BLOG 5/3/15. CHRISTIAN FAITH NEVER A COMFORTABLE FIT POLITICALLY
For the next eighteen months we are going to be deluged with all kinds of reports and commentaries on politics, politicians, and candidates for the United States presidency. Such is one of the colorful, but sometimes obfuscating, dimensions of our political system. Those of us, who take seriously our Christian discipleship, don’t ever fit comfortably into the cultural and political patterns in which we live. At the same time, we do live positively and creatively in these same systems. Christian, if they take seriously their calling to be people of God’s New Creation, are those who are light and salt, and a New Humanity that demonstrates God’s design for the human community in lifestyle and relationships.
One only has to remember that when the Israelites were taken into captivity by the Babylonians, God told the exiles to “seek the welfare of the city in which you dwell.” Such a calling requires us to be very sensitive and creative in communicating the reconciling grace of God in what are often very hostile situations. We are never called upon to seek security or dominance, rather, we are called upon to be instruments of peace and reconciliation, and of humane solutions to human need—and face it: that is seldom simplistic or uncomplicated.
Or, look at Jesus. One could say that he was both anti-establishment and counter-cultural. He was on a whole different agenda than either the Jewish temple establishment, and he certainly was on a different agenda from the Roman Empire. At the same time he moved among that scene as an instrument and advocate of justice, of caring, of sensitivity, and healing even to those who were traditional enemies, and who were alien to all he had come to be and to do. He launched his earthly ministry with the announcement that he was the fulfillment of the Isaiah 61 prophecy that the Messiah would bring good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovering sight to the blind, liberty to the oppressed, and he year of the Lord’s favor. He also told his followers that when the Son of Man was to come in his glory, they would be judged on their response to the hungry and thirsty, to the immigrants/strangers, to the naked, to the sick and to the imprisoned.
Translate that in to the political and social agendas of so much of our contemporary scene and it reminds us that (as Martin Luther King, Jr. reminded us) that we respond to a higher law, to a counter-cultural agenda. Rather that seeking to escape the areas of greatest need, God’s people should be moving into them as an incarnational folk as demonstrations of reconciliation and costly love. There are marvelously helpful and realistic resources for such incarnation, I think especially of the Christian Community Development Association (which you can access on its website). But our incarnation also involves environmental concerns, economic justice concerns, the unconscionable number of those in prisons in the country, yes, and the racial injustice that seems to pervade so much of our scene—and to realize that most political candidates are loathe to even touch some of these.
Are God’s New Creation people conservative, or liberal, or progressive, or disruptors of the status quo? The answer: Yes, all of the above. We are also light and life, courtesy and caring, and positive in the face of hostility. We are Christ to our neighbors, and to the dominant social order. We are to be always transformational, even at the risk of our lives and careers. Jesus never promised that his calling was into a comfort-zone, but it is never dull or unfruitful.
Keep all of that in mind, and feed me back some comments. Thanks for being my subscribers.
