Biblical Principles Must Rule a Christian's Politics
Above the impact on our pocketbooks, above preferences, above biases, above prejudices. Bold statements, I know. But for Christians, not controversial. Or, at least I didn't think it would be.
I've worked to develop my own political thinking over the last 20 years or so, observing the Christian community and their political attitudes and behavior, searching for a model that made sense biblically and civically. It turns out there is no shortage of politically vocal believers willing to tell me their positions. The advent of Facebook made this nearly inescapable. But as I've tried to explore those positions and learn from them, I found it to be a difficult task, and for surprising reasons.
One of the unexpected barriers I encountered was inconsistency in the positions, and further, an unwillingness to address them or explain why they are not inconsistent. Sometimes a position is claimed on a basis of faith, while at the same time other opposing positions are enthusiastically embraced. Other times the position is associated with Christianity for some reason, yet seems to go against biblical teaching on the subject. The list of issues where this is found is the bread and butter of political debate - abortion, immigration, health care, how to respond to oppression when we find it. Across dozens of conversations, when I ask how the conflicting positions are reconciled, I have been met with either bewilderment or hostility. Every time. This leaves me thinking that, until someone makes a convincing case (or any case at all), the apparent inconsistencies are actually real ones.
Another barrier perhaps more troubling than cognitive dissonance, is difficulty in finding believers willing to explain how their faith informs any particular policy position, whatever it is. I have come to think that unwilling likely means unable. For at least some, I know that until I asked, it had not occurred to them - because they told me so. If our faith is supposed to be expressed in every aspect of our lives, why would our political position be an exception? Should we not be able to explain how our faith leads us to all positions in life, political or otherwise? And further, shouldn't these explanations be a major way in which we demonstrate how faith in Christ sets us apart from the rest of the world, and is a better way? How would a non-believer know we take our faith seriously if we can't explain how the bible supports political positions about which we are so passionate and vocal?
In assessing these two factors, it became clear that the two of them go hand-in-hand, and in fact solving the second resolves the first. Biblical principles are not inconsistent. If scripture becomes a litmus test for policies we advocate and positions we adopt, then our positions will become straightforward to explain and the logic reveals itself. The reason we are taught in scripture to live, think, and act as we are is so that we will stand apart from everyone else, our witness will be strong and obvious, and what we say will stand up to scrutiny. We would be able to give an answer for what we believe, and that answer would point invariably to Christ.
From what I can tell, there is a sort of automatic instinct for self-preservation that comes into play and interferes with the scripture-first approach. We don't want to endorse things that cost money from our pockets, for example. Or things that we perceive as diminishing our "worth". Or we adopt tortured rationalizations for accepting unacceptable things. Or we let our need to belong to a group (such as a political party) cause us to embrace positions without thinking about the implications. I think it is incumbent upon us to overcome these tendencies and go first to scripture to see what it tells us, then to establish our politics. If that's not what we do, then do we truly understand what it means to let Christ rule in all areas of our lives?
Since adopting this approach of scripture-first, I have had to make many, many changes in my political opinions, and in how I view parties and candidates. It seems like the deeper I go, the more I diverge from the major stereotypical positions associated with Christianity, and therefore from the political dogma espoused by established parties. I don't see this as a bad thing - if we stand apart based on a biblical foundation, it makes sense we would stand apart politically as well. We are on more solid ground than any other.
Photo by Jon Tyson
