The Separation of Kingdom and State: Part II: How Then Should We Vote?
Jenn posed the next logical question to the first installment below: how should we pick our political leaders? Here are guidelines and criteria for Kingdom voting in America, for every issue, for every candidate:
1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from becoming polluted by the world.
4. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
5. Your attitude should be like that of Christ Jesus.
6. Do nothing out of selfish ambition and vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
7. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others.
8. Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
9. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God, without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.
10. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
11. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
12. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
I wrote in the first post that politics and economy in a capitalist, republican democracy are necessarily self-interested. We rely on adverse parties and interests balancing themselves in the marketplace, with some artificial protections erected to prevent abuse of a minority and weaker parties. This is true as citizens of the state.
As citizens of the Kingdom, however, our attitude must be like of our Lord. Jesus did not press His rights. Jesus did not appeal His unjust conviction. Jesus did not flare with anger when he was mistreated, misunderstood and persecuted. Jesus became angry when the weak were oppressed, when the powerful abused the poor, when outcasts were manipulated. He called to those whom the powerful and rich rejected and forgot. He moved among the dirty castes to call them to Himself, then He called us His ambassadors, His presence on the earth in His absence. As we inherit His mission, we inherit the burden of His compassion, selling out our own interests, our own advancement to ease the burden of the downtrodden, to reconcile the outcast, to attend to the poor, to lift the head of the malformed and misfit.
Therefore, we must vote like Christ. We should cast our ballot for those candidates and those issues that would relieve suffering in dark places, who will serve the weak, who will advance the agenda of the abused and persecuted, who are mindful of those who cannot contribute to a campaign, to those who cannot invest in the stock market, to those who can pay no taxes. We who claim Christ should vote, should shop, should drive, should buy, should march, should campaign, should speak and should stand for those who cannot stand for themselves in a crooked and depraved generation. We should not vote for our own interests, our selfish ambitions and vain conceits, but we should vote for those who would care for the orphans and widows in their distress.
(Magnusson wrote well on this subject on May 3, 2005 at his blog: www.ermagnusson.blogspot.com, "Is It Lawful to Pay Taxes to the Emperor?")
1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from becoming polluted by the world.
4. Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
5. Your attitude should be like that of Christ Jesus.
6. Do nothing out of selfish ambition and vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.
7. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but to the interests of others.
8. Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
9. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God, without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life.
10. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.
11. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
12. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
I wrote in the first post that politics and economy in a capitalist, republican democracy are necessarily self-interested. We rely on adverse parties and interests balancing themselves in the marketplace, with some artificial protections erected to prevent abuse of a minority and weaker parties. This is true as citizens of the state.
As citizens of the Kingdom, however, our attitude must be like of our Lord. Jesus did not press His rights. Jesus did not appeal His unjust conviction. Jesus did not flare with anger when he was mistreated, misunderstood and persecuted. Jesus became angry when the weak were oppressed, when the powerful abused the poor, when outcasts were manipulated. He called to those whom the powerful and rich rejected and forgot. He moved among the dirty castes to call them to Himself, then He called us His ambassadors, His presence on the earth in His absence. As we inherit His mission, we inherit the burden of His compassion, selling out our own interests, our own advancement to ease the burden of the downtrodden, to reconcile the outcast, to attend to the poor, to lift the head of the malformed and misfit.
Therefore, we must vote like Christ. We should cast our ballot for those candidates and those issues that would relieve suffering in dark places, who will serve the weak, who will advance the agenda of the abused and persecuted, who are mindful of those who cannot contribute to a campaign, to those who cannot invest in the stock market, to those who can pay no taxes. We who claim Christ should vote, should shop, should drive, should buy, should march, should campaign, should speak and should stand for those who cannot stand for themselves in a crooked and depraved generation. We should not vote for our own interests, our selfish ambitions and vain conceits, but we should vote for those who would care for the orphans and widows in their distress.
(Magnusson wrote well on this subject on May 3, 2005 at his blog: www.ermagnusson.blogspot.com, "Is It Lawful to Pay Taxes to the Emperor?")
posted by JRB at 10:04 PM
4 Comments:
I am drawn in by your exploration of the proper interaction of faith and politics, as it is a question I often struggle with. I appreciate your thoughts; they have provoked some of my own, and in light of your other post requesting comments, here they are.
You describe what Christ did; let's look at what Christ didn't do. This man, God incarnate, who turned a few loaves into a feast for thousands, could have abolished poverty and hunger with a word. He didn't. He could have healed every affliction and ended economic disparity and oppression. He didn't. In short, He could have remedied all the problems that afflict the disadvantaged - but He didn't. Why?
Christ didn't eliminate poverty because it wasn't important. He knew that the real problem of the poor is that they are lost. Christ administered to the poor because he knew they were uniquely suited to truly hearing and obeying his message. (cf. his discussion with the Rich Young Ruler).
In other words, Christ's treatment of the poor was with an evangelic purpose, a way for Him to show that He cared for them and to further open their hearts to His message so that they might be saved.
Yet you posit that our sole critera for voting should be the protection of the downtrodden. Even assuming that the government is best suited for this task, how does government action parallel Christ's? Christ helped the poor so as to save them; so we should vote for someone else to help the poor, someone who will not minister to their true spiritual need? This might relieve our guilt, but will it achieve Christ's purpose?
Neil, your vision that Jesus ministry to the poor was to 'save' them is astute, yet I think you limit the nuances of the biblical vision of salvation simply to heavenly afterlife. That doesn't seem to match Jesus' ministry, in which salvation was something that came to the poor, marginated, and oppressed through the healing ministry of Jesus, through their inclusion in the restored Israel that was forming around him during his ministry, and through their invitation to join him at the table. Salvation as a heavenly existence in the afterlife is a biblical version of salvation, but it is not the only image of salvation in Scripture. By limiting the salvation to the afterlife, we miss Jesus' true impetus to and for social justice, as well as a great deal of the prophetic literature, in which God's heart pours out for those on the margins of society that Israel has neglected (see Isa 58 or Amos 8 for example.
Jesus may not have eliminated poverty, but to say it wasn't important is something you can only say from the comfortable seat of privilege. The entire program of Jesus' ministry in Luke is guided and informed by the compilation of Isaianic texts in Luke 4:18-19. Notice how all of these are about bringing salvation to people now, in the real world. They are also the marks and proofs that God was visiting the world in Jesus throughout Luke. By alleviating the needs of the poor, the sick, the marginated, the kingdom of God wsa breaking into the world through Jesus. It continues to do this through the church, the second Incarnation and visitation of God. If we choose to engage the political systems of our society, we should do so in a way to empty ourselves for the sake of the least of these.
Just my two cents...
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Neil -
Thanks. These are challenging idea. I will adopt and incorporate Eric's thoughts above with one note to focus our discussion.
You are correct that Jesus did not eliminate poverty; in fact He said that the poor always will be with us. He did not eliminate poverty but did minister to the poor. Even then, though, he did not always (or ever?) lift them to affluence. You are right that we should model our ministry and policy, thus after His model. Look carefully and see that I am not promoting socialism or a welfare state, but the state of being poor is not at all academic or abstract to the impoverished. Poverty inflicts hopelessness, fear and worry, despair and need. A laissez faire free market only drives the wedge more deeply between the rich and poor and, in America, has tended to alienate the affluent Church from the subjects of its evangelism and ministry.
(Also, I did not suggest that our "sole criteria" for voting should be the protection of the downtrodden, but if Christians have the opportunity to vote to that end how can we consider otherwise? For the record, I suggest that our sole criteria for voting should be Love. See passim.)
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