I wrote the body of this post in response to an e-mail from someone about a series of sermons about whether or not a Christians can be involved in the political process. Here was my thoughts on the question.
You would think this would be an easy question to answer considering that we are called to be the Light to the World. Christians should be leading people to a more enlightened way of living based on Gods plan for the world, found in the Bible. The problems is the world "political." I looked it up in the dictionary and the word has negative connotations. Politics involves manipulating people, influencing people, using ones knowledge of how the system of government works to get the outcome that you desire. One problem preachers and other Christian Leaders have is that when you try to lead Christians to use their vote to promote "Christian Values" you run the risk of being perceived as a "Politician" and Americans have an innate mistrust of "politicians". Well we used to anyway. I think that Christians are losing influence in our culture because we are being perceived as just another special interest group seeking special privileges.
On the other hand, (I used to be an attorney and there is no such thing as a one handed attorney) since we are Americans, we are involved in the political system regardless of how we feel about it. Our founding fathers gave us the right to vote on our leaders and on particular laws. If we chose not to vote we have said to the government and the rest of the country, "whatever y'all want to do is fine with me!" On top of that Christians have played important roles in creating the nation we have today. From the abolitionist to the civil rights movement, Christians have been in the forefront of change in this country. We were also at the forefront of the temperance movement that resulted in Prohibition. Unfortunately, Probation was a huge mistake that we should learn from.
I guess the answer to the question is, yes we must. However, we cannot go about the business of politics like the people of the world do. We need to examine what Christ and the Apostles said about how we are to relate to the world and act accordingly. We need to examine and discuss among ourselves what Christian Values really are and allow for people to disagree as to what they are. However, those values must be found in or derived from the Bible, not people's opinions.
To tie things up, I recall when there was a dispute among the disciples about who was the greatest among them, Jesus answered them that when people in the world get power, they like to lord it over people. That was not to be the way among his followers, He said they the greatest among us was to be servants to the others. And if I recall correctly, the Greek word used for servant in the text can also be translated "slave." Maybe we should strive to be a little more lowly and humble when dealing with our fellow Americans in our "Culture War."
