Before I start my planned post, I want to make a quick public service announcement. I was under the impression that it would be several months before God and Country was released on video. But on a whim, I searched for it the afternoon of Easter, and it is available to buy or rent on AppleTV. So I encourage you to rent the movie and see it for yourself if you did not manage to see it in theaters. It is well worth your time.
It just so happens that in God’s perfect timing, the day after my parents and I saw God and Country in the theater, the sermon in church was on Daniel 9. In Daniel 9, Daniel who was a teenager when first kidnapped by Nebuchadnezzar, is now an elderly man, and he is offering a prayer of corporate repentance. He is confessing that God is righteous and just, and his people deserved his judgment against them for their collective sin. But for the sake of God’s reputation in a watching Pagan world, Daniel pleas with God for God’s mercy and forgiveness.
When I first wrote about our church’s study of Daniel in January, I mentioned that I felt frustrated because there were so many opportunities for application of the book of Daniel to the American church’s epidemic of Christian Nationalism that I felt our church was tiptoeing around. I was relatively confident the church leadership wasn’t actively promoting this counterfeit religion. They do honor military service which bothers me slightly, but they have never endorsed a political candidate or invited political operatives into the church. But was my church complicit in the sense of ignoring the giant elephant in the room, similar to the Christian playground ethic that if you witness someone being bullied but stand by doing nothing, you are complicit even if you didn’t actively participate in the bullying? Or was my church merely treading lightly, using tact and wisdom to speak the truth, but subtly so as not to alienate people with different perspectives? This I could understand. As satisfying as it would be for the pastor to affirm the hypocrisy of Christians getting behind Donald Trump, it is a slippery slope between speaking this truth, and implying that Jesus would be a Democrat, a mistake some churches make on the other extreme. Not only would sliding down this slippery slope alienate people, but it is also unbiblical. Sure, you could argue that Democrats are more committed to social justice and equality right now, but Jesus would rebuke the behavior of both Democrats and Republicans if he returned today, just as he rebuked Caesar’s government and the religious leaders during his earthly ministry. Jesus had no partisan loyalties, and neither should we. Sadly, these days, I cannot help but view all Christian media and pastors with suspicion, listening for the subtle code words to discern where they stand before I can fully trust them. So I was so delighted by the sermon on Daniel 9, given by our church’s pastor of Missions, that I e-mailed him a note of encouragement. First, he remarked that the American church also needs to pray a prayer of corporate repentance, and for God’s reputation to be restored for his sake, not so we can “get the right person into the white house so that we can have things our way again.” Then a few minutes later, he made a connection between Daniel 9 and Matthew 5:13, using as an example the fact that him and his wife made the decision to send their children to public school because Christians cannot be salt and light to the world if we isolate ourselves from it.
In other words, whether we want to be or not, God calls us all to be influencers, but instead of persuading people to spend money on a silly cup or fashion item, we have the privilege, and responsibility of leading people to Christ and eternal life. In a sermon on Matthew 5:13, John MacArthur quoted Elihu Burritt, a humanitarian activist (1810-1879) who described our responsibility as influencers in a sobering way: “Thousands of my fellow beings will yearly enter eternity with characters differing from those they would have carried thither had I never lived.” But at the root of Christian Nationalism is a misguided understanding of how Christians ought to influence the broader society. Only God knows what is in anyone’s heart, but I suspect that some politicians, pastors and high-level political operatives do not have a genuine personal relationship with Christ but are using Christians to gain political power. But as I was reading The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory, I could tell by the way Tim Alberta depicted some of the political operatives and pastors promoting Christian Nationalism that they have charismatic personalities that draw in ordinary people who could be my friends, relatives and neighbors. Just as a charismatic salesman can cause even educated people to fall for a scam, so I believe charismatic pastors and political operatives have persuaded good people who have a genuine personal relationship with Christ and want to do what is right to buy into what I have called counterfeit Christianity, a scam with potentially eternal consequences.
This became especially apparent to me in Chapter 8 when Tim Alberta discussed how Matthew 5:13 has been twisted by proponents of Christian Nationalism. Chad Conelly, a political operative Tim Alberta met in Ohio, had a compelling Christian testimony and a charismatic personality. Nonetheless, he declared to an audience gathered in the atrium of the Ohio state Capitol building, a stop on the American Restoration Tour, “If Christians who outnumber all the whiners and complainers and God-haters in America, if Christians would just be the salt and light Jesus asked us to be, we wouldn’t have this mess” (Page 164). There is so much biblically wrong with this statement, it would be laughable if the ramifications for all the evangelicals people like Conelly were leading astray weren’t so serious. First, Jesus never used immature, demeaning language—whiners and complainers—to characterize anyone. He certainly got angry on a couple occasions and rebuked self-righteous hypocrites. But even his rebukes were spoken in a spirit of love, calling all to repent of their wicked ways and follow him, and he would forgive them and reward them with eternal life. Second, and just as important, Jesus taught that we are sent into the world, but we were never supposed to love the world (John 17:14-16). By pursuing political power and privilege, aren’t we allowing ourselves to become too comfortable in the world? I love reading about the early church, who understood that being the salt of the earth meant being rubbed into the world like salt rubbed into meat to preserve it, and yet being distinct from it, caring for the sick that the Pagan world wouldn’t touch, adopting babies that the Pagan world abandoned.
