We are entrenched in
the season of presidential candidates vying for attention. They want to divide
and conquer you, your family, friends, neighbors and your pets. While I certainly do have my own convictions
about not entering into the voting process (with some exceptions), I am not
entirely writing to persuade you of them.
What I do want to say is that when one claims Jesus as Lord it comes
with a resolve that stands at odds with empire and requires a rethinking of our
political involvement.
Our Nation-State
The
first thing to consider is the schema by which governmental institutions
operate, especially when considering a president. A government’s primary function is to systematically
rule its society. They do so by
leveraging control over the people through a formation of politicized ethics, laws
and regulations that everyone must adhere to.
At the same time citizens expect their leaders to help create something
of a free and equitable society. This is
really what the average voter is after. A piece of control through their vote
(power to the people and all that) and a leader they can put trust in because a
president can potentially work to advance a society one can feel good about and
have a sense of security in.
To
add to the picture, American politics has shoehorned all of our issues into two
parties which created bipartisan loyalties, but for a long time Christians as a
whole were not necessarily committed to one side over the other. This changed with the rise of the "Christian
Right", in which Ronald Reagan became a key figure, as it sought to gain Christian loyalty
to the conservatives by merging political symbols with Christian ones. They
emphasized the Republican Party as being inherently more Christian than the Democrats
especially during the Reagan campaign.
Yet, Ronald and Nancy also became known for putting their trust in Joan Quigley's astrology more than in God...
More to the point, no matter how anyone felt about Carter’s presidency he was and is an
outspoken Christian who thought the democratic side could exist in line with his Christian values. This alone flew in the face of the Christian Right’s agenda, but
the ploy worked and Reagan got the majority of Christian votes.
What
makes it worse is that it created a power vacuum and a new pattern for the church’s
involvement in politics (namely Evangelical streams) as the church is now
invested mostly in the conservative side of the bipartisan trap. That is unless you are a necessary scapegoat
for much of what is wrong with America and Christianity (e.g. progressive/liberal Christians). We have ultimately
fooled ourselves into believing, as Lee Camp says, that we can baptize
unrepentant political-structures and dub them Christian.[1] That is a lie from those
wanting to gain control and claim certitude for our nation-state, but it
inherently sells out the Gospel.
The
Gospel does not create a free and equitable society in the same way or for the
same reasons the governments of the world do.
This is because as Christians we have come to locate ourselves within
God’s story and it is through this that we begin to be formed by where the
story has come from and where it is going. Thus, there is an underlying need to
see why the story of Israel and Jesus should change our relationship and
interaction with government and its politics.
Learn a New Song
For
sake of length my main focus is on Jesus, but I do want to show the correlations between the Exodus and
Jesus as they are pertinent.
In
Exodus when Moses leads the Jews out of the land of oppression God has just
shown himself as superior to the false ruler Pharaoh (an anti-creational archetype). It is as Ted Grimsrud terms, God’s and
Israel’s “rub with the empire”.[2] This
confrontation results in expulsion from empire out of God’s incompatible
cohabitation with it, but it is in exile that God gives them a new hope and new
doxology.
Prior
to their exit one can imagine that the Hebrews were probably singing songs of
oppressed slaves, but when Moses leads them out a new song is sung establishing
hope in God as their only true leader and giver of freedom (Exd. 15:1-20). Walter Brueggemann illustrated that Egypt
could not permit or tolerate it when Pharaoh’s own coronation edict (may Pharaoh's reign never come to an end) was
misappropriated by Israel’s saying “the Lord will reign forever and ever”
(15:18). Such doxologies are always
polemical; the unstated counter-theme at the end is
“and not Pharaoh”(15:17-18).[3]
Move
ahead now to Jesus and we see Matthew and Luke very intentionally weave this into
the birth narratives in two distinct ways:
1. Matthew
likens Herod to Pharaoh by showing that Herod too feared the one that would
bring his reign to an end and thus attempted to snuff out Israel’s potential
Messianic boys (compare Exod. 1:15-16; Matt. 2:7-8, 16).[4]
2. In
Luke’s gospel Mary, Zechariah and Simeon sing new doxologies that speak of
freedom and hope that will come through this child. Then in Exodus-like fashion
the lyrics blatantly threaten Herod’s and the Roman Empire’s positions of power
(Lk. 1:46-55, 69-79; 2:29-32). It symbolizes the beginning of the end in a long line of self-deceptions.
Jesus’
Unruly Politics
Nevertheless, the ultimate threat to
the empire comes with Jesus’ proclamation that the Kingdom of God is present and is reclaiming its reign over creation (Matt. 13:33) and it is doing so in
opposition to its greed, violence and oppression (Matt. 5-7). The agitation gains traction as the religious
leaders fear losing their power positions (Jn. 11:45-53), which gave way to
their insurrection indictment of Jesus. They claimed he incites the people to
rebellion, tells them not to pay taxes, misleads their nation and claims
himself as their king (Lk. 23:2, 14). Note
that the most pressing question out of these accusations for Pilate was: are you king of the Jews?(v.3). Jesus never denies it. But what is most profound is that he is then the one king whose reign is forever and yet he is the only one willing to quietly go to his end and makes the cross the coronation of his enthronement.
So if
Lordship does in fact belong to Jesus, then it will always be in conflict with those who
believe they can play power roles because it exposes the sham of personal and national
pretentions of importance and reveals that it has an inevitable end. This is also to say that the sanctification of one nation over
another is always an untrue gesture as well.
To
then take part in an anxious election season will be a tricky one for Christian
voters because any governmental change for the better is always incredibly
shortsighted and temporary especially when it comes to leaders. Remember, Jesus left behind a Church for his
political benefactors not a nation-state.
The state that is characterized by power, force and coercion is
overturned by the reign of mercy, self-giving love, patient-forgiveness and
reconciliation. If you then feel
inclined to take part to vote, then don't use it as a way preserve your own way of life (especially at the expense of another). Rather, use it as a vehicle to temporarily stand in
service of the other: helping the poor, the foreigner, children, the sick, the
marginalized all while condemning state-sponsored violence and greed. More to the point we then need to spend that
much more time being the church that embodies this ethic.
It
seems to me our faith in ideologies and final solutions are idols that should only be obscured by
our trust in the Lord of heaven and earth.
So if our politics, and indeed our lives, do not act as if Jesus is Lord and look like his destabilizing the current power-structures, then we are probably doing it
wrong.
[1] Lee Camp. Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World (Grand
Rapids, MI: Baker Publishing 2008), 22.
[2]
Ted Grimsrud. Jesus’ Confrontation with
Empire Retrieved from http://peacetheology.net/2012/06/09/jesus-confrontation-with-empire/
[3]
Walter Brueggemann. The Prophetic
Imagination (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press 2001), 19.
[4]
Ibid, 82-83.
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