The Church in America – United in Discontent
We Americans have a streak of social rebellion on top of our sinful rebellious sin natures. We seem to feel as “Americans” we must reject authority in some way, we just can’t agree to somethings. What determines our values and opinions? Today the broad catch-all category of politics has taken hold and encompassed many things in life. People across the spectrum from agnostics to Catholics seem to have a political opinion based on the direction of right left or middle, or conservative, liberal and neutral.
On top of that we pile our religious, denominational or Christian points of view. I say points of view because many people have a political agenda not based firmly on God or scripture but loosely on culture and religious social dictates. Being in a world and culture of labels and definitions you are not just Christian in your faith you are a Christian Nationalist etc. As if we have learned nothing from history and honesty most Americans no NOTHING of history, we make the same mistakes that labeling people has caused throughout mankind’s sorted history. All humans are also tribal, prideful, selfish and when a society of humans moves away from the truth of the Gospel into evil and chaos God is at work. In America there has been for most of our history a group, a pivot of faithful Christians. This we know can sustain a nation and prevent God’s wrath. Israel is the prime example of this.
As we consider ourselves God’s chosen people, we then must accept the penalty for falling into sin and idiolatry. America’s sins are great and the church it seems to me falls in either one of two camps. Either they pastor and elders remain quite about the politics/social ills of the day, subjects like abortion etc. or they spend too much time on those areas of life to the exclusion of the Gospel. In the silent church the polarization continues off the grid so to speak.
A few churches have decided to have regular groups etc. for discussion of issues of the day in which congregants can air their views and discuss them in light of God’s Word. This keeps concerns from festering beneath the surface. Life must be filtered through the Gospel. As the fact is our Lord is active within us, with the help of the Holy Spirit and at work all around us in millions of ways seen and unseen he will act in some way. Christ prefers we talk to him, pray to him.
This is the problem, the bottom line. If we genuinely believe our Lord and his Word encompasses all of life, then why separate our political participation from our church? When we do that, we then deny Christ is sufficient. Most churches devote church resources to a range of issues: finance, marriage, parenting, and more. But we never discuss politics through the lens of God’s Word. We must change our way of thinking and apply discipleship to politics like we would anything else
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