Thursday, August 4, 2016

Christianity, Politics, and the Spirit of Anti-Christ

Full disclosure Part 1: I am a Christian. I believe Christ came into this world to restore our relationship with God. I believe he lived and performed miracles, was crucified, died, and rose again on the third day. I believe he ascended back to God and will, in some form or fashion return. I also believe the Bible is the divinely inspired Word of God and that having a restored relationship with God requires belief in Christ and confession.

Full Disclosure Part 2: I am a libertarian. I believe that individuals 
and collections of individuals should be free to make decisions regarding their lives without seeking the approval of myself or a majority of our fellow citizens. I believe government is necessary to protect the rights of individuals from being infringed, that it should do so equally and without respect to the various qualities of those individuals. I also believe that free economic exchange among individuals has proven to be the most effective mechanism for raising individuals and societies out of poverty. Therefore, I believe governments should be very cautious in interfering in these exchanges.

Full Disclosure Part 3: I believe that my faith should guide how I view politics, the use of political power (i.e., force), and my fellow citizens. I believe reversing this perspective, viewing my religion through the lens of my politics, distorts my understanding of God, my understanding of my responsibilities to my fellow human beings, and my understanding of the limits of political power.

Having set the stage with these disclosures, I want to address what I believe has emerged as the spirit of anti-Christ within the American Church.

I realize this will be viewed as a very provocative, even inflammatory statement. So let me explain what I mean by the “spirit of anti-Christ.” This is the perversion of the relationship between religion and political power. In essence, the effort to promote Christianity, the kingdom of God, or Christian principles via the power of the state. To be sure, this is not new in Christianity. Certainly American Christians are not the only ones to have been deceived by the notion they could somehow usher in the “Kingdom of God” through the law. It has been a strain within Christianity that has been alive at least since the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine and the subsequent declaration of Christianity as the official religion of the empire.

So this deception is not new. And although most of my comments will focus on what is considered the “religious right” in American politics, it holds true for the much smaller less organized and less influential “religious left” that has begun to emerge over the last couple of decades.

 As a Christian, I believe my perspective on any topic of human interaction or spirituality must first begin with the words and actions of Jesus. Given that His message was not a political message, but rather a message of restoring our relationship to God, Jesus did not say a great deal regarding political life. It simply wasn’t the focus of His mission.

However, what He did say, I believe, should cause all Christians, and especially American evangelical Christians to pause and reflect. In the Gospel of John, Chapter 18, Jesus has been taken before Pilate. The Jews have accused him of blasphemy for claiming to be the Messiah. Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Christ responds, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.

In this short passage we can obtain profound meaning. Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. And since it is not of this world, the worldly instruments and strategies for advancing it are also not of this world. In fact, relying on them can prove disastrous. The history of Christianity is filled with the atrocities of using the power of the law to bring about God’s kingdom. From persecuting pagans, to the medieval practice of selling indulgences, to the Spanish Inquisition, and the Salem witch trials, and more, when Christianity is advanced via the law, great suffering and injustice is the result.

Yet, this temptation to seek to use the power of the law to accomplish godly purposes has been almost
too powerful to resist. From almost the time Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity there was a pull to use the powers of government to enforce Christianity upon the populace. It is this idea – the idea we can or should advance Christianity via the civil law that is the true spirit of anti-Christ – that has plagued Christianity since Constantine.

Jesus told Pontius Pilate that if His kingdom was of this world, His followers would fight for Him, because that’s what the followers of political leaders do. But his kingdom is not of this world. And he does not expect, nor need, his followers to fight for him. Jesus told his followers to take up their cross and follow him. What does this mean? It means we should live as he did, and in so doing, demonstrate the love, grace, mercy, and power of the One we follow.

But eschewing political power is easier said than done, especially in a democracy, where, unlike in Jesus’ time, citizens can impact the policies of the government. As Christian leaders, especially evangelical leaders, saw changes happening in society that troubled them, they again reverted to trying to impact society through the law. Christian leaders began actively endorsing and supporting certain candidates based on those candidates’ pledges to support “our Judeo-Christian values” – through new laws, of course. Once again, we would ignore Jesus words and attempt to demonstrate our fealty to him by fighting for him.

This “fighting” for Christian values too often led us to sacrifice any real adherence to such values on the altar of political victory. Christian leaders would endorse candidates who had only the most marginal relationship to Christian teachings, who demonstrated behavior quite the opposite of those teachings, or who only cared about Christian values for the votes they brought. But we were told doing so would “reclaim America for Christ.”

The American political landscape in 2016 is a direct result of this anti-Christ approach to politics. Neither the Democrat nor the Republican nominees project anything that can be remotely tied to the principles of Jesus. One seeks power at all costs. The other seeks fame at all costs. Neither seem disposed to seek Christ at all. And yet we are told that as Christians we must choose one bad option over the other. Once again, evangelical leaders across the country have prostrated themselves before political power, denying the spiritual direction of the one they claim to follow.

Indeed, evangelical voters have been one of Trump’s major voting blocks. These voters propelled him
past his primary opponents with relative ease. The spirit of anti-Christ has consumed us. We will willingly sacrifice all that Jesus taught us to “Make America Great Again.” In fact, now that our hypocrisy has been shown, we have many trying to make an argument that it is our Christian duty to support Trump; that only he can stem the tide of secularism in our country; that only he can restore us to our virtuous and prosperous past. Evangelical Trump apologists are even trying to use Old Testament examples (because there is no way to use the words of Jesus) to make the argument that God uses ungodly people for his purposes. These are delusional words to justify their complete surrender to the spirit of anti-Christ.

If we Christians truly desire to have a profound and meaningful impact on society, we will abandon this course we have been on for the past several decades. We will stop looking to political power and those who wield it as the path to building the kingdom of God. Instead, we will return to the words of Jesus. We’ll take up our cross daily. We will show love, grace, and mercy to our neighbors and our communities. We will seek justice for all our citizens. We will demonstrate the power of what we say we believe through our daily interactions with our fellow human beings. We will spend more time reading our Bibles and less time watching cable news networks or listening to talk radio. We will learn to understand that political power cannot accomplish what we seek – it can only destroy it.

It is not my place to tell anyone what candidate they should support. However, if you are voting for any candidate because you believe they are going to protect, advance, or promote Christian principles, I believe you have been deceived. Jesus did not call us for that purpose. He called us for a greater one.

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