Evil is manifested more clearly in politics than in many other professions or activities in our culture. The shades of grey seem to be darker. Ethics are twisted to produce the results that politicians desire

In our culture today, politics is seen by the Body of Christ as one of those yucky, muddy things that we don’t want to have anything to do with. Yet, whether we realize it or not, politics and government affect our lives more than anything else.

In a time when the Early Church was ridiculed for their belief that Jesus was the Messiah, a layman, not an apostle, took center stage as he bore the wrath of the religious crowd.

As Christians, when we start participating in the culture we discover some harsh realities. People are not always kind, and it is not easy to be a Christ-follower engaging within a hostile world.

Jesus taught that the first shall be last, the last shall be first, and whoever would be the greatest must be the servant of all (Matthew 19:30, Mark 10:43-44). This is an “upside-down kingdom.”

“Christian Nationalism” is a pejorative that secularists (those that do not hold to a Biblical worldview) use to impugn the motives and actions of Christians who engage the culture and the government. Look no further than Wikipedia to find the lengths to which they will go to malign sincere Christians.

Thinking of politics and civics, I would argue that the dire situation in which we find ourselves today in the United States, stems largely from the passivity of the Church.

For almost 100 years, the Church has withdrawn passively from confronting the encroaching tyranny of the state. Church leaders invoke Romans 13 out of context and instruct their flock to “stay in their own lane”. When the Church passively fails to speak truth to power, the powerful will inevitably seize more and more power for themselves.

Although we may be confident that the word of God is absolute truth, it can still be a lonely task to speak the truth to a society that has embraced postmodernism and has thus abandoned any notion of truth.

Are God’s principles relevant in the civil society? In the political arena, we are often told to be pragmatic and to support the candidate that can win…

We are living in a time that is unprecedented in our cities and nation. I know we are all concerned. 

We are seeing riots in the streets, our police officers being scorned and spit on, and vandals destroying private property... 

In a previous blog, I quoted Frederick Douglass who said that there are 3 boxes that defend our rights:

· The Ballot Box

· The Jury Box

· The Cartridge Box

Gary DeMar writes that the late Congressman Larry McDonald said that there was a fourth, the Soap Box. The Soap Box is…

Romans 13 commands Christians to be subject to the governing authorities.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.

(Romans 13: 1-2).

This passage is frequently invoked by pastors and laymen alike as an excuse to avoid civic and political activity. But what is the responsibility of an individual citizen of a republic when the government becomes oppressive?

When I got into politics as an activist over 15 years ago and then as a career, my father, a former pastor, questioned whether I was doing the right thing. He didn’t want me to leave what he considered to be the “call on my life” to teach the Bible. He had this idea in his mind that Christians couldn’t really get involved with politics without corrupting themselves with the “evil”. He believed it was a corrupting game. I told him politely that I believed he was wrong.