The political Christian
I’ve been thinking for quite some time about how we as Christians should relate to political issues. One thing that I’d like to see discussed has to do with the diversity of our politics: If we’re all starting from the same Bible, why do we have such different political views? It seems to me that we often let our background rather than the scriptures govern our views about such matters. With few exceptions, we seem to be as likely to seek scriptural backing for our political views as we are to allow those views to be formed by scripture. Liberals stay liberal, and conservatives stay conservative.
Recently, I’ve been considering some verses in Jeremiah 29, a passage familiar to most of us, I would think:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
Jeremiah’s words to the exiles of Jerusalem apply to us as well: we are strangers and sojourners in this land, with our true citizenship in God’s heavenly Kingdom. Nevertheless, we are to live our lives as usual and do the normal things that people do: live, marry, have children, and participate in the life of the land. But God gives us a set of additional responsibilities: “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” I did a bit of checking, and found that the word translated as “welfare” is the Hebrew word “shalom”, usually translated as “peace”. Thus, our engagement in the political process has a goal: the shalom of the town, state, and nation in which we find ourselves. And while this doesn’t necessarily resolve the conservative/liberal/democrat/republican baggage that we bring with us when we come to the Lord, it at least tells us what ought to be seeking. It seems to me that we should at least have a common definition of the welfare or shalom that we seek on behalf of where we live, even though the means through which we seek it may differ according to our respective politics.