Church

The typical routine in a white American evangelical church includes a group gathering mid –morning on a Sunday in a heavily mortgaged building.  There is a welcoming committee, three hymns, prayer and bible reading, a sermon, collection during another hymn, benediction, maybe some coffee, then classes before everyone makes a break for lunch, nap and football.  Wednesdays may include a kids program and maybe more prayer.

These rituals are considered to define church life and as such are sacrosanct.  But are they?  Does scripture demand these activities, or are they cultural?

The covid pandemic has rattled churches because without the ability to gather in person, their purpose seems to be in jeopardy.  Some church leaders have resorted to leaning on a political cry of “freedom and rights” as a basis to keep meeting.  Some have taught that the disease is not serious and can be ignored.  Others have claimed that God will protect them.  Still others have been appealing to lawmakers for exemptions (and getting them).  Many used electronic media for a while, but returned to gathering in person, some with masks and some without.  The catch is that those people who have declined to attend in person have become disconnected and neglected, if not actively ostracized.

Simultaneously, political division has invaded the buildings with biblical wisdom being replaced by party rhetoric, leading to deep division and loss of love. Much of this dissention is built on listening to and believing messaging from cultural and political sources, and the tools used for gathering news and opinion filter out contrary opinions. 

Where is truth?  In the Bible.  Therefore, let us go back to scripture and re-examine what church should be about, and how it can be achieved in 2020. 

What is the church?  It is the body of Christ’s people, his bride, a planet-wide assemblage of diverse people, periodically meeting.  We are clearly instructed to gather together – but for what purpose?  To:

• Worship the almighty God because He deserves it, and therein is satisfaction and joy
• Administer the sacraments (baptism and communion) as instructed by God
• Preach, teach, and read scripture to remind each other about who God is and how we can live holy lives
• Pray together in corporate submission to God
• Fellowship together and encourage one another because that is how we give and get love
• Discipline those who are drifting off the path of truth in order to restore them
• Communicate the gospel to non-believers, because this truth is for all mankind

Do we have to gather in large groups to do all of this?  Maybe not.  Maybe God is using the pandemic to shake up our complacency. 

It is obviously impossible for the whole worldwide church to gather in one place and time due to constraints of distance, time zones and accommodation.  Therefore, it seems reasonable for us to gather in smaller, local, groups.  But how small?

Economics and the temptation to follow the models of the culture encourage US churches to be very large.  Media encourage us to be greedy, covetous, self-promoting, popular, and powerful.  Numbers matter and the biggest, loudest and strongest win.  It is hard not to drag these anti-scriptural norms into our churches.  Bigger buildings, better music programs, slick media tools all seem to point to “successful” churches.  What is intriguing is the number of Pastors who built large churches, initially starting with solid doctrine and seemingly good motivations, but ended up crashing and burning when the power and fame went to their heads.  Is bigger really better?

Remember that a core task of the church is to grow deep and loving relationships.  This is impossible in large groups, not least because people are reluctant to be honest in a crowd, irrespective of the quality of the sermon or the music.  It is all too easy to slide into the back row of a large church, and slide out again without talking to anyone, even if you are desperate for fellowship.  Larger churches try to solve that by setting up smaller groups that are intimate and loving, with varying degrees of success.  The failure is often that the programs become the focus of attention rather than the people within them.  Systems and processes supersede relationships and individual’s needs.

At the other extreme, there is a minimum size, because how many people does it take to provide the resources to support a full time Pastor?  Many churches in small towns are learning these limits as the towns shrink and people die or move away.

What about electronic tools?  Webmeetings, emails, and texting have certainly facilitated our being able to shelter at home and continue to interact, and as such they have been fantastic.  But, are they enough?  Not really.  Everyone I speak to, including the introverts, are “zoomed out” and very keen to get back to some sort of direct contact.  But is that wise?

