Yesterday I wrote about the theological foundations of my political views. Today I want to speak more on why I see a need to bring my faith to bear on my politics in such a dense manner. As I briefly mentioned yesterday, a huge mistake I see my fellow Christians making is not bringing their faith to bear on "political issues." Or more precisely, not doing so in any consistent manner.
One of the most glaring examples of this inconsistency is the usage of the term "pro-life." The term has been used almost exclusively to refer to the abortion debate. Most evangelical Christians describe themselves (and rightly so) as "pro-life" because they seek to defend the innocent lives of unborn children who are killed everyday by abortions. I have no problem with this as I too believe life begins at conception.
However, the problem arises when those same Christians advocate policies that are decidedly "anti-life." The most obvious example is the frequent support of some Christians for the death penalty. Is it really possible to claim to be "pro-life" when you are simultaneously "pro-death"? This is further complicated when we consider that in most cases the death penalty does not save any innocent lives compared to life in prison. Research has shown that the death penalty is not an effective deterrent for violence, and the offender generally does not pose any more serious threat to society being locked up for life than being executed.
Another example of this inconsistency of applying "biblical principles" is the fact that some issues constantly get biblical treatment (abortion, gay marriage, religious freedom), whereas other political issues can be discussed at length by Christians without any reference to Scripture of faith (gun rights/control, immigration, war and diplomacy, poverty, economics, etc.) To that point, some Christians will say the difference between the two sets of political issues is that the Bible addresses the former but not the latter. How can we have a discussion informed by faith on topics on which the Bible is silent?
However, this is somewhat misleading. Most of the modern political issues we discuss in light of our faith are really not present in the Bible either. For example, modern democracies with freedom of religion did not exist in biblical times, so strictly speaking, the Bible is silent on religious liberty in the modern sense of the term. Likewise, the Bible does not specifically address abortion. Rather, we look at verses the suggest the dignity of life in the womb and apply those to our modern debate. Even gay marriage is really not in the Bible as the modern concept of a committed, loving relationship based on "same-sex attraction" is a far cry from what the Bible has in mind when it references "homosexuality" (see here for more on that). The truth is we constantly import our modern issues onto the ancient text in ways the original writers never envisioned. This is not a bad thing so long as we are mindful of the original context of the verses we use, but let's not naively (or deceptively) claim that we bring up the Bible for some political issues and not others because those are the only issues the Bible addresses.
A prime example of this is economics. Many Christians will refer to Marx or Keynes or Smith, or refer to ideological concepts like fiscal conservatism, trickle-down economics, etc., but won't broach the topic of Scripture. Ironically, unlike the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage, the Bible actually has tons to say on the topics of economics and poverty. Jim Wallis has famously remarked on how a friend in seminary went through the entire Bible and cut out every single verse about the poor. The resulting Bible was a shredded mess because so much (at least 2,000 verses) had been excised.
It seems to me the real problem is the compartmentalization of our lives. We divide our lives into sectors. There is the work part of my life, the family part of my life, the leisure part of my life, the political part of my life, and then we also have this other fenced-in area--the religious/faith part of my life. Sometimes these sectors may overlap and bump against each other, but we as modern Americans do a good job of keeping each realm separate in our minds.
For instance, a few years ago I posted the following photo on my Facebook page to see how Christians would react:
I suspect the reason this picture is so difficult to swallow is because we as American Christians have separated the gun rights/gun control issue from the sphere of faith. We reason that gun control is not a "religious" issue. Jesus never talked about guns, and neither does the Bible, so Scripture never even crosses our mind. Instead, we rely on arguments about the second amendment, mass shootings, the NRA, self-defense, and the like. Making guns a "religious" debate never even makes it as a blip on our radar.
However, this is artificial compartmentalization at work. I would submit to you that the gun issue is a religious issue because religion touches every part of life for a Christian. Jesus is not the Lord over some small cross-section of life called "religion" or "church." He is Lord over every part of life, including our politics and "secular" debates. That's the point of Jesus' incarnation. Jesus entered into human life, experienced all of human life, and sought to redeem all of human life, not just the "religious" parts. Our faith should be the lens through which we view all of life.
