Dear Elim Grace,

As a preacher, the two most frequent “opinions” about my preaching over the last 10 years have been:

1. I don’t preach Jesus or the gospel enough
2. I don’t preach politics enough

One day I will stand before Jesus for what I did and didn’t preach, but if that time were tomorrow, I would sleep well tonight.

A sermon is not everything about something nor something about everything but something about something. 

I recently did preach on how Christians can think about politics and government. Some were happy I said something, some angry I said anything at all. Some were happy with what I said, some disappointed. Some were happy with how I said what I said, some not so much. 

The Friday before I preached I wrote on our Christian outrage in our current political climate and a snare to be aware of. Again, mixed reactions.

The pulpit and the pen are two essential instruments or tools for pastoring. How and when one is used versus the other is, in my opinion, the difference between a skilled and unskilled pastor.

So I am using the pen here, not the pulpit, and giving a pastoral collection of thoughts on politics. They are in no particular order of importance. Some you won’t agree with. Some are open-ended. And some are intended to provoke you to think. 

• It’s very simple: if God’s plan on earth was for the church to establish or to be a nation’s government, then it would be stated in His word and established by His sovereignty. But it’s not. Because it’s not His plan for the church. His plan and will and desire for the church is that we would be a people on earth proclaiming the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. That includes being subject to our governing authorities and living in peace, but that also includes not being subject if and when our governing authorities demand or command us as the church to be disobedient to God.
• The church’s primary responsibility is not to vote but to preach the gospel. The gospel is the power of God to save.
• In politics, we must allow, like Moses, for the hardness of heart. Some things that aren’t part of “the original plan,” might be allowed or permitted due to the hardness (stubbornness and persistence) of the human heart. But, even so, the people of God must stick to and are called to “the original plan”.
• A theological deficiency stops many Christians from being excellent politicians: an understanding and belief in God’s common grace. God gives good gifts of wisdom, talent, skill, and beauty by grace (without merit or discrimination). Like a sower, he casts them across all of humanity, because He loves the world and He loves humanity. By God’s common grace humanity can “enrich, brighten, and preserve the world”. In general, politics operates in the realm of God’s common grace.
• You don’t get into politics to save people, but to serve people.
• Your politics are not the most important thing about you, even as your politics might reflect what is most important to you.
• Politics is what you do after worship. The most political act you will ever undertake is to worship Jesus. To adore Him. To submit every area and dimension of your life to Him. To put your hope and faith in Him. To obey Him even when obedience to Him will provoke mockery and hostility.
• The kingdom of God binds our morals (convictions and beliefs) as the people of God to what is rooted in the eternal nature, image, creation and Word of God (such as the sanctity of human life, marriage and gender). It does not bind all our opinions on how these issues (and so many others) should be legislated.
• We don’t politicize our faith. Politics are penultimate, not ultimate. Even a small “Christian” government/nation would be penultimate, not ultimate
• We don’t idolize a party/platform/president. If your world unravels depending on election results, you have made an idol out of politics. 
• We don’t demonize the opposition. When love becomes a god, it becomes a demon. Booker T Washington wrote, “I resolved that I would permit no man, no matter what his color might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.” Too often the way we treat one another as Christians leads to an enormous negative impact on our witness.
• If you praise what is good and moral in a candidate, you must equally condemn what is bad and immoral. Be consistent. Consistency is the enemy of hypocrisy.
• That one of the biggest reasons today pastors leave their churches and the ministry is political conflict is a shameful testament to the witness of the church of Jesus Christ. To the faithfulness of the church to Jesus Christ. We’ve allowed political factions to divide us.
• The litmus test as Christians for our salvation is faith in Christ alone, not faith plus political alliances or votes.
• Salvation is the reorientation of your life’s deepest trusts and commitments and desires around Jesus Christ. So your loyalty to Him should shape your perspective and inform your vote. As the saying goes, “If Christ is not Lord of all, He is not Lord at all.” 
• In general, the Kingdom of God is not mirrored perfectly by any political party/platform/candidate. Or, put another way, the Kingdom of God is mirrored imperfectly by every political party/platform/candidate.
