CHRISTIAN POLITICAL ACTIVISM AND DISCIPLESHIP TO JESUS ARE VERY DIFFERENT UNDERTAKINGS

          Those who promote Christian political agendas must take care in order to avoid damaging their souls and distorting their witness to Jesus Christ. The practices and virtues associated with the quest for earthly power, even for the best of ends, are hardly those of the Beatitudes.  Christ called his followers to acquire purity of heart and love their enemies.  He instructed them not to rest content with a code of moral behavior, but to find healing from the disordered desires at the root of evils as grave as murder and adultery. 

          People find strength to pursue the life of discipleship through their participation in churches, families, and other groupings that form them to fulfill callings inevitably at odds with dominant social trends in one way or another. Doing so requires the deep personal struggle of taking up the cross in relation to our own weaknesses and temptations.  

          To focus on gaining political power in order to enact legal codes that regulate the behavior of fellow citizens is a very different undertaking.  It is a project that the Lord and the twelve disciples did not pursue.  To identify the way of Christ as mere obedience to legally imposed norms is to take discipleship out of its necessary context, watering it down to the type of outward observance advocated by the Pharisees whom he so strongly criticized.  When purity of heart, love for enemies, and freedom from anger are displaced by the need to do whatever it takes to coerce others through political force, the way of the hypocritical Pharisee threatens to supplant the way of the Savior who called for turning the other cheek.  While governments can and must impose regulations on the behavior of people by force, they cannot heal the soul.    

          Christ taught that his followers are to be a city on a hill, brilliantly lit and drawing others to the blessedness of God’s reign.  The genuine political witness of Christians requires that their communities, personal lives, and public statements convey the teaching and character of their Lord, especially in relation to those they consider their enemies and to “the least of these,” such as prisoners, the homeless, and immigrants.  Actions and words which give the impression that Christianity is chiefly about conventional political support of or opposition to this or that agenda risk distorting the proclamation of the gospel into just another slogan for “our side” to win its battle against rivals for earthly power. 

          Before making pronouncements condemning others, Christians should remember what Christ said about taking the plank out of one’s own eye before attempting to take the speck out of someone else’s.  Those whose horizons extend no further than the next election or battle in a culture war will never think in such terms, but those who claim to follow a Lord whose kingdom is not of this world must do so in order to have even a mustard seed’s worth of spiritual integrity.  

          Christians may certainly enter into the political fray toward the end of promoting public policies that do better rather than worse in serving the common good of their neighbors and promoting the peace of the world, but they must do so self-critically and with a chastened sense of realism. The points of tension between the purity of heart, love for enemies, and repudiation of anger that the Lord taught and the inevitable corruptions of politics are glaring.  It is hard to see how there can be any unambiguously Christian political agenda, for even the best arrangements of competing interests in the world as we know it fall short of the blessed reign proclaimed by Christ and are sustained by practices that contradict his teachings in one way or another.  

          Strong doses of realism and repentance are necessary to help activists, and even average voters, keep their eyes on the prize of their ultimate allegiance to a Lord with a very different agenda. At the very least, those who devote their time and energy to electoral politics must guard their hearts from passions that threaten to compromise both their personal spiritual integrity and their public witness to the Savior who rejected the temptation to become an earthly ruler.  Otherwise, they risk becoming the kind of people Christ so strongly criticized:  self-righteous hypocrites for whom religion is primarily a tool to gain power over others.  Regardless of how noble any political goal may be, it is not worth damaging one’s spiritual health and distorting the public witness of the Christian faith.  

Originally posted on the Spirit of Abilene blog:  https://spiritofabilene.com/2023/07/29/christian-political-activism-and-discipleship-to-jesus-are-very-different-undertakings.