St. John Studies

In Chapter 3, Pastor Adam Hamilton addresses the idea of words, the building blocks of the thoughts that we try to pass on to others.

Without words, we would have little idea about what another person is thinking, other than through their body language.

Everyone would agree that words are essential, yet why do we treat them with such disregard?

The title of Chapter 3 is “If you can’t say anything nice…” and you know the end of this statement, “don’t say anything at all.” It is all about those words we use.

In today’s climate the use of words has taken on a whole new meaning with the word social media. I am a senior citizen and I have spent my whole life specializing in low tech communications [that is face to face, one human to another].  So the term “social media” poses problems for me.  It really does not seem that “social.”

Before you point out my inconsistency, let me admit that I am using a blog to express my ideas and the blog is connected to Facebook. Some of you may think my preference for face-to-face communication should preclude my use of this “social media.”  I am living a lie.  Guess so.

However, it is the idea of media that introduces problems in our world today, media meaning “ the means of conveyance, or expression; especially referring to mass media.” Media is the “method we use” to send out messages to large numbers of people.   “In the old days,” mass media methods were television or a newspaper but today mass media can mean Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google, Instagram, Flickr etc. etc.

For the person who wants to express themselves, the door has swung wide open.   With a computer, it is much easier to get a message out to anyone who will read it.

This is where words come into play.

What are the words you are sharing with others?   Do you find yourself expressing edifying ideas or are you expressing ideas that should never escape your mind?

I have found that the internet is the place where many people lose their filters. Some people will write things to others that make us cringe.  Even in this Presidential election process, candidates have taken to social media to express themselves and I shake my head and ask “what were they thinking?”

It seems like the boundaries for appropriate expression are lost even in the Christian community. James it trying to warn his Jewish-Christian brothers and sisters about the problem of the tongue with the words from James 3  “When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.  Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.   The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.”

I find it interesting to note that first century Christians had problems with their use of words just like we do today.

They did have an advantage. They did not have social media.

However, they did have the temptation to use words to destroy others. Pastor Hamilton states sarcastically that the words from James quoted above “don’t apply to president’s political parties and others with whom we disagree.”  At least that is how it seems for many Christians.

Then Hamilton says it.   [You aren’t going to like this.]   “If they don’t apply to these [situations], to whom do they apply?”

People don’t often want to be confronted with the truth. Jerry Bridges in his book Respectable Sins writes about the use of harmful words in the Christian community: “any speech that tends to tear down another person—either someone we are talking about or someone we are listening to—is sinful speech”.

What happens to us when we use social media? It seems the firewall is gone.  We let fly!  We express and then we think.  Hamilton says “Rather than trying to understand why [others] believe what they believe, and being open to the possibility that we are wrong, we feel threatened by their convictions and look for ways to criticize the individual and his or her convictions.”

As we return to James 3, James says “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth comes praise and cursing….Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?”

You know the answer

Of course it can. Fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring all the time and it our sin with words that causes that.

I admit it.

Sometimes I overthink things…little things…inconsequential things…meaningless things?…

Well I do.

As we transition from Chapter 2 in Adam Hamilton’s Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White he writes about “the big things of God”.

He spends a lot of time on this in Chapter 2 and there are reasons.

First, Christians are so distracted by “the world.” It says in Philippians 3:20: “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ”.   It says in John 17:14:  “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world”.  As we are alive in this world, the things of the world impact us [war, famine, suffering and poverty] but as Christians we are to see the world in a different light.  This world is not our life.  Our life resides in Christ.  Therein resides our hope.  We are not meant for this world; we were meant for heaven with God.  This world is not our real home; it is a temporary location.

It is also a distraction. The concerns of daily life can turn us away from God as we get mired in the “very important” affairs of life on earth.

Pastor Hamilton goes out in the night and looks up in the sky and ponders the limitless power of God and wonders why we do this.

Secondly, Christians take their faith and fragment it into small pieces that distract from the main message of an awesome God. I have to recount Hamilton’s story of the traveling preacher who came to his college and preached against rock and roll music.  Being a good young man, he wanted to honor God in any way that he could so he listened to the message and felt convicted.  The pastor told the young people in the crowd to go home and destroy their rock and roll music collection.   Pastor Hamilton did so at the end of the service.  All his LPs went into the dumpster after he broke them in half.  The most difficult records to destroy were his Beatles albums.   The pastor said destroy them so he did, wondering all the while why God was so upset with music lyrics like “She loves you yeah, yeah yeah.”