With all of this background, let us return to the fundamental question – how do we worship, fellowship, learn and evangelize as a body in a time when a bug makes it potentially dangerous to gather in groups?  When and how should a larger body gather and to what end?  The structure described in the first paragraph may not be bad, but it may not be right for the planet earth in 2020.  But, what is the right model?

I don’t know.  My purpose is to challenge you to put aside politics, prejudices and habits and think about these questions from first principles.  What does the Bible actually say about church?  Are we doing it right?  Can we use our imaginations to make our churches into places where God is obeyed and people’s needs are met without risking our lives?  How do we change to make church a place of shelter and celebration instead of bickering.

Following is a selection of verses to help think about this.

1 Timothy 4:13 Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.

Hebrews 10: 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

Hebrews 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Acts 4: 32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. 33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.

Luke 4: 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. 17 And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written,

Acts 17 Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

Mark 2: 2 And many were gathered together, so that there was no more room, not even at the door. And he was preaching the word to them.

Acts 20:7 On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

Acts 20:28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

James 5:14 Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.

Revelation 21:9 Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

 

 

A Reprimand

 When we were first locked down, I started actively trying to care for and encourage several different groups of people.  Having spent weeks at home after a surgery, I was aware of the challenges of isolation.  I worked at regular emails, calls and texts.  Most people responded, some more honestly than others.

A few more weeks and I hit a wall.  Budgets were hammered, work got hard, people around me were grumpy, and my healing stalled.  I crawled into a hole and hid from the world.  As part of my escape, I stopped contacting the groups I had been trying to support.  No one noticed.

Last month I posted a piece in the style of a psalm, preaching to myself to trust in God to find joy.  In there was a pretty loud statement that I was not doing well.  I got 31 likes and a scolding for not being in church in person.  Not a single person contacted me to pray, talk or help. 

James 2: 16 If…one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

At the same time, my social media feed is filled with churchgoers raging about the election, covid, rights, and the economy.  The church has become hard soil, distracted by life, fruitless, useless.

If I am typical of the way people are being treated or ignored, then there is precious little love going around and the body is failing to fulfil its mandate to love people and lead them toward Jesus.  As such, we are doomed unless we repent.  And I am as guilty as anyone.  Go read Revelation 2:1-7.

 

A Psalm

 

Let’s be honest.  People everywhere are afraid, depressed and angry.  I am among them.  Isolated, under-appreciated, worried.

We blame politicians for how they are handling a worldwide crisis, we blame foreigners because we can, we blame our neighbors for being selfish and stupid, and we take it out on everyone around us including those we love.  It is showing up in increased outbursts, mental health issues, suicides and public demonstrations.  We crave love, and get rage.  We live for feel-good stories, which are few and far between, and while moving, they don’t change much.

The world is out of control and I (control freak) can’t do anything about it.

But wait…

·       God is in control

·       God does love us

·       God is the comforter

This is where it gets real, and hard – leaning into these truths and finding joy. 

Working on it.

Passive or Active?

Responses to Covid 19 have divided the church.  At the root of much of this division has been how people are addressing an age-old question, namely, how to find the balance between trusting God (passive) and doing something about it (active), in daily situations. 

For example, some say that they will refuse a vaccine when it comes out and rather trust God to protect them.  This statement sent me down a trail pursuing this thought to its logical conclusion.

·       If not this vaccine, then we should reject all other vaccines including polio, smallpox, mumps, …

·       If no vaccines then we should eschew all medicines including ibuprofen, antihistamines, cancer treatments …

·       If no medicines, we should avoid all so-called natural remedies, because how do we define them?

·       If no remedies then we should decline all medical treatments including setting broken limbs, surgery, bandaids, childbirth support…

o   No prosthetics, including walking sticks

o   No keeping mice and bugs out of the house to prevent plague, lyme disease, malaria…

o   No watching your diet for health reasons, such as sugar, fats, preservatives, food allergens…

·       Indeed – no avoiding poisons

·       Then, jumping off high places and walking on the highway are OK

At the extreme end of the “let go and let God” scale then, one can sit at the table and order a steak dinner and expect God to serve it.  This is clearly absurd, not least because after the fall, God told Adam that “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”, i.e. no free (steak) lunch.  We have to work to survive.

