Today, politics is changing the definition of what a Christian is. We’re setting the Bible aside and using a different standard.”
-John Torres
Let’s be honest. Today’s political landscape is a mess. Whether you vote left or right, you are discouraged. You are angry about the things that are taking place in our government. You are frustrated that more people seem to be buying into the false narratives you clearly see as dangerous. You are annoyed that the people who are on your side do not speak up louder for your side. You believe the country is falling apart and this could be the end of democracy as we know it.
What’s interesting to me is both sides have the same feelings. They use the same language to describe the same problem they just are on two different sides of the same coin and both refuse to acknowledge the commonality of what we are all seeing take place.
John Torres is a relative nobody. He is the senior pastor at Goodwill Evangelical Presbyterian Church and in Tim Alberta’s book ‘The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory’ he describes the struggle of being a pastor at a time like this.
At a time where your congregation is looking to you to confirm and even champion their personal political views. Almost every congregant is looking for this confirmation bias not realizing that just down the pew from them is someone also looking for confirmation bias from the pastor for their radically different set of political beliefs.
This leads us to the question: What is the role of the Pastor during an election cycle?
1.) Guide People to Become More Like Jesus:
Our goal as Christians is to be apprentices, students, followers of our rabbi Jesus. The goal for any follower of Jesus is to become like their rabbi. Regardless of what season we are in we are always called to become less like ourselves and more like Jesus.
The challenge we face today though is that this is not as clearly stated from the pulpit as should be. I believe many of our congregants are looking to us to repeat their political views from the pulpit because they have missed the point of why we are here to begin with.
In the midst of all the smoke machines, stage lights, and high tech equipment that creates cool videos on Tik Tok, our congregants have been miscommunicated to as to why the church exists.
Russell Moore tweeted “Those created in the image of God should be treated with dignity and compassion, especially those seeking refuge from violence back home.”
Jerry Falwell Jr., former president of Liberty University then responded back on Twitter saying: “Who are you @drmoore?”“Have you ever made a payroll? Have you ever built an organization of any type from scratch? What gives you the authority to speak on any issue?”
Tim Alberta then chimes in:
There are Russell Moore Christians and Jerry Falwell Jr. Christians… Choose wisely, brothers and sisters.”
What does making a payroll have to do with speaking about the truth on how we are to treat others who are made in the image of God? What does building an organization from scratch have to do with Jesus’ message that we are all called to proclaim?
Jerry Falwell Jr. is a solid representative of someone who was Christian in name only yet had the authority to speak for Christians in areas that questioned what a Christian’s convictions are.
I believe we have missed the goal. We do not know our aim. Too many of us in the church have gravitated towards men and women, leaders, pastors, speakers, businessmen who are christian in name but have failed to embody the actual lifestyle and character of the rabbi they claim to serve. Our primary mission as image bearers of Yaweh is to reflect his goodness, kindness and mercy. In Exodus 34:6-7 Yahweh describes Himself in the most quoted verse of the Bible by the Bible.
The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.
If that is how our God describes Himself and then as image bearers we are to reflect who our God is, then this character description of Yahweh by Yahweh should transfer to the people called to reflect who He is to the world.
Discipleship matters. For so many generations now we have prioritized evangelism. And to be honest, I am not even sure its because we genuinely want to see souls get saved, rather I believe we like building huge crowds because that looks more amazing than the gruesome work of taking a person through the developmental process of becoming more like Jesus day to day. We are like a cabinet maker who goes off into the wilderness, grabs a chainsaw and then chops a tree down with his saw. He cuts and he cuts. And he manages to get a few pieces that are okay enough to use to build a cabinet. But the problem is, none of the wood was planed, none of the wood was sanded. The joints do not fit nice and neatly. The paint exposes all the saw marks that were left because of a man who refused to do the long hard work of shaping that wood into what it could’ve became. For many of us preachers and pastors we love the chain saw, but we need to learn the process of turning raw wood into beautiful cabinetry. We need to learn how to take raw individuals who have been shaped by the world, deceived by the devil, and corrupted by the flesh, and do the long hard process of training them to become a little more like Jesus day by day.
2.) Faith Over Fear
Fear is a very profitable emotion. If you can scare people you will see results. This reminds me of my childhood growing up in the Evanglical movement where ‘Hell Houses’ were a regular practice with the intended goal that we could scare the actual hell out of people. These houses were designed to strike fear into people about where they would spend eternity and thus lead them to Jesus.
Politics has taken on the same mindset. Continuously politicians and now some pastors are using language of martyrdom and persecution to strike fear in the lives of people in order to get them to vote a certain way.