Why would our awesome God be so concerned with all rock and roll music? Some music does celebrate drug culture, violence and abuse against women and those themes should be condemned.  But “She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah?”

I don’t think so.

Pastor Hamilton goes out in the night and looks up in the sky and ponders the limitless power of God and wonders why we do this.

We do it because we take God and we limit Him to our own needs. Our needs are not His needs.  As humans we need to be able to conceptualize God.  There is nothing wrong with that.  My faith has grown as I have tried to conceptualize God in a more spiritually mature way, but I am still putting God in a box and I always will.

Psalm 139:6: “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”

We turn to the Bible to attain as much knowledge as we can but even here we are limited. Hamilton states the Biblical authors got the word from God and that word was put in language for other men to understand.  Do you think the words of man are capable of expressing God messages?  From the written word, we are asked to read it and interpret it as God would want us to.  As we attempt to decode the Word, we are limited by our understanding of the language and our experience with the Scripture.  We try to understand but do you think your interpretation is the interpretation or quite possibly there are additional ways to understanding the Scripture?  I never feel like I have it all correct when I read the Bible; numerous readings over the years have revealed new things to me on every reading.

My limited ability to think puts God in a box.

As we leave Chapter 2 and move to Chapter 3, Hamilton cites a book by J.B. Phillips entitled Your God is Too Small. I have not read this book but it sounds like it expresses the point that I am trying to make.  Hamilton says of the book, “I fear that today the Christian church (along with every other religion) is often guilty of worshipping a small God whose mystery we think we’ve nailed down in our black-and-white theology.”

Maybe, just maybe we all need to go out in the night and look up in the sky and ponder the limitless power of God…and see how wrong we truly are.

In my last post, the good doctor who said “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror” had a character trait in place that I think served him well…humility.

In Adam Hamilton’s chapter 2 of Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White, he goes beyond humility in listing other factors that can help us all with understanding others.

In my years of teaching interpersonal communication at a college, I always enjoyed trying to explain some aspects of managing conflict in the everyday world and I am struck by the ideas that Pastor Hamilton uses that would help us all in diminishing this stressful part of life. Of course, Hamilton is perturbed about our society’s conflict over polarizing political issues but he is also upset that the church cannot “get it together” to accomplish good in the world [Christians fight among themselves].

Ego conflict is not a term he uses but it is a common idea in the interpersonal world. An ego conflict occurs when a person insists on the attitude that my position must be the winning position.  People today invest so much ego into the expression of their thought.  This is who I am, this is what I know for sure, this is how competent I am, and this is how much power I have.  When ideas are expressed and someone feeds back a negative comment, a personal comment or a judgement, naturally that leads to escalation.    When you hear people yelling polarizing statements like “right or wrong, faithful or unfaithful, I am whole and you are defective and I am going to heaven and you are not”, we know the conflict is out of hand.

Pastor Hamilton has good advice to help us deal with ego conflict. Fight the tendency to label others negatively is one thing he says.  I agree, once that negative label is applied, what you have really done is build a wall between yourself and the other person, a wall that is hard to tear down.

Quit going for the “kill.” I often talked to students about conflict, trying to get them to visualize a knight in armor battling with another knight in armor.  Both knights hack away at each other until one is down on the ground and the other is victor.  That kind of attitude called “win-lose” sets people up to polarize.  Recognize that none of us knows all about everything.   Other people can teach us stuff.  Try to see value in another’s position even though you do not want to give up your strongly held conviction.

What needs to happen is we need to get to the point where we can admit that some of the other person’s position is correct.   Hardly anyone is 100% wrong.

If you are having a hard time with this, Pastor Hamilton says recognize that something which is essential for one person may not be essential for another. This way you can at least honor their strongly held belief without having to give up your own strongly held beliefs.  It is all a matter of perspective.

Last but not least is the old adage “pick your battles.” Too many people today are ready to begin World War III when it is not necessary.  Some issues are worth discussing, disagreeing and arguing for but most are not.