Therefore, there has to be a point where we take responsibility and put some effort into looking after ourselves, and our neighbors, and another where God takes over.  But where is that cutoff?  Many far smarter and better-educated people than I have wrestled with this, but I am stupid enough to try too.

Let us start by stating unequivocally that God is sovereign.  That means He is totally in charge and indeed could easily serve steak dinners and protect us from every harm, if he chose to.  But he doesn’t.  He clearly gives us responsibility to take action to care for our bodies (temples) and allow them to flourish.  Intertwined with this is that He, and only He is the giver and taker of life. Simply stated, God is in control, but I am responsible; which is a conundrum that we will only understand in heaven

Noting that Jesus stated that those who are sick need medical help, and that one of his disciples was a physician, it would seem reasonable that God is not anti-doctor.

There are many passages in scripture where God instructs people to go do things: build the ark, fight the battle, catch the fish, prepare the meal, feed the poor, pay the tax, buy a sword.  There are also passages where the battle was won with no fighting, swords were banned, and people were miraculously healed and raised from the dead.  Sometimes Paul fled from the riots he caused, and sometimes he stayed to be arrested. 

There is obviously then, no simple injunction that we can follow blindly.  So how do we know what to do?  We listen to God. How does He speak? Through scripture first.  But scripture is completely silent about Covid-19.  However, He has laid down principles about loving Him and our neighbors, not killing, stealing, or coveting, and not limiting our horizons to this life.  The Bible consistently condemns inaction in the face of injustice, poverty and need.  Most of all we are told to walk away from the fear and anxiety that is expressing itself as selfishness, paranoia, and bigotry in our community today.  We are also told to seek His presence and rely on the Holy Spirit for guidance (subject to the principles of scripture to ensure that it is the Holy Spirit we are listening to).  We avoid fear by trusting Him explicitly.

So: two contradictory messages and we are back where we started.  We have to trust God with every detail of our lives, and we have to take action.

The only way I have been able to resolve this is to act where I can, and to let God take on the outcomes and the things I have no control over.

This includes taking advantage of medical professionals and their treatments and recommendations.  At the same time, I seek joy and reassurance in God’s presence.  It is kind of fun to watch our mighty human edifices crumble in the face of a teeny tiny virus, and to remember who is actually in control.

 

To mask or not to mask

Let’s start with “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”  But how do we do that in a Covid environment?

Then the potential disagreement.  Any discussion will be influenced by a perception of how serious the disease is.  If it is just the flu then all of the panic is unfounded and we are wasting our time.  If it is significant, then we have to respond.  I lean toward the latter – 200,000 deaths in the US over the last year compared with 50,000 flu deaths; 90 people a day in ICU in Iowa; long term affects including mental and other body-system failures being reported, one of my staff informing me that they never want to go through that again…

If then, the disease is significant: how do we demonstrate love; what do people need? 

•          To hear the Gospel – but they will only listen if we meet the other needs below
•          To be protected from getting Covid – I would still argue that this is indeed critical and can’t think of any reason to not do it if it is possible
•          To be supported if they get Covid
•          To be supported if they lose jobs or income
•          To be encouraged while isolated

The elephant in the room is: how many illnesses and deaths are acceptable against crashing the economy?  Life is precious, yet we all die.  So what is the value of a life? Does it change with age, I.Q., skin color, economic status or sports ability?  How many jobs lost vs how many sick people? 

Maybe a useful way to consider this is on the basis of risk.  All jobs involve some risk.  Pavement engineering is one of the worst.  No one is allowed to work in my lab without hours of training.  All my staff on construction sites have to wear hard hats, steel-toe boots, and reflective vests along with ear- and eye-protection.  We seek to control the risk to so-called “acceptable” levels with “appropriate” actions.  The hard part is defining the details of what is appropriate and acceptable.

