Now the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it to the house of Dagon, and set it by Dagon. When the Ashdodites arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD. So they took Dagon and set him in his place again. But when they arose early the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen on his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD. And the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands were cut off on the threshold; only the trunk of Dagon was left to him. Therefore neither the priests of Dagon nor all who enter Dagon’s house tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod to this day.[i]
In the presence of God all idols must fall. That’s the way that God has structured His universe. What are the idols that compete with our allegiance to Christ today? In addition to whatever desires may tug at our hearts in competition with the things of God, I think these idols also include the ideologies that we embrace that compete with our allegiance to the supremacy of Christ, for example, our allegiance to “isms” such as capitalism, socialism, conservatism, liberalism, and patriotic nationalism. Let’s take patriotic nationalism as an example. I know I am stepping on some toes here, but we need to ask ourselves why so many Christians are so quick to assume that God wants to make America great. What if, in order for God’s purposes to be accomplished, America needs to be knocked down a few rungs? What if, in order for God to be magnified in all the earth, America needs to be reduced to a shadow of its former self? What if America needs to be abased in order for God to be exalted? I don’t agree with the idea that being a strong Christian should necessarily make us more patriotic. To the contrary, I think it should probably make us less patriotic. The greater allegiance we have to the exaltation of Jesus Christ, the less allegiance we should have to the exaltation of the U.S. Either we are living to magnify the supremacy of Christ or we are living to advance the greatness of the United States of America. We can’t have it both ways. When God entered the house, the idols fell. When Christ becomes the Lord of our life our allegiance to all competing ideologies must fall to the ground, and this includes our allegiance to the advancement of the greatness of the U.S. If we call ourselves Christians, then our first allegiance must be to the Lord Jesus Christ, not to the United States of America. An allegiance to anything or anyone other than our allegiance to the Lord becomes a far distant secondary allegiance. When we bring the cross and the flag to the same level, we are either idolizing the flag or demeaning the cross. When we bring the Bible and the Constitution to the same level, we are either idolizing the Constitution or demeaning the Bible. Recently some voices have suggested that a strong Muslim could not be the president of the U.S. because his or her commitment to the Muslim faith would be greater than his or her commitment to the U.S. I am suggesting that if that logic is correct (and I think it’s not), then by that same logic a Christian could not be the president of the U.S., for being a Christian requires that our commitment to our faith is greater than our commitment to the U.S. I know that may sound odd to some very patriotic American Christians, but I have a hard time understanding how we can call ourselves Christians if we place anything higher than or equal to our commitment to Christ. Think in terms of the literal, historic followers of Jesus while he still walked the earth 2,000 years ago. When Jesus called people to follow him, would he have allowed them to place their allegiance to their country, nationality, ethnicity, political inclination or any ideology on a higher plane than their allegiance to him? That’s foreign to New Testament thinking. And He summoned the multitude with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s shall save it.[ii] The denial of self that Jesus calls for includes, among other things, a denial of the ideologies that once ruled our minds and hearts. We may have been strongly conservative or liberal, globalist or nationalist before we became Christians, but we changed primary allegiances when we became Christians, if our awakening was real. Therefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.[iii] When we became Christians we gained a new identity. Our primary identity now is that we are “in Christ”, not that we are Americans or conservatives or liberals or capitalists or socialists or anything other than “in Christ”. I know that I’m running contrary to much current thinking here, but I struggle with the concept of a “Christian America”. Only people can be followers of Jesus, not nations. We Christians do not own the United States, and we cannot demand that every person in the nation should live as if he or she were a follower of Jesus. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand.[iv] Jesus came to call his sheep to follow Him, not to coerce those who are not His sheep to live as though they were. I understand where strongly patriotic Christians are coming from but I think their zeal is misguided. Don’t get me wrong. I think there is legitimacy in a limited degree of patriotism. The most patriotic stage of my life was when I lived in Europe for a few years when I was a young man. I became homesick and would get a lump in my throat whenever I heard the National Anthem played. I made it a point to find some Americans with whom I could celebrate the Fourth of July every year, even though we were the only ones who “knew it was a holiday”. I think that level of patriotism is not wrong. We do have reason for a limited degree of patriotism. I think that we in the U.S. are closer to the ideal of “liberty and justice for all” than the way of life that is found in many other countries, and I’m thankful for that. I’m also thankful for those who have served and died in order to secure our freedoms. What I am questioning is excessive, arrogant, condescending patriotism, especially when such patriotism tries to blend allegiance to Christ with allegiance to the U.S. as though they were allegiances of the same degree. Jesus would not agree with that degree of patriotic zeal. I have a hard time picturing Jesus coming to church waving an American flag, singing military songs about America’s ability to conquer and boasting about the greatness of America’s power. That’s just not the Jesus I know. What role, then, should we Christians have in society? In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus told us what we are to do. We are called to be the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth”.[v] Our role is to influence people by the quality of our lifestyle, by the beauty of our character, by the love we have for one another, and by the quality of concern we have for others, whether they are inside of or outside of our own Christian community. This is what the Church is all about. We have been called into existence to show the world what living with God among us is all about, not to coerce the world by our politics. If the beauty of Christ does not rest upon us, then why would the watching world ever want what we have? Getting into a political tug-of-war over who controls society is a cheap substitute for the God-magnifying work that God has called us to do as a Christ-honoring and Spirit-filled Church. Madeline L’Engle captured this beautifully: We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.[vi] The early Christians had no intention of ever taking over the Roman Empire. That was a later development under Constantine. Before the Constantinian Era followers of Jesus saw themselves as a minority group, and that is how they were designed to function. Today we Christians find ourselves in the same situation. We need a reality check. We are a minority group. We live in a post-Christian world. Rather than lamenting our minority status in a post-Christian world we should praise God for it. Now we can let our light shine as God intended. Now we can be the salt of the earth as God intended. We who are Christians don’t own the U.S. We are one group among many. People will recognize the greatness of our God, the magnificence of our Christ and the beauty of the way of Jesus if we abandon our power struggles and simply focus on being light and salt, as Jesus instructed us, showing forth the beauty, the gentleness, the wisdom and the compassion of our Master and His ways. That is what will cause people to be drawn to the light. Trying to assert political and cultural power in ways that are or seem to be coercive will result only in pushing people away from the light. That is not the way of Jesus. We Christians need to think through what it means to be a minority group living in a post-Christian culture, and what are the political implications of that status.[vii] We need to rethink what the relationship between Church and state