I don’t know how many times I have listened to people who don’t think like me but I enjoy analyzing their argument. I don’t fire back at them.  I just listen.  If they don’t think like me, I would be disingenuous if I told them I agreed with them so I don’t do that.  However, I also don’t automatically choose to fire back with a negative evaluation of their ideas or attack them as a person.  My thinking process is “well, this is just not that important.”

As Christians we have to learn to look beyond our own small interests as we encounter others in the world. We have to realize that what we do and say reflects on Jesus Christ.  If we choose to wade into an out-of-control argument, people are always watching.  Some may be impressed by our strong backbones as we stand up for our beliefs.  Others may wonder what in the world we believe as we let our out-of-control ego needs overpower our sense of civility.

Pastor Hamilton uses an oft-quoted expression in chapter 2 that I would like to emphasize. He tries to attribute the quote to someone but his research is unclear.  Maybe the words come from a 17^th Century Lutheran, or St. Augustine or wouldn’t you know it…some say John Wesley.

Take some time to think about the words:

“In essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”

What a better world we would have if we all lived by this motto.

I had a long conversation with a church member not too long ago about a couple of people in their Sunday school class.

It seems that comments had been coming forth from people about other denominations and this person was really upset. The denomination that was denigrated was the home denomination of this person.

All I could say was “We should never do that. It is not appropriate to be making such comments in a Sunday school class or anywhere else for that matter.”

We all know that Jesus was a Jew, yet He was not one who spoke ill of other religions. When confronted by the Centurion who seeks a miracle for his ailing servant, Jesus says “Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.” Then Jesus said to the Canaanite woman with the demon-possessed daughter, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

If His Disciples had their way, Jesus would have ignored the woman. They said “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”  He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”  The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”  “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”  This was when the daughter was healed.

Jesus did not demand that people become Jewish before He worked a miracle for them.

When one of the Apostles saw someone casting out demons in the name of Christ, they told Jesus that they tried to prevent him because “he does not follow along with us.” Jesus said, “Do not hinder him; for he who is not against you is for you” [Luke 9: 49-50].

Why do we refuse to see more differences and ignore the similarities? It happens all the time.  Take a diverse group of people and put them in a big room to sit at picnic tables.  What do they do?  Most will gravitate to tables where people who look like them are sitting.  That drives me crazy!  How are we ever going to learn anything about how other people experience life if we just hang out with people who are just like us.

Instead of focusing on differences and similarities, and using such generic terms like diverse, let’s use the word rich. The Christian experience is a rich one.  I have a good friend who just joined the Catholic Church and the proud traditions of the church really appealed to him.  I have another friend who is non-denominational and his services are truly alive with the Holy Spirit.  The music is very lively, people will get up and shout their praises and the singing is in a word, “exuberant.”  My Aunt Babe was a rector in the Episcopal Church and attending her services, one was exposed to a liturgy that was truly poetic and proper in its performance.  I have visited African-American churches that are so supportive of the preacher, their shouts of encouragement are uplifting and you never fear that they are not listening.  The shouts always come at the right places because they are engaged with the message.

Jesus assured that where two or more are gathered in His Name, He is with them [ Matt. 18:20].

He did not say two or more Jewish people, or Catholic people, Baptist people or United Methodist people. He said PEOPLE.

Pastor Hamilton says in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White:  “The truth is that all of the branches in this tree called Christianity are a bit defective.  But each adds to the beauty of the whole.  What a tragedy if we were to cut off all but one of the limbs.  But what riches are to be found if we can humbly listen and learn from one another, appreciating our differences, while together seeking to follow Jesus Christ.”

In 1991, Rodney King [a taxi driver in L. A.] was brutally beaten by L. A. police. It was caught on camera and when it played on television, it caused riots in the African-American community.   King was attributed with going on TV and saying “Can’t we all just get along?” in response to the unrest his beating ignited.

The “can’t we all just get along” plea is a good one. It is a wish for all people all the time but today we need unity in the Christian community more than ever before as the scripture “You are the light of the world” [Matthew 5:14] takes on great meaning.  In short, the world needs a moral beacon, especially today.

Sadly the “can’t we all just get along” plea falls on deaf ears within the Christian church.