• Politics is the art of compromise. I don’t have any qualms about a Christian being as shrewd as a serpent, but in so doing, they are also to be innocent as doves when it comes to their integrity and to the core of what God loves. Remember: God has told us more about WHY government exists and less about HOW government should operate. 
• The Greek words for Justice and Judgment share the same root, which means “to separate and to sift”. Can you have justice, then, without judgment? Without knowing the difference between right and wrong? A Christian should be steeped in the Word of God deep and long enough to be able to recognize when policies are on a path towards or away from what God in His wisdom and love and righteousness has deemed “good”. Where a Christian’s loyalty to party or candidate is blind to what God requires, it is better to “pluck out your eye” than to continue forward.
• Not all a nation’s troubles and conflicts are the result of its sinful or foolish decisions, but every nation’s sinful or foolish decisions will result in trouble and conflict. 
• Some Christians are called to be influential from a place of government position/responsibility, while some Christians are called to be influential from a place of friendship with those in government positions.
• I’ve changed a few words and terms to fit the context of our present day, but in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape, a senior tempter, writes a junior tempter, Wormwood, on how to tempt Christians using politics: “Whichever he (“the patient,” the Christian) adopts, your main task will be the same. Let him begin by treating Republican-ism or Democratic-ism as a part of his Christianity. Then let him…come to regard it as the most important part. Then quietly and gradually nurse him on to the stage at which Christianity becomes merely part of the ’cause’, in which Christianity is valued chiefly because of the excellent arguments it can produce in favour of the republican effort or of the democratic effort…Once you have made the Republican World or the Democrat World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man, and it makes very little difference what kind of worldly/political end he is pursuing. Provided that meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him than prayers and sacraments and charity, he is ours and the more ‘Christian’ (on those terms) the more securely ours. I could show you a pretty cageful down here.”
• Christians navigating the complexities of politics and government should not be like a bumbling musician on a street-corner. We should be like an excellent musician whose mastery of skill and technique enables him to play the most complex pieces of music with effortless beauty. The world should be able to look at us and see us “playing” effortlessly, exuding a beauty that deeply resonates within them.
• Jesus is King – all authority in heaven and earth belong to him. All earthly rulers have been entrusted with an authority from on high, one for which they will give an account as stewards to the Master.
• Jesus is Savior – there are no “be all” and “end all” political saviors. No singular political figure (or movement) will save the world and usher in God’s final kingdom, a brand new heaven and earth. That honor and power belongs to Christ alone.
• Jesus is Lord – all final loyalty belongs to Jesus, not a candidate or political party. Again, when love becomes a god — any love, even love for country – it becomes a demon. 
• Jesus is an all-consuming fire – politics should never become an all-consuming endeavor. Putting all your hope and joy into the next vote or next president is bound to leave you hopeless and joyless when things don’t go your way. Jesus alone is worthy to be loved with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
• Politics is not everything – what happens in Washington D.C. or Albany, New York has serious implications but it is not everything. What matters most as Christians is what happens in our churches: are we worshipping Jesus? following and walking in obedience to Him? seeking Him and listening to His Word? gathering together and building each other up in our faith? confessing our sins to one another and bearing fruit through repentance? serving and praying for each other? operating in the fruit of the Spirit and being conformed into the image of Jesus?
• Every earthly government, kingdom, movement, and political leader will cease to exist in the end. Only Jesus will never be moved and only His kingdom will never be shaken.
• Our vote is a vehicle or means through which we bring our faith to bear on our communities, to shine as light and to preserve as salt. 
• Our vote should not divide us from one another as Christians. An unhealthy religious fervor begins to view the other side as the sum and total of their vote. There’s no room for disagreement, difference, forgiveness, forbearance, listening, or learning. They are the enemy.
• God has determined the boundaries of our dwelling, So the opportunity to vote is something we should give thanks for, and like all gifts from His hand, we should receive it, not reject or ignore it. We will give an account for how we stewarded that gift.
• Whether in victory or defeat, remember that nothing happens that is outside of Christ’s control and His purposes – whether His purpose for our lives, or Elim Grace, or the United States, or the world, or all of creation. All at once, Jesus is the Beginning and the End.