So in an age of Covid, if someone has to go to work, or chooses to serve, play or fellowship with others, it behooves them to control the risk, yes to themselves, but just as importantly, to the people they meet there and come home to afterward.  https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/ indicates that attending a function in Story County with 100 people means a 75 to 99% risk that someone in the group is infectious.  The scary part is that that infectious person may not be aware of their threat to the community.

We are required by scripture to gather, worship, exhort and encourage, but can we do that with “acceptable” risk?  Likewise, we are all bored with isolation (included us introverts), and the looming winter is aggravating that frustration; we need each other. A model of managing risk in the context of worship may be the Chinese underground church.  They do gather, quietly and carefully, trying to fly under the radar of the authorities – they are not filling crystal palaces.  Similarly, when we gather we should manage risk by doing what we can to limit exposure.  We have to consider carefully whether our practices are truly scripturally required, or just tradition.

I am also very nervous about endorsing any activity solely based on someone saying “God told me,” because most of us have lousy hearing and often His voice is drowned out by our own desires.  It happens that God does speak to us directly, but mistakes also happen (been there done that).  We have to filter such instruction through all of scripture.  Likewise, “God will protect me” does not ring true with other diseases, so why should we expect it to apply here.  We have to care for our temples, by actions such as getting flu shots, not eating excess licorice, not walking in the middle of the expressway, and by avoiding people who may infect us.

Also worth noting, is that the Romans 14 passage is addressing a church that is trying to turn around generations of indoctrination.  To eat or not to eat certain foods is simply a conscience issue because, in general, food will not kill us unless indulged in excess (including the guy who died of licorice poisoning last week).  A modern parallel may be a discussion on whether should I wear a suit to church. A decision either way is not going to affect the well-being of anyone else involved.  However, in the context of Covid, exposure to the bug could hurt you, regardless of what you think of it or how invincible you think you are.  Choosing to avoid harming others is a moral issue and far more than just conscience or being religious.

A better picture of how Jesus dealt with contagious diseases are the passages on leprosy.  This illness was also extremely contagious, debilitating and incurable, hence the laws to separate the sick from the healthy.  Jesus healed the few lepers he met, but he did not heal all lepers alive at the time.  When those individuals were healed, they were instructed to submit themselves to the authorities before they were allowed back into the community.  He did not make leprosy go away, and he did not override the protective systems in place.

The part where the church should be setting a shining example to the community is in the other tasks: supporting those in need or are struggling with being trapped at home.  We are called by scripture to serve those in need – including those who are infectious. That may include deliberately and sacrificially exposing ourselves to greater risk, but can we do that without risking them, or our families?  An example is the medical staff living in RV’s rather than going home.  We also need to watch our motivation in providing that service – is it to flaunt our bravery and resources, or to live out the gospel?

Some argue that masks don’t work, yet Dr. Fauci, among many others, repeatedly tells us that masks and space go a long way to reducing risk, and seem to be an easy, “appropriate” and “effective” ways of demonstrating love.  Refusing to do that simple action in the name of invincibility, rights, or because they are uncomfortable and look stupid is way beyond a matter of eating forbidden food, and appears to be profoundly selfish. 

Philippians 2:3-4 “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves, 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

When I go to the office, everyone does it without complaining.  So why are the Christians being so resistant to doing something so easy?  I suspect it is because they are being manipulated by a politically informed obsession with “freedom” and “rights” that is not biblical.  Jesus clearly instructs us to lay down our rights for others, and our freedom is not to do what we want, but to do want He wants: to be a living sacrifice; to love our neighbor.

To quote one of my hockey fan colleagues “Wear the …. mask, it’s not like we are asking you to wear a Toronto Maple Leafs Jersey.”