The truly sad thing about this is it has been this way almost from the very beginning. I have been blessed to have some time to read since I have retired and one of my “must reads” was Brian Moynahan’s The Faith: A History of Christianity.  Moynahan pulls no punches in his book as he takes Christianity to task for the lack of unity in the faith.  Adam Hamilton does the same:  “Though all claim to be followers of Jesus, most have divided over matters of doctrine or ways of practicing their faith.  Each feels that their doctrine and practice is more faithful than the others.”

The truly sad thing about the history of our faith is as Christianity became the adopted faith of the Roman Empire in the Empire’s last years; Christians began to turn on each other as they tried to root out heresy in their religion. The irony of this fact is that the Roman Empire made martyrs of Christian believers as emperors refused to allow Christianity in the Empire.  As Emperor Constantine found his way to Christianity, he refused to persecute non-Christians [for a while].  Eventually in the 340’s he came under so much pressure to persecute pagans that he allowed pagan shrines to be desecrated by Christians.  Moynahan says “it took little enough time for Christians to turn from persecuted to persecutors.”

It was not long until Christians turned their attentions to heretical Christians. In 386 at Trier [in France] Christians set fire to a group of their own because they had been critical of Christian church practice.  They imposed the penalty of burning at the stake which was a popular form of execution used by Emperor Nero.  Moynahan does not recount many burnings in the next years but he admits “a precedent had been set.”

You might wonder why do I go back to Christian history, to times that seemed so long ago? What is the point that I am trying to make?  Well the point is after Christ left this earth and man took over how the church was run, it has been a splintered mess.

I get so disheartened when I consider the influence the church could exert on the world if we all worked together. Hamilton cites such powerful scripture when he turns to Matthew 23:24 “You blind guides!  You strain at a gnat but swallow a camel.”  Rightly so, he understands the important thing about our faith is its focus on justice, mercy and faith.    Jesus says “It is these you should have practiced without neglecting the others” [Matthew 25].

Instead we have a spirit of competition as each church tries to draw in the unchurched in any way possible. We have to fill the pews.  We have to have heavy collection plates.  Moynahan states Christians “have fractured their faith beyond repair, as each church claimed its own right to reach to heaven, they were heedless of an earlier and grimmer miracle.”  The tower builders of Babel made an effort to build an edifice that reached to heaven, making the tower a prime example of human pride and self-sufficiency.  The Lord was not happy with the effort and he confounded their single language.  He made it where they could not understand each other.

We have done that to the church. We have taken a powerful institution and we have fragmented it due to our own desire to “be right.”

Chapter two begins with a multitude of clichés but they do apply:

We can’t see the forest for the trees.

We win the battle and lose the war.

We struggle to keep the main thing the main thing.

We make a mountain out of a molehill.

“While this is a universal affliction of all human beings, religious people excel at it” [Hamilton, 9]

“Can’t we all just get along?”

No…we can’t.

This first week I have spent a lot of time posting on our government that is not productive due to politicians not finding a way to get along, the fact that there is such a thing as middle ground between extremes when it comes to politics, the idea that politics and spirituality are strange bedfellows and finally the role of the pastor in all of this political mess.

Today I want to pull back and discuss this black and white stuff.

Why do we talk about the world in extreme terms? Why do we like to use ideas like white [a color due to the reflection of most wavelengths of visible light; the opposite of black:] and black [of the very darkest color owing to the absence of or complete absorption of light; the opposite of white].

What is the value of all this extreme thought?

Well you might be surprised but the greatest value is it helps us to use our brains less.

I don’t know what happens to some people. As they get older, life gets to be a struggle and they want to “cut to the chase” to use a common cliché.   They want the “quick and dirty” answers.  They don’t want to examine issues which are difficult.  Too often they just want someone to give them the answers.

This is where black or white comes in. People want to classify others as black or white or liberal or conservative but let me tell you, as Pastor Hamilton says, “we humans are an odd and somewhat confused lot.  We defy black and white categorization.”

He cites Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church, you know that church that likes to station church members along routes going from funeral homes to cemeteries. Those church members have controversial messages about homosexuals and how America is being punished for tolerating them.  In Christian County, Kentucky [where I live] the county passed an ordinance banning this type of display since they were going to do this at a military funeral.

Fred Phelps was a lawyer who fought for civil rights for African Americans after he left law school. He was highly regarded by the NAACP due to his work opposing discrimination based on race.

He defies black and white categorization.