The problem with this way of approaching politics is that Jesus said “my kingdom is not of this world.” Meaning, His kingdom has and will always last longer than the mere Republican, Democrat and American Kingdoms we have built. Persecution is not something as Christians we should be fearful of. That is the whole point of the book of Revelation. Jesus’ message to the seven churches in Revelation is that they can be overcomers of the persecution that is coming their way. Jesus’ message is not to fight against the persecution that is to come causing it to then not come. No Jesus was always up front with his students that persecution would come.
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. (John 15:18-19)
As pastors we must communicate to our congregations that persecution is not something we should be focused on fighting against but rather it is something we should expect because of the Kingdom we are apart of. Our battle is not with this world but with the Kingdom of darkness that has entrapped this world to its lies. We then fall into the Kingdom of darkness’ lies when we then focus on fighting for “our rights.” Jesus gladly gave up his rights, just like the apostles did for the sake of spreading the message the world needed to hear.
Politicians and corrupt pastors will aim to strike fear in Christian’s not for the sake of building Jesus’ Kingdom but rather for the sake of building their own earthly kingdom.
As Christian’s we do not need to fear persecution. Not because persecution is easy. But because as Christian’s, our movement has lasted longer than the mere span of time our country has been around or its politics. The kingdom of Jesus has lasted over 200 years in the face of the worst persecution known to man because its eyes were set on things eternal not on things temporary.
Jesus Kingdom has stood against the Roman Empire, the Chinese Government, Islam and even its own worst parts of itself. Because of that, we can encourage our congregations not to buy into the fear of “if we do not get the right guy in, we are all doomed.” We do not need to buy into that fear because our King does not stay on the throne because he was voted in for four years at a time. Our King has and always will be at work on our behalf. His throne is not bound by a four year term limit so fear is not needed. Rather we set our eyes on things above because we operate on a different timeline. A timeline of faith, not fear.
3.) Love Thy Neighbor, Love Thy Enemy
It has been said that we live in the most divided time of our nations history. I am not sure if that is true since for much of nations history we were divided over race/ethnicity. That is a fairly huge dividing wall that even was the cause a war. Yet, the sentiment I do understand. Our nations is divided. We live in a pluralistic society where everyone has the freedom to believe whatever they choose to believe and then act accordingly to their beliefs. On the same street that a Baptist church is sitting on there is also a Hindu family. The Hindu family and the members of the Baptist church has leverage in local government by way of being business owners and members of the community. They each vote according to their own beliefs and customs.
The same is true in a broader sense. In the same nation that has Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who is fighting critical race theory from being taught in schools, on the far other side of the nation is Portland where it is baffling that anyone would oppose being taught critical theory on any subject.
Our nation is full of people who believe differently than us on any given subject. And within our nation we have these two opposing forces known as Democrats and Republicans. Both have their extremists, both have their moderates. Yet both see the other as the problem. The two forces refuse at many times to work together. And thus label each other the enemy and then spend millions of dollars every election cycle to convince us, the voters, that the opposing side is so dangerous that if you do not fight them at the polls then they will turn this nation you love either into Nazi Germany or Communist Russia. With fear tactics like that it is no wonder that families who vote differently cannot sit in the same room together for a Christmas dinner.
Pastor, our people are being deceived by the ways of this world and they are being convinced that the person next to them is their enemy.
I am not gonna try to convince people they have no enemies. The person who votes differently than you very well may be your enemy. They may be voting for bills to be passed that would cause great harm to your life or your loved ones life.
Rather as a Pastor I believe our role as shepherds in our community is to remind our congregations the call not just to love our neighbor as ourself but to love our enemies.
Jesus faced worst threats than we did. The person voting differently than us who we may classify as our enemy, is not mocking and beating us. They have not hung us on a cross and gambled over the only clothes we own. They did not strip us naked for the world to see and take away our innocence. They did not ruthlessly hunt down our friends and brutally muder them for saying our name.
Jesus faced all of that and yet still said “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Jesus faced all of that and yet still pushed His disciples to go out into all the world and proclaim His name.
Jesus at his final meal gave us a perfect example of the person we are to be by passing the bread and the cup to a man who is about to sell him and leave him for dead. We for understandable theological reasons have turned this supper into a ritual in our church services. But this meal was the most common basic elements of a meal in Jesus day. It’s the equivalent of making a PB&J sandwich in your house and giving it directly to the person who will right after leave your house and take money from your enemies and leave you for dead.
Let us not be like Jonah, who was called to deliver a message to Nineveh yet was so full of hate that he ran the opposite direction. Let us not tell Yahweh: “oh but you do not understand the time we are living in, we have to act differently, we have to act courageously against our enemies.”
You do have to act courageously. But not in the way you want to or think you should. Yahweh understands this specific cultural moment better than you and I ever could, and if he still is calling you to love your enemy then hold off on your judgments that this moment is different than all other moments in human history. Let go of your privilege that puts you high up in this castle and the moment you face any sort of backlash you whine as if it’s the end of the world. Our God has been through so much more and yet He still presses on.
May we do likewise.
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