Ramblings of an old man in a time of pandemic

Life has changed.  Circumstances way out of our control have completely upset the normal order of life, and we hate it.  Not surprisingly our response has been fear, blame, hoarding, and escaping to our homes hoping the monster doesn’t get us.  In many ways, it feels like one of those dystopia movies I grew up on.  The confusing part is that Jesus was never featured in any of those movies, so we are ill-prepared to be Christians in such a time.  Or are we?

What has been demonstrated very clearly is that our way of life was balanced on a knife-edge, and we have fallen off the knife.  That way of life revolved around a greed-based economy, so the collapse of this economy is forcing us to question how much of the stuff in our lives is really necessary.  Jesus’ teaching was that life should be based on meeting needs of ourselves, and of others with grace and generosity.  This has always been hard to live out in a culture of selfishness.

The interweb is providing a plethora of voices the means to clamor for our attention.  The opinions coming from these voices are varied, contradictory and confusing.  Common questions and opinions include:

Who is to blame?

American culture is litigious.  When someone does something bad – they get sued.  And so we are scrambling to figure out who to blame and who should pay.  For some, the answer is to blame political authorities for a lack of planning.  The language is passionate, angry and condemnatory.  For others, the blame belongs to the nations where the disease initially flourished, and so all oriental looking people are subjected to verbal and physical abuse, regardless of where they are from.  Then it gets to be local.  Neighbors condemn neighbors because they are not perceived to be complying with current norms.  Shaming and shunning fly around facebook pages.  We express our fear with rage.

When will it end?

I recently had major surgery.  It took weeks to recover, indeed it is now 7 weeks and I am still not fully healed.  Initially I could not wait to get out of bed and back to normal, and it was galling and depressing to learn that my body is older, less forgiving, and more prone to pain than before.  This is the new normal; it will never go back to the way it was.

So it is with this virus.  It is likely that our lives will never go back to “normal” and maybe that is good.  Was anyone fully satisfied or fulfilled by life as it was?

History has shown that crises can completely change the way that nations think.  In this case, the whole world is affected.  Could good come of this?

When will it end?  When will I go back to my office?  No-one knows.  Experts pontificate and modelers crunch numbers.  The catch is that all models are only as good as the assumptions made and the data provided.  My students love to develop artificial neural network models to predict the engineering performance of the materials we study in our lab, but it is scary how often they are unable to tie those models to basic physics and chemistry.  It would seem we do not have enough data to make predictions with any reliability.

What about God?

If he is really God, then what is he up to?  If he is truly omnipotent, he could fix this with a snap of his fingers.  How can a good God do this to us?  He is the one to blame!

So where is God in all of this?  The first point to remember is that neither creation, life, nor the economy are about us.  We were created to worship the creator.  When we wander into self-indulgence and self-glorification, God gets jealous that our attention is not on him, and, in his own time, he takes measures to get it back.  And yes, God is absolutely justified in getting jealous.  He is sovereign, almighty, above all else, and deserves to be worshiped. 

Has God been caught out by this pandemic?  Is he surprised?  Nope.  He knows everything.  Therefore, is he doing this to punish us?  In the same way that my parents inflicted pain on me as a kid when I was disobedient, God is using pain to draw him back into the top of our priorities.  My parents were not being mean, but loving, by teaching me what is good and right, and sometimes it hurt to learn those lessons.  Discipline rather than punishment.

So how do we handle the promises of good all over the Bible when, evidently, they are not being fulfilled for everyone?  Many people are suffering and dying, losing jobs, and trapped indoors.  In many ways, it feels like God has gone silent.  The only way I can speak to this is to refer to Job and Joseph.  Both went through a really bad time, and God seemed to be silent.  Yet in both cases, God was working out his intent.  It was pointed out to me recently that when Joseph finally revealed himself to his brothers, he did not claim that God made something good out of something bad (making lemonade in modern parlance).  Rather, he planned the good from the start, and was present with Joseph’s suffering on the journey to it.

