What if for one year we took a hiatus from politics? What if the entire evangelical church across the U.S.A took a one year pledge to abstain from watching, talking, blogging, or attending anything politically related? What if we said not this year? This year we’ve got some realignment to do. What if instead we decided that for one year we would zip it politically and consecrate ourselves for the intended purpose of focusing on how to be the church? I wonder if the renewal we so desire in America might actually begin to birth as the churches light begins to get cleaned up.
How about instead pouring ourselves into coming along side the poor, practicing true authentic community, reversing the divorce rate by loving and leading our families better, and practicing radical generosity with our next door neighbors? What if we exclusively decided to sanctify ourselves to be the collective beautiful bride that Christ so longs for? What if we turned our conversation and pontificating about “how bad America is, where it’s going and what rights we are losing” to an impassioned internal church conversation about “what shalom does God want us to bring, what love does God what us to extend, what fears does God want us to address, what impurities does God wants us to unearth?” What if we did this on a local level in our local churches? I can only dream.
I certainly love the call to focus more intentionally on "being" the church, but a call to remove ourselves from all things political seems irresponsible. Except for the loud-mouthed preachers the media seem to find, I'm hard pressed to find a believer who has any idea of what's actually happening politically. I will grant you that people kvetch about politics in a way that makes me believe they have more hope in their government than in their God, but then the call for change is really seen in the call at the end part of your post: "Let's turn the conversation ... "
ReplyDeleteInstead of talking/blogging/kvetching with an ungrateful, arrogant (fearful) heart, we can "pontificate on what shalom God wants us to bring ... etc."
Out of that, our "involvement" in our society (political or otherwise) will probably become a lot more balanced and generous.
Great thoughts Michelle.
ReplyDeleteThere seems to be a supernatural threshold that Paul and Jesus both embraced by not addressing the political landscape in their day (which was very similar to ours). The corporate church seems to have an extremely hard time staying on mission when duking it out with the smoke-and-mirrors world of politics.
Our government is a mess up but the biblical narrative leads me to think its irresponsible to fight in their ring. I think its actually more responsible and potentially better stewardship of our kingdom focus to work on our "body health and missionality". In theory is it possible to focus on being the church and engaging with the politics... maybe. But I really struggle with that dualism when Jesus nor Paul set that trajectory for the church.
On top of that biblical reality; practically we have lost moral authority to speak into the politics or laws of our land.
My curiosity makes me wonder if there is a supernatural threshold we have not grasped?