One of the most important books that I read in seminary was titled The Politics of Jesus<\/i> by John Howard Yoder.\u00a0 In it Yoder dismisses the traditional view that Jesus was totally a-political, that He took no interest in, nor \u00a0interacted with, political matters.\u00a0 Yoder, in contrast, says that Jesus was very political, just not in the ordinary sense that we identify today.<\/p>\n
We are experiencing the after-math of a very contentious political season. During the campaign, Christian after Christian got on social media to proclaim what Jesus\u2019 politics were\/are!\u00a0 After a while, it all kind of melted into a mess.\u00a0 Would Jesus vote Democrat?\u00a0 Or Republican?\u00a0 Or Third Party?<\/p>\n
The truth is, Jesus\u2019 politics are NOT partisan.\u00a0 In fact, in the Bible partisan politics are frowned upon.\u00a0 In the list of \u201cworks of the flesh\u201d in Galatians 5:20, the Revised Standard Version lists, among others, \u201cparty spirit\u201d.\u00a0 Originally, I thought \u201cparty spirit\u201d was the \u201cWooHoo, Let\u2019s PARTEEE!\u201d kind, but that was a miss-reading!\u00a0 The NRSV translates \u201cfactions.\u201d\u00a0 A \u201cparty spirit\u201d is aligning oneself so strongly with a \u201cparty\u201d (or faction) that one dehumanizes those not in that party. Jesus\u2019 politics were people-centered; He cared about transforming the hearts of people, not so much transforming the policies of Rome.\u00a0 Because He knew that, regardless of the political policies of Rome, if you transform hearts of people, the world changes for the better.<\/p>\n
Jesus\u2019 politics were about transformation at the level of human relationships. Salvation is not a matter of politics, but saved people will make political decisions that help others (in theory, at least!).\u00a0 For Jesus, the state is not the primary vehicle for social \u00a0transformation: people are.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t mean that we necessarily only vote for Christians, because some Christians are wrong in their thinking, but that we vote for those who will clear the way for the Gospel to go forth unimpeded.<\/p>\n
Consequently, now that the election is over, we need to love people even more.\u00a0 Demonizing others because of their political stance is not Christian. Sometimes it is better to not say anything and just pray for people.\u00a0 That\u2019s the tact I am taking (for the most part).\u00a0 I invite you to join me.<\/p>\n
Blessings,<\/p>\n
Pastor Glen<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the most important books that I read in seminary was titled The Politics of Jesus by John Howard Yoder.\u00a0 In it Yoder dismisses the traditional view that Jesus was totally a-political, that He took no interest in, nor \u00a0interacted with, political matters.\u00a0 Yoder, in contrast, says that Jesus was very political, just not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,39,38,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-news","category-local-outreach","category-outreach","category-pastoral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2582"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2584,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2582\/revisions\/2584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}