A few years ago a very good friend in my Sunday school class loaned me a popular book about Fox New founder, chairman and CEO Roger Ailes [Roger Ailes, Off Camera].   This friend knew I was different than him because of how I reacted to news of the day in Sunday school.  When he gave me the book, I wondered “what is he up to?”  Out of respect for him I read it from cover to cover and I was shocked.  I figured a man like Ailes only dealt with extreme right wing people but I soon saw that he did not.  He had relationships with all kinds of people from all over the political spectrum.  He called up liberals and conservatives daily and had friends from the left and right and worked hard all his life to understand the world of television, irrespective of any party affiliation.  I began to see Mr. Ailes in a whole new light.

He defies black and white categorization.

To be honest, life is like that. I don’t want you to jump to a conclusion that all moral choices in life are gray.  I am not advocating that.  I just want to point out that making decisions takes work, work that we often don’t want to do.  We want to shut our brains down quickly.  It is a strain to take the time to think through issues.

We have a candidate running for president now who is evolving right before us on the television screen. He defies description from time to time because he does one thing and says he believes another.  His “track record” says one thing because of the money he has given to support various causes and now he says he is the opposite of that.  His political party, from time to time, does not know what to do with him.  He does not fit their mold.

He defies black and white categorization.

Pastor Hamilton says “Many of us are liberal on some issues and conservative on others. Someone more conservative than you thinks of you as a liberal; likewise, your liberal neighbor considers you a conservative.”

These terms are of little use except to shut down the human mind. Pastor Hamilton will hopefully show us in upcoming chapters that Jesus offers a way to take our energies and be bridge builders, peacemakers and healers.

Get ready, it may require you to crank up your cranium.

That’s the opposite of shutting it down.

Remember, we are trying to avoid those extreme terms.

Sorry, the pollen has got me.

This pic tells it all.  Today’s Post will go out tomorrow…..

The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that constitute the Bill of Rights.

The First Amendment is a good thing for a nation that seeks to “separate church from state.” I can’t imagine that many American pastors would want a government that would tell them how they have to preach.

But in times of political turmoil, I also can imagine that it would be hard to not take the pulpit and comment on the times, especially when our culture needs words of guidance.

Pastor Hamilton cites two cases of pastors who represent opposite ends of the political spectrum and how their expressed views did not help.

I have lived long enough to remember Pastor Jerry Falwell, Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg Virginia and one of the founders of Liberty University. I am less familiar with John Shelby Spong, retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church.  He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author.

If you have had a television set for the past thirty years or so, you have seen Reverend Falwell on his “Old Time Gospel Hour”. Sadly he grabbed headlines a few years ago by saying things from the pulpit like 9/11 was caused by the American Civil Liberties Union, abortionists, gays and lesbians.

Spong has been made famous to some by declaring that most of the historic doctrines of the Christian faith are bankrupt. In fact, what most Christians believe has been thrown out by Spong [a sample is the virgin birth (understood as literal biology); Spong states that the virgin birth makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible].  To understand more about him, look up his “Ten Points of Reform”.  Talk about controversy…

What is the role of the pastor today? What can they say and do to help the situation in American Society today?  Does a Pastor need to influence his or her congregation in the voting process?  Is it important for them to discuss their own political views from the pulpit or should they avoid such topics?

I have been sitting in congregations when pastors made statements about politics and I have never seen it turn out well. In fact, I have talked to parishioners who left the church due to a political comment made by a pastor.  One woman left due to one sentence in one sermon.  It was a judgmental sentence and she felt it judged her.  That was enough.

Yet, Presidents have sought pastors for their guidance; probably the most influential pastor has been Reverend Billy Graham, who has counseled every president from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush [eleven in all]. What did Graham do that impacted these world leaders?   They know and God knows.  You can bet he had an influence.

Despite reports to the contrary, President Obama has a spiritual caucus of five pastors that he consults and prays with on a regular basis. The details of their relationship with the President are not well known but he reaches out to them to keep himself spiritually grounded.

I have had private conversations with pastors who have talked politics.   When they do, I always get uncomfortable, like they are making pronouncements that they should avoid.

Still the question is there, what can they do? What is their role?

