BLOG 7/27/16. BEING GOD’S KINGDOM PEOPLE IN A POLITICAL SEASON
It’s worth taking a deep breath, stopping, and remembering that there is no way we can escape being engaged in a political process, beginning at birth. We are all (for better or worse) born into a polis, into a community of others, beginning with our parents and our siblings. There are those parents, if they are fulfilling their parental responsibilities, who are our authority, who give us some semblance of order in our lives, and provide for our needs—of course there are irresponsible and absentee parents also, but that blank spot will be filled with some other substitute. (Too many kids today have found their polis in gangs, alas!).
Then there are the local civic authorities in the towns and cities, the larger state structures, and the national polis, which is vastly complex. But our responsible political involvement begins with family and neighborhood. If it is healthy, it is an involvement that seeks the positive welfare of all of us involved—our caring, our mutual quests for peace, order, and justice. When we get into school we have our first encounter with elections, in which we elect the most talented and respected classmates as class president … and so it goes. But, note: it is never in an ideal or perfect context. It is often a context of injustice, deception, violence, and totally unqualified leaders.
The early Christian church was birthed in the tragic political context of Jewish hegemony threatened by this new entity, the context of the Roman Empire that was often horribly oppressive in seasons, then context of trade guilds that often required the worship of local pagan deities, … and other political realities. To be irrevocably committed to the teaching, the platform, the agenda of one whose identity was that he was Lord, was God, was the only ultimate authority, and in whose new polis God was creating all things new, from the start made the church to be both a community of hope and caring and love and justice on the one hand, and a threat to all other proclaimed authorities and political presences—but also a threat.
New Testament writers would define such other power structures, or self-proclaimed authorities, as ‘principalities and powers.’ And yet, … in all the centuries since the church has had to engage the plethora of different political realities, … sometimes successfully, and sometimes clumsily—sometimes as communities of peace and order and justice, and sometimes adopting the destructive agendas of the darkness. Most often the Christian polis is a minority. Often the light burns in the deep darkness of destructive governments, such as the Nazi German setting of the last century where a ruthless dictator sought to co-opt the church for his own agenda.
There have been bright spots such as when the British parliament was defending the slave trade, which was so profitable to many. But in that parliament was one deeply involved in the political process who also saw the brutal inhumanity of that trade, and with his Christian friends retired to the village of Clapham each weekend to pray about how to bring and end to this horrible practice. His name was William Wilberforce, and he ultimately succeeded in using his political presence and influence to bring slave trading to an end.
But no one escapes our corporate responsibility to the polis, to be the sons and daughters of the light. But that responsibility of being those who are the loving, caring, just, peace-making citizens begins in the home and the neighborhood. It begins with a servant spirit. It chooses its political stance in the array of imperfect political options by that company that most enhances the agenda of God’s New Creation—even when it may risk us our reputations. It is never easy, but it always begins with or ‘political’ essence in the basic community of family and neighborhood.
That for starts. I’d be happy to hear your comments. We’ve got several months when we are going to be immersed in political stuff, and doing or homework is a good place to begin if we are to fulfill our calling to be the incarnation of the divine nature with excellence.