How do we apply that to where we are now?  Remember that God’s horizon is longer than ours, and trust that his intentions are good.  His definition of what is good may differ from ours; for me, good is comfort and security for my body.  For God, good is eternal security for my soul.

Faith vs Science?

Will Christians get special treatment?  Does God's work in their lives mean they are protected from this disease?  Should we defy local laws and go to church?  On the basis that, normally, God does not stop us from falling off ladders, or heal all of us from other diseases, then it would seem fair to answer that question with a “No”. Now He may perform some miracles, but we are reminded not to test him. The purpose of miracles is to glorify Him, and never to exult any person.

So how do we respond? 

We trust God with the things we cannot control.  We act wisely with the things we can control, including listening to people who know more about this than we do, and filtering out truth from ranting.  Above all, we love and support the people we can reach.

What about this concept of social distancing?  Let’s instead call it what it is – physical distancing.  I have had more social contact with people than ever, actively caring for 6 different groups of people, and yet I have not seen any of them in weeks.  In times of uncertainty and fear, believers have the greatest chance to display Christ’s love because we are secure in him.  We need to speak up about love, joy peace found in Christ.

We need to step forward and proclaim the gospel to a frightened world…

The Powerless Church

I have long wondered how Christians can influence national policy.  It is a challenge because our position is built on scripture, but when the culture rejects the bible as authority, we lose credibility, relevance and power.

Mankind has always struggled with the tension between doing what they want, and doing what is right. Fundamentally, this is a consequence of the fall in the garden of Eden. Sin became fun. The Old Testament is filled with stories of God repeatedly stating his expectations, and his peoples’ failure to comply. These stories include His laying down the law – in ten statements. The interesting part is what follows. People start to question the limits. If there is a line – how close can I get to it? What if I just put my toe across? Can I cross it when no one is looking? What if no one is hurt? Just this once?

The reason we have lawyers is to address these issues. They work to refine the details of the lines, close loopholes or find ways to bypass them (depending on who is paying). Again, go back to the Old Testament.  The 10 commandments were backed up with reams of rules in the Pentateuch. These were further extended by the priests of the day to libraries full of minute details of what could and could not be done in any given situation. Philosophers struggle with defining what is right without becoming subjective, especially when they do not consider scripture.

In the past, laws have been instituted by people to support God’s standards, but they often become tools for abuse, discrimination and bigotry. This dilemma is entirely consistent with the bible. Laws do not make people do what is right; they make sinners into criminals. For instance, what were the consequences of the Prohibition of alcohol? Certainly not a reduction in drinking.

Communities set up morés and traditions, and use the law, social shaming or even death threats to enforce them. Consider, for example, the conundrum of a culture that encourages and glorifies sex with anyone without limitations. The subsequent backlash to abuse of this “freedom” is that it becomes criminal even to ask someone if they are interested.

Much of what we see in history and entertainment is commentary about the validity, abuse and enforcement of local standards.  Every cowboy and action movie features the good guy vs the bad guy.  Often, the question being raised is whether the Robin Hood-like characters are the good guy or not. Is the cop who breaks the rules to uphold his standards a hero or a rogue? Should small-town sheriffs beat up strangers with the wrong look or accent because of a perceived threat? How do we feel about national heroes who are chemically castrated and banished because they are homosexual? What if the majority of people consider a given rule to be wrong? We watch with confusion as stories unfold through the ages of shunning, abuse and hurt, all conducted in the name of enforcing what is “right.”

Despair is raging in the present christian community as the USA marches steadfastly into a post-christian age. I knew a preacher who regularly berated his church about the slide of American culture away from God into sin. He was not wrong, but I am not sure I ever heard an answer on how to fix it. The church struggles to come to terms with living in a community that glorifies marijuana, same sex-marriage, and abortion. They respond by getting angry and ugly. They vote for any politician who pays lip service to some of these concerns, despite falling far short in others. They are swayed by propaganda machines that play to their fears and selfishness. They start to hate and disparage people with different opinions. They blockade funerals of soldiers, because the deceased may have been a homosexual. They place bombs outside abortion clinics. They hate people stupid enough to be born in a different place. Hypocrisy reigns. The gospel is silenced. Satan smiles.