I liken their job to that of the watchman. In Isaiah 21:6 the Lord said to Isaiah “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.”   Isaiah was a prophet in the Kingdom of Judah, probably between about 740 B.C. and 698 B.C.   In this verse, he is prophesying about the fall of Babylon.  He is warning of impending doom, for Judah has not been doing what God has demanded.  God wants total dedication from His people and they have been worshipping idols and doing unspeakable acts against God.

Our culture needs a watchman, a person who keeps an eye on our culture and warns of repercussions for our behaviors. My pastor skirts the issue of politics, by not talking about it at all, preferring to discuss “higher” issues than American political affairs.  When Adam Hamilton is asked whether he is a liberal or conservative he answers “yes” to that question.  Obviously he cares about America or he would not have written Seeing Gray but he does not feel compelled to take sides.

What was the role of the watchman? Like the Old Testament prophets, they warned Israel and Judah that they were doing wrong in the eyes of the Lord.  They warned that God was going to punish them if they did not repent of their sinful ways.  Judah did not listen to Isaiah.

America may not get it.

America may pay the price for ignoring its watchmen.

I am so blessed to have close friends and family members who are pastors. I am so blessed to have so many solid Christians in my life who are friends.  I am so blessed to be a member of a Christian church family.

And I wonder from time to time where we all fit into the world of politics today?

Then they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Him in order to trap Him [Jesus] in a statement. They came and said to Him, “Teacher, we know that You are truthful and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay a poll-tax to Caesar, or not? “Shall we pay or shall we not pay?” But He, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why are you testing Me? Bring Me a denarius to look at.”   They brought one. And He said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” And they said to Him, “Caesar’s.”   And Jesus said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” [Mark 12].

“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it” [John 17].

These two scriptures are very popular and may mean different things to different people but in Mark, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to say that Jesus is trying to relay the idea that what the government demands of man is much different than what God demands of man.

In John, Jesus is specifically praying for his Disciples to realize they are not of this world. Several times in the Bible He refers to Christians as being in this world but not of this world.

But politics?

To me, the word has such a “worldly” feel about it.

As Americans, we are told by many in other cultures that we should appreciate our vote, our ability to participate in government, our means of expression.

I don’t advocate that we just quit participating but I do advocate that we educate ourselves as much as we can about what is going on with a candidate.

This may be a very inconsequential metaphor, but it is just like clicking “like” on someone else’s Facebook post.   Be very careful what you like.  Your liking indicates something about you.  [of course, voting is much more serious than that.]

Keep in mind that politics can be about “being used.” Adam Hamilton in Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White says: “Too often faith has been used by Christian leaders and politicians to further a particular political party or political agenda.”   For many political operatives, the Christian Evangelical group of voters is just a demographic group.  I don’t know how many times I have heard a pundit or a politician say that such and such candidate has locked up the Christian Evangelical vote.  I don’t want to be a voter in a block of voters, just voting like others in my demographic group.

More than that, in the minds of many people who are unaffiliated with a religious group, the more controversial topics like homosexuality, abortion and the Biblical origin of man drive people away from the church. You may recall what I said at the beginning of this post about the many Christians I have in my life.  Guess what; I have many non-Christians among my family and friends and many of them won’t have anything to do with God because of their feelings of disgust about the church and a single controversial issue.  Often they are not fully aware of the position of the church.  They just think they know.  As Hamilton says, “Christianity has become a wedge that drives people from Christ, rather than drawing them to Him.”

I want to vote with my head and my heart. I want to vote for the candidate that reflects the best choice for me.  I want to vote for the candidate that reflects how I feel about my faith.

Is the perfect candidate out there?

Sadly no.

They all have flaws.

You may have to make the slightly square peg fit into the round hole and it takes work sometimes.

It is important work however as you deal with the fact that your vote does matter. It matters because it reflects on you and your faith.  It matters because we have the right to vote.

Today especially, it is important for Christians to be actively, intelligently involved in our governmental process. What we need to give to Caesar is our vote because we have a nation that allows it and we never want to give it away. What we need to do in the world today [in my estimation] is never to forget that we are people of God, people who advocate peace and love for one another.

Our political activity should be positive rather than negative. We should discuss and act as citizens who want to offer “the balm that can heal” a divided country rather than citizens who want “to divide our nation” [Hamilton, XV].

I wonder from time to time where we all fit into the world of politics today?

Well, like that square peg and that round hole, we don’t seem to fit, but we need to do the best we can to be a positive force, to offer that balm.