When it comes to guns (and many issues like it), it is a tragedy that so many Christians have never asked questions like "What would Jesus do?"--Would Jesus own a gun? Would he use a gun in self-defense? Would he beat guns into plowshares? Would he serve in the military? Would he hunt? Obviously we cannot answer these questions definitively, and our answers will likely be shaped by our own cultural preconceptions, but we must at least ask the questions. After all, Jesus would have an answer to these questions if He were walking on earth today. Therefore, we too as "little Christs" must attempt to ask and answer these questions in the most Christ-like manner we can.The Bible may not tell us directly if Jesus would own a gun, but we can examine the story of Scripture with an eye on Christian tradition and Christian community to help us to arrive at a reasonable answer.
Here is my point: Christians need to stop being so schizophrenic with our application of our faith to political issues. Even when the Bible does not directly speak to a topic, we can still be informed by its story. We can still elicit values from Christian tradition and the Christian story to assist us in making decisions. I will cover the practical sides of this more in-depth in Part 3.
At this point, I hear some objecting that such an approach would allow Christianity to be easily co-opted by a political ideology. "Mixing faith and politics is not a good idea," they say. I will address this concern specifically in tomorrow's post, but here I'll just mention that I think the concern is overstated.
Although faith being co-opted by political ideology is certainly a risk of my approach, I believe that risk is actually greater when we only apply our faith to politics in a haphazard manner. Indeed, we already have a problem when evangelical Christians can be considered a reliable support base for one political party. When we only apply our faith to our pet issues, that means some other ideology will fill the gap to guide our decisions on all other topics. We align ourselves with the political party that seems to agree with us on the "religious issues" (abortion, same-sex marriage, religious freedom), but then blindly agree (or are forced to agree by the "lesser of two evils" argument) with that party's platform on all other issues whether the policy proposals are Christ-like or not. The result of dividing life into sacred/secular or religious/non-religious is to doom ourselves to do and say things of which Jesus would never approve.
Furthermore, the reality is you always run the risk of getting your faith hijacked by political ideology any time you engage in the political system. The only way to avoid this is to remove yourself from the system altogether. This is the Anabaptist approach, but I suspect most American Christians feel that not engaging politics at all is irresponsible and a waste of an opportunity God has given us to shape our world through the form of democracy.
However, if we took the view that every action carries religious significance, and that Jesus is Lord over every political issue, then we suddenly find ourselves in a place where we are uneasy with both the Left and the Right. We find ourselves agreeing with one party on one issue, but then prophetically critiquing the same party on a different issue. If we ground our politics in our citizenship in God's Kingdom and approach every issue guided by heaven's politics, then we would actually have a counter-cultural Christian response to the politics of our country.
So as you listen to debates in the coming weeks and decide what candidate and policies to vote for or against, here is my request: Ask yourself how your faith impacts each decision. Use some holy imagination and put Jesus in your shoes. How do you think He would vote? Even if the issue at hand seems far removed from the concerns of a first-century, Jewish man, just remember this--Jesus was a real human who tread real earth in a real culture filled with its own real political complexities. That is the whole point of Jesus' incarnation. God is not some cosmic idea floating transcendent above all our daily concerns. He became a human being and dealt with all the mundane and secular matters we deal with.
Therefore, ask how your faith relates to those seemingly "non-religious" topics. What if our faith does have something to say about economics, immigration, guns, terrorism, climate change, and the like? After all, if Jesus had been born in our country He would have had to decide how to engage our political process as well (or whether to participate at all). There is no issue above or beyond the reach of our faith. All we have to do is ask the right questions.
[In Part 3, I wrap up this series with a post examining the limits of what Scripture can and cannot do (or shouldn't do) when it comes to informing our political decisions.]
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