Why American Christians
need to be (More) Politically Active
and much of this
applies to the rest of us as well
American
Christians live in a country unlike most countries of the world and certainly
unlike all the countries that were in existence in Bible times. That last part is particularly important,
because most Christians act like they’re still living in the ancient Roman
Empire.
The Bible says that everyone “is to
be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except
from God, and those which exist are established by God. Therefore
whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and they who have
opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.”
In another place, it says to “submit yourselves
for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in
authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and
the praise of those who do right.
So Christians read this and accept
everything that our government does as being of God. Many of them have even accepted the
inevitability of persecution from this same government as being a part of God’s
plan for our nation’s future.
What they are missing is that we are
the government. The people in Washington
or Springfield, if you live in Illinois, they all work for us. They are supposed to serve us and not we
them. We don’t have rulers and kings; we
have representatives, people who work for us.
Suppose you had a business and you
looked at the books and saw that your money was being spent foolishly, you
would fire the people involved and hire new ones. If your employees did shoddy work and lied to
your customers, making promises they couldn’t or wouldn’t keep, you would fire
them. Because they represent you. Your name is on the business.
Suppose you hired a lawyer to defend
you in a case but found that he was actually helping the people who brought
suit against you, you would fire him, because he is supposed to represent you,
to argue your cause, to stand up for
you.
I know Christians think this whole
world is just a place that they are passing through, yet most I know take quite
good care of their houses, their cars.
They work hard on their jobs, because their work reflects them and their
testimony for God. Well, this country is
another extension of who you are and your testimony for God.
The whole world is watching the
United States. Many of them still think
of us as that Christian country that we used to be. And what do they see? Massive debt, borrowing more money than any
other country in the world. A nation
that used to be great by so many standards just being average at best in those
same categories.
Is that so unimportant in the light
of eternity? Are these just earthly
things that pale in light of heavenly things?
Is this the whole world that Jesus warned us about gaining that would profit
us nothing if we lost our own souls?
Christians care more for that one
tribe in some mountainous region of the Andes Mountains where the gospel has
never been preached than that nation around them that used to send most of the
missionaries to other lands, as it methodically erases God from public life, so
that entire generations grow up thinking of Christianity as passé, a relic of
an unenlightened past and Christians as narrow-minded dolts with their heads up
their butt.
Where I think many Christians are
missing the forest for the trees is that they are focused almost entirely on
individuals but fail to see how large public actions affect those same
individuals, or their children growing up.
Jesus told a parable comparing
people’s responses to the Word of God to different kinds of soil. Some had rocks and thorny plants in them
which inhibited these people from responding adequately to God. Christians are failing to appreciate how the
government and culture are affecting the soil of people’s lives by legalizing
and normalizing behaviors and attitudes that provide new barriers for people to
seeing the validity of the gospel.
Christians are sowing seeds of the
Word of God through their words and actions, and the government and culture are
following them with dump trucks unloading rocks and gravel on all the visible
soil.
When evolution is not challenged in
our schools, our school boards, and state legislative sessions, whole
generations grow up believing that this is settled fact and the Bible is just
made up stories along the lines of ancient mythology, that life is just some
cosmic accident of no intrinsic value, and there is no God responsible for all
this and to whom we are accountable.
When the Bible is removed from public
life and our government, there are no more rules but that of the lowest common
denominator, and that is a pretty low standard, where lies don’t reflect on
one’s trustworthiness, where normalcy is rewritten to be all-inclusive, where
debts don’t have to be repaid, and more and more of life comes under the hand
of government to ensure that everything turns out the way it wants.
Christians believe they can undo all
this by one by one conversions, which is like saving the Titanic, one bucket at
a time.
The Titanic sank, and the United
States, and Western Civilization as well, is sinking, while Christians are
distant bystanders. A few issues like
abortion and gay marriage have gotten their attention, but there are dealing
with the aftereffects, like sandbagging your house against the flood when they
should have fixed the dam a generation ago.
They are definitely late to the party,
but there are enough of them to turn this around if they own this country like
they own their own houses and businesses.
If you found that your bank was
skimming a few dollars from your checking or savings account every month, would
you say anything? Yet the Federal
Reserve prints billions of dollars a month of new money that devalues all the
money you already have in those same checking and savings accounts. They also keep interest costs down so they
won’t owe so much on the money they borrow.
But this means also that all the money you save, because you don’t waste
your money and believe in saving, is actually losing money in the bank.
Do you shop at different stores when
you find that you are paying more than you have to for the same thing? Our government can’t think of one way to cut
its spending except to offer to cut your favorite things so you just agree to
them spending however much they want on everything else.
When an organization asks you for
money, are you particular where you give your money, only looking for the most
worthy of causes and those who use their money the most wisely? Do you know all the things your government spends
your money on? Their standards are a lot
lower than yours. Is that how you want
your money spent?
Do you sacrifice to live within your
means so that you don’t go into debt, because you believe it is wrong to owe
people money, because the debtor is slave to the lender? Your government can’t function for a day
without borrowing about 40¢ of every dollar they spend. The government pays off its credit cards with
a credit card. And whose name is on the
card? Yours and your children’s.
They don’t think they have to pay it
off. Actually they don’t. You do.
They don’t have any money but what they take from you.
If somebody took your credit cards
and bought things in your name, would you be upset? Would you try to stop the person doing
it? That is called identity theft. The government doesn’t need to steal your
identity. They don’t care if you know
who’s taking your money. The game is to
take it in ways that you can’t keep track of, so you would need to be an
accountant with a lot of time to figure out all the ways they are taking your
money.
I was looking at my pay stubs to
prepare my income taxes and saw that between what the government took out of my
check and my property taxes, they were taking about 50% of my gross
income. And that’s not including city
stickers, state sticker, gas taxes, sales taxes, and all the fees and taxes on
my utility bills. I would love to give
to a number of worthy causes, but the government is taking too much of my money
to spend on what they want and not on what I want.
Christians believe in being good
stewards of their money, but what about the other half of your money, the money
the government takes from us? Should we
not care how that is spent?
Would you pay for somebody’s
abortion? You already are through
Planned Parenthood, which your government subsidizes.
Do you believe in the military, the
one that now bans chaplains from praying in the name of Jesus? If you look this up online, please be sure to
check the dates on the articles. This
used to be one of those urban legends, but no longer. I haven’t kept up with all the new
rules. They don’t want to make them too
public, but this is not the military we used to know.
Are you aware that the rules of
engagement have been changed in ways that greatly increases the number of our
casualties? There are far more soldiers
who have been killed and wounded than need be, so that we can fight kinder,
gentler wars.
Are the souls of those overseas more
important than those of your neighbors?
True, some have heard nothing about Jesus before, while our nation still
comes to a halt one day a year at Christmas.
But we are letting our culture and our government fill the lives of our
neighbors with moral and intellectual stones and thorns which will make them
increasingly unresponsive to the Good News of the gospel.
The early Christians may have
considered themselves “strangers and aliens” in their lives then, but our
nation here is just an extension of your home or your work. You don’t let strangers trample through your
yard or your house or let anybody tell you how to run your business. Well, don’t let people run your country
either who don’t represent or look out for your interests. You should be as concerned about your country
as you are about your own house, car, and business.
