths and assure them we’re the nice guys they want us to be. We’ll keep religion in its nice, quiet box and never let that box overlap with our politics, our anthropology, our sociology, or anything else that might offend someone.

Either they think the Gospel was not supposed to be successful and we were always supposed to be with our backs against the wall, trying to pick off a convert here or there in the face of state persecution until Jesus comes, or we could grow to be numerically successful and refuse to hold any sway over culture.

How the latter would be possible without a retreat to communes, I’m not sure. In either case, they have no phase 2 in mind for the Gospel mission. It’s always 68 AD, Nero is always in power, and the kingdom is always a never-sprouted mustard seed.

No, we have to think bigger. Politics is not the only thing, or even the main thing. But it is a thing. History has brought the church to this phase, and we need to act like it.