Jim Wright, an audience member Tim Alberta interviewed after another stop of the American Restoration Tour, a church, said, “Some Christians say we should stay out of politics, that we don’t have to worry about any of this because this isn’t our home. But it is our home right now. And the persecution that’s all around the world is coming for us” (Page 174). Therefore, Jim Wright believed Christians were justified in pursuing partisan victories to keep this persecution at bay. The first half of Wright’s statement has a grain of truth in it. In the prophet Jeremiah’s day, when God allowed the Israelites to be carried off to Babylon as judgment for their sins, false prophets were spreading alternative facts, giving people false hope that this exile would be so brief it wasn’t worth settling down in Babylon. God gave Jeremiah the responsibility of speaking the truth, that this exile would last 70 years, so they should build houses, settle down, marry, have children. And they should also “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7). We too should think of ourselves as exiles in a Pagan world, but while faith alone is all that is necessary for salvation, if our faith is genuine, it should render us unable to ignore the injustice in the world. Moreover, in his Great Commission, Jesus did not command his disciples to hunker down in a monastery and pray. He commanded them to go out into the world, spreading the gospel and that is what we are supposed to do too. Of course, most of us in this day and age are not called to be itinerant preachers, but we can still “preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, use words” (Saint Francis of Assisi).
But the second half of Jim Wright’s statement is misguided. After all, immediately preceding Matthew 5:13 is Matthew 5:11-12 which reads, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” We are not being persecuted. Sure, some states could have handled pandemic restrictions more tactfully. Christians who argue that bars and stores should not have been open while churches were required to shut down have a valid point. But a building with people packed close together in pews is not necessary for worship. People could still gather for worship outdoors, and the government did not block the websites of churches who livestreamed worship every Sunday. To say even then that Christians were persecuted, I think is an insult to parts of the world where Christians have to worship in whispers, and could be arrested, tortured or killed for worshipping Jesus. True persecution may be our reality someday. In fact, one pastor at my church pointed out that Jesus does not say “blessed are you if people persecute you.” He believed Jesus’s use of the word “when” is intentional. Persecution is a reality of our fallen world where the Bible, on numerous occasions prophesies that most people will reject Jesus, and hate those who follow him. The level of religious freedom we have in the United States is an anomaly, not the historic norm, and while I am grateful and hope that doesn’t change, Jim Wright may be half-correct that persecution is coming for us. But given that the Bible prophesies that persecution is an entrenched reality of this fallen world, pledging allegiance to either political party with the hope of keeping persecution at bay is like building your house on sinking sand (Matthew 7:26-27). It is foolish to think that mortal, fallen human politicians will be able to keep at bay what Jesus prophesied is entrenched in our fallen world, and because politics is a product of “the world” and it is apparent that most politicians are motivated by accruing power, not a genuine faith, both parties would be capable of perpetrating persecution. We are not being the salt of the earth by working for partisan victories. In fact, the hateful rhetoric that always accompanies these partisan efforts renders Christianity as repulsive as the smell of rotting meat to a watching world. We are the salt of the earth when we behave as the early church did, showing compassion for the poor, the sick, the oppressed, when the fruits of the spirit are evident in the way we treat our family, coworkers, neighbors, people that aggravate us. I am not looking forward to the day when real persecution may come for us, but I would rather endure it as the early church did and show I am Christian by my love then potentially forfeit eternal life by pledging allegiance to a political party whose power is fleeting and who ultimately will not be able to keep persecution at bay.
That Reminds me of a Song: I grew up Catholic, and while I wasn’t fond of some of the songs we sang in church—they felt like dirges—I loved one particular song we sang on occasion, and it came back to my memory as I wrote this blog. Bring Forth the Kingdom begins by referencing Matthew 5:13, “You are salt of the earth oh people, salt for the kingdom of God.” The refrain admonishes Christians to “Bring forth the kingdom of mercy, bring forth the kingdom of peace, bring forth the kingdom of justice, bring forth the city of God.” The sermons in the Catholic church were not as bible-focused as the sermons at the church I attend today, so back then I didn’t fully understand the concept of God’s kingdom and how we are to offer the world a foretaste of this eternal kingdom here and now. But this song had the right theology, and when I think of it, it makes me smile and strive to preach the gospel with the same lively spirit as conveyed by this song.