Part II, based on a sermon delivered at Calvary Memorial Church in September:
You may recall the story of Jesus’ two disciples who request to sit at his right and left hand when he enters his glory. It’s recorded for us in Mark’s Gospel, chapter 10:35-45. I find it a useful story to review during this election season because here we find Scripture exposing for us, in a very candid way, the temptation of all politics.
They ask Jesus a profoundly political question: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” (10:37)
Give us status, Jesus. Give us influence. Give us power. Political power to rule.
The temptation to seize political power is one Jesus himself knew all too well. He was 40 days in the wilderness when the Devil offered him not the presidency of the United States but “all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.” (Matthew, 4:8)
To use power not in life-giving and justice-creating service of others but in the service of your own agenda. This is the temptation of politics.
What makes political power such an irresistible temptation? I think Henri Nouwen has the simplest answer: “Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.”
I would imagine there are a lot of differing opinions here on a range of political issues: immigration, taxes, welfare, social security, education, the environment, military spending, and trade. But I’m fairly confident there is one thing we would all agree on — there’s not a lot of love in politics these days.
Richard Hofstadter wrote an insightful article about the “paranoid style” of American politics. Our political culture, he says, is defined by “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy.” That sounds about right, doesn’t it? The remarkable thing, though, is that Hofstadter wrote those words in 1964. Makes me wonder what he might say about the sorry state of politics today.
My brother Brad sent me an email recently lamenting the state of politics in America. I suspect some of you may have sent and received similar emails. “I had dinner with several clients in Atlanta last night and not one word of policy was exchanged. It was all about 15-second-sound-bites. … These are company owners who should know better. Maybe my expectations about people actually evaluating policy are way overstated … People are going to vote viscerally, not logically. It’s kind of depressing … everyone is just mad at the other guy, not supporting their own [candidate] … as the polls show!”
But it’s awfully easy to shift the blame, isn’t it? When we talk about the sad state of American politics, it’s easy to assume it’s someone else’s fault. There’s some other group messing everything up. It’s those darn Democrats! Or weird Republicans! Or special interests! Big banks! Greedy Wall Street executives! Teachers unions! The gun lobby! The media! Fox news! Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Rachel Maddow!
The British journalist G. K. Chesterton was once asked to give his thoughts on the question, “What is wrong with the world?” No doubt those who asked were hoping for some eloquent treatise on the great social or political ills of the day: communism, totalitarianism, racism, sexism, classism, some other scary sounding “ism.”
Instead, Chesterton penned a very short and extremely honest answer.
What is wrong with the world? “I am. Yours, truly, G.K. Chesterton.”
We are the problem with American politics. The sad state of politics in America today is better described as the sad state of Americans as we engage with one another politically. We’ve become, by and large, an anxious, angry, and resentful people.
Sadly, followers of Jesus haven’t helped the situation. Instead, in many ways we’ve done much to stoke the blaze of resentment, distrust and incivility.
What’s gone wrong? The world has given itself to the idolatry of political power.
But so, too, in many ways has the church. We’ve been like James and John, the sons of Zebedee, asking Jesus if we can have the corner office in his earthly kingdom, our name on the letterhead, our views always made the law of the land.
We’ve succumbed, you might say, to the temptation of politics, to a deep and subtle political worldliness, the kind Jesus warns against, the kind Jesus went up against as he stood before Pontius Pilate, the kind Jesus died for as he was executed as a political agitator.
Instead, Christians — indeed, perhaps, Americans of all faiths, and none — need to be reminded, not least during this election season, of the Bible’s level-headed vision of politics:
Politics is good, but politics isn’t God.
There is a long and venerable Christian tradition that views politics as basically a necessary evil. These are Christians who don’t see politics show up until after the Fall in Genesis 3. This is a more pessimistic view of politics where the state exists simply to “bear the sword” (Romans, 13:4). This is an approach that puts politics in the same category as pulling weeds out of your garden, something pretty annoying but that has to be done if you want to minimize the damage.
But this view of politics, I believe, sells short what the Bible says about politics. As we learn from the opening chapter, we are made in the image of God. Which means we’ve been created to image forth God the great king and to do so in relationship and in community.
This doesn’t mean God has given us a particular political system to follow. We don’t find in Genesis 1, for example, any mention of representative democracy or an electoral college or a Supreme Court or a separation of powers or a House or Senate. In fact, we don’t even see anything about Republicans or Democrats in the Bible!
But what we do see on the opening page of Scripture is a great king who makes human beings in his own royal image, to represent him and to extend his kingdom in this world. We find in Genesis 1 a political creature called man, who is called to live out his vocation, socially and politically, with others made in God’s image.
Which means we have been made not just for community but for political community. Aristotle was exactly right: “Man is by nature a political animal.” Or, in more Christian terms, man is by divine design a political creature, called to steward creation and govern it in a way that reflects the character and will of our Creator.
For the Christian, then, engaging in politics shouldn’t be viewed as getting your teeth cleaned, much less going for a colonoscopy. Politics isn’t some necessary evil, a sad and slightly depressing feature of our fallen world.
No, politics is a creational good. God has made us political creatures in his image.
But it must also be said that politics isn’t God — even though we want to make it God. We need to resist this particular temptation.
We need to grapple with what it means for the church to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that [we might] proclaim the excellencies of him who called [us] out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter, 2:9). We need to reflect on the ecclesial shape of our politics. What does it mean for the church to have a prophetic ministry in politics today? What does it mean for the church to have a priestly ministry as a faithful presence? And what does it mean for the church to have a kingly ministry and thus seek the welfare not of itself but of the city?
My hope and prayer in speaking to politics for Christians is, first of all, to lay the groundwork for a distinctly Christian approach to politics that is genuinely Gospel-rooted and God-centered.
Secondly, my hope would be to help change our political culture as Christians, so that we increasingly engage in politics with grace and truth, civility and compassion, humility and courage.
And thirdly, I would hope that these reflections encourage followers of Jesus to do the hard work of political engagement, but to do so in a way that prioritizes love, displays patience, and rests in hope.
As Henri Nouwen put it, we should never make political power an easy substitute for the hard task of love.
Rev. Todd Wilson is senior pastor of Calvary Memorial Church.