We have lost sight of our purpose. Believers in the USA should not be just like everyone else, terrified and manipulated by security, financial and cultural failures. God is on his throne, more powerful than any political authority (go read Psalm 33). He is in control. Our place on the planet is to reflect him, to be an ambassador, salt and light, to a broken world. The role of the church is to disciple people. When people change, the nation changes. The desire to do what is right cannot be legislated because it has to come through changed hearts. We do not have to change laws. We have to be part of God’s work to change people.

“Hosanna” was a political rallying cry – the crowd believed that Jesus would liberate the Hebrews from Roman oppression. They celebrated his entry to Jerusalem because they thought he was a conqueror, who would overthrow the invaders and their lives would be easier. Instead He died. In the build-up to elections in the US, we clamor for political solutions that will make our lives easier. Experience should inform us that this hope is misplaced.

How can Christians influence national policy when the culture rejects scripture? We don’t. Just as Jesus did not. Instead, He delivered the answer to a far bigger problem: the failure in Eden. Our task is to extend that work.

This does not mean we should not exercise our privilege and duty to ensure that righteous leaders are elected, and that they are obligated to do what is right. However, placing them above Christ in our priorities is misguided and dangerous.  God is extremely jealous of his status, and has been known to exterminate those that ignore Him.

We started this discussion with 10 commandments. Jesus highlighted two – love God and love people. The challenge then, to all Christians is to examine our opinions, conversations, social media posts and teaching. Is Christ glorified? Who are we loving, and who are we hating? Is the gospel being declared? Are we trusting God, or our politician?

Leadership

If leadership of the American Church is going to fawn at the feet of political authorities, then at an absolute minimum, they should assess and select such people on the basis of scriptural guidelines. Following is a selection of characteristics, extracted from the bible that describes people of good character, and especially those who should lead.

Let’s start with the basics, applicable to all people:

The 10 Commandments

·       Do not worship other Gods

·       No idols

·       Do not take God’s name in vain

·       Obey the sabbath

·       Honor parents

·       Do not murder

·       Do not commit adultery

·       Do not steal

·       Do not lie

·       Do not covet

OK that is old fashioned stuff – so let’s look at the New Testament.

From the New Testament

People of the bible should be (Galatians 5: 22-23):

·       Loving

·       Joyful

·       Peaceful

·       Patient

·       Kind

·       Good

·       Faithful

·       Gentle

·       Self-controlled

As opposed to (Galatians 5 19-21):

·       Sexually immoral, impure, sensual

·       Idolatrous, sorcerers

·       Picking fights, jealous

·       Angry, enjoying rivalries and dissent

·       Divisive (name calling)

·       Envious

·       Drunk

Leadership

Likewise, our leaders should, at a minimum, refrain from taking pride in sin. Indeed, they should be held to a more exacting standard (1 Timothy 3:2):

·       Above reproach

·       Husband of one wife

·       Sober-minded

·       Self-controlled

·       Respectable

·       Hospitable

·       Able to teach

·       Not a drunkard

·       Not violent but gentle

·       Not quarrelsome

·       Not a lover of money.

Scripture is also full of passages that roundly condemn nations and their leaders who:

·       Oppress the poor

·       Indulge in pride

·       Are greedy

·       Are self indulgent

As I am bombarded by the news media discussing our leadership on all sides, the dissonance with these lists are jarring.  Admittedly, none of us succeeds in achieving all of these, but believers are, by definition, repentant.

The Church

Therefore, defending any unrepentant politician from the pulpit because they are supposedly “good” for the church is profoundly disturbing. God is more than able to protect his bride.  Indeed, YAHWEH is extremely jealous of His status as the only true God and He will walk away from the evangelical church if they continue to bow to people ahead of Him.