“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)
The people of Israel heard these instructions from God, through Moses, after forty years of wandering in the desert, just as they were about to enter the land that God had promised to give them. For forty years the people had needed to stay close to God because their existence depended upon it. Without the manna, the water from the rock, the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and without the constant dialogue between God and Moses, the people would have been doomed. Now they were about to enter a new chapter of their existence as God’s people. Slaves no more and desert wanderers no more, soon they would have their own land, so they could grow their own crops and earn their own livelihood and try to live by their own strength and ingenuity, and they were in a position where it would be easy for them to wander from God if they really wanted to go it on their own. God knew that, human nature being what it is, when we feel that we don’t need God we have a tendency to take Him lightly or even to ignore Him, so God’s final word to His people before they enter into this new phase of their existence as a people is that they are to love him with all their heart, soul, and might. This is in stark contrast to the religions of all the other peoples who were surrounding the people of Israel. The false gods of the peoples around them were power-hungry gods who were in competition with other gods. The gods would use the people as pawns in their quest to outsmart and out-maneuver the competing gods. The people who served these false gods became just like their gods. They became skillful in using their gods to get what they wanted out of them. In this strange dance, the gods would try to manipulate the people for their own advantage, and the people would try to manipulate their gods, not to mention each other, for their own advantage. The people learned to give to their gods so that they could get from their gods. The gods did not love their people, and the people did not love their gods. Piety became reduced to manipulation. Strange how we become like our object of worship. People who who worship manipulative gods who jockey for power and position become manipulative people who jockey for power and position. In contrast, the God of Israel asks for one thing— that His people love him, with all their heart, their soul, and their might. God wants His people (Israel and the Church) to love Him with all that we have and with all that we are. God doesn’t want our cold-hearted, mechanical obedience. He wants us to love him. He wants our relationship. He wants our heart. We become like our object of worship. People who worship a loving and compassionate God become loving and compassionate people. I want to give two applications here. The first application comes from the book of Job. Job lost his children, his possessions, and even his health. Would he still love God? The answer to that question would determine whether Job really loved God or whether he really loved the easy and comfortable and sheltered life that God had given him. Would Job be a true son of Israel who loved God because He is God, or would respond according the pseudo-piety of the surrounding peoples by loving what God gave him under the guise of loving God Himself? When God takes away his hand of blessing and all we are left with is God, that’s when we know if we really love God or if we love God’s gifts but not really God Himself. That’s when we come to know what’s in our own hearts. The second application has to do with the realm of Christian political involvement. Do we Christians get involved in politics in an attempt to control society, or in an attempt to help people? Do we want power for ourselves, to protect our own rights and advance our own causes, or do we want to surrender our power in order to serve the needs of others and protect their rights? I realize that this sets up a false dichotomy, as many would respond that they want to control society in an attempt to help people, but sometimes we need to understand the extremes before we can begin to explore the mediating positions, so please bear with me as we think this through. I submit that if we are involved in politics for the sake of power, and if this is somehow motivated by the fact that we are Christians, then we have embraced the pseudo-piety of the countries that surrounded Israel. Do we really love God because He is God, or are we using God as a tool so that we can have control of society? If that is the case, then do we really love God, or do we love the position of power that we think we can attain if we have God on our side? That sounds suspiciously like the religion of the peoples who surrounded Israel. If, on the other hand, we surrender our desire to control society, and we use our political involvement as a tool to help other people, this sounds more like the spirituality of the true sons of Israel, and the spirituality of Jesus. We are free to worship God because He is God, not because we are trying to get something out of God (in this case, societal control and the preservation of our own rights). We use whatever power we may have to help other people, not to further or maintain our own rights or our own place in society. We trust God to care for us so that we can care for others. We follow the example of Jesus by becoming servants, not masters, and we use political power for the sake of others, not for ourselves. As Jesus emptied himself for our sake, making himself the servant of all and giving up his life for his friends, so we must follow his example of surrendering our power and our rights for the sake of others. Christian political involvement is not about protecting the rights of Christians. It’s about using our power and perhaps surrendering our power to protect the rights of others. That is the only kind of political involvement that is worthy of the name “Christian”. One more thought: We have suggested that we become like the object of our worship, so what does the tone of our political involvement say about the God that we worship? If we approach our political involvement in a way that makes us constantly angry, militant, and totally lacking in compassion, then this must be the way that we understand God. We can say anything we want to say about believing in a God of love and compassion, but what we post on Facebook betrays how we really understand God. If we say we believe in a God of love and compassion but are constantly making comments that are angry, militant, and totally lacking in compassion, no one will believe us when we try to tell them that “God is love”. Maybe that’s where the problem begins. We have forgotten that God judges sin but loves the sinner, and that Jesus separated us from our sins by taking the judgment for our sins upon himself. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved” (John 3:17). A day of judgment is coming, but today God offers His grace. As A. W. Tozer tried to tell us a generation ago, “Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” and goes on from there.” (A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of The Holy). Even if our understanding of our God is right, and even if our heart is right, what are we communicating to the watching world about the God that we worship by how we speak about where we stand on political issues? Christians, beware of sending out the wrong message about the God that we worship. God forbid that the watching world should have a false understanding of God because of our political involvement. God forbid that the world should reject our God because we represent him in the wrong way by our political involvement. God forbid that the watching world would reject Jesus because we have misrepresented him by the way in which we approach and discuss politics. Better to lose a “culture war” than to push away a generation from knowing our God and our Savior. People need the Lord, and we are pushing them away by our angry and compassionless political rhetoric that is sometimes more concerned about holding onto our power than about surrendering our rights for the sake of others. If we are more concerned about the reputation of our God than we are concerned about winning some kind of “culture war”, and if we are more concerned about the next generation coming to know Him than we are about using political power to push society in what we think is the right direction, trying to artificially and prematurely bring in the Kingdom of God through our own human efforts at legislation and political maneuvering, then we need to make some changes. I am concerned that when Christians get caught up in the “Make America Great Again” rhetoric we are really building our own kingdom under the guise of building God’s kingdom. We need to ask ourselves a few honest questions. What if God does not want to make America great? What if God wants America to fail in order for His purposes to be fulfilled? Are we willing for God to be magnified even if it means that America must fall flat on its face and be humbled by God and by other nations? Do we want America to be great at the expense of the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed? Is that how God views greatness? Or is an America that cares for the rights of the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized the kind of America that God would consider great, even if militarily and economically we are weaklings? What if God wants America to be last rather than first? Have we confused our devotion to God with devotion to American patriotism? What if magnifying God is best achieved in a way that takes us away from the imagined “good old days” of yesteryear? Do we want to glorify God and magnify God and love God with all that we have and all that we are, or do we want to go back to a glorified conception of an American yesteryear that never really was as great as our selective memory might lead us to believe? I believe that God is asking us to choose between the two. We can’t have it both ways. I am concerned that when many Christians go to social media to angrily vent their political opinions they are unintentionally doing more to push people away from the Savior than to attract people to the Savior. We need to address this now, before the reactionary impulses of an election year take command over our tweets and posts and everyone starts operating on auto-pilot. We need to stop, breathe, take the time to think and pray, ask intelligent questions, open up the dialogue, listen to each other, honestly try to understand each other, listen to God, ask God for His perspective, and try to discern what Jesus would do before we react in accordance with whatever political ideology we may embrace and rush into an angry, militant and reactionary rhetoric that may end up throwing mud on the name and face of our Savior. Let’s not be guilty of pushing away a generation that Jesus came to save. We have already pushed away far too many of those for whom Christ died. God forgive us. Remember the sober warning that Jesus gave to the religious establishment in Matthew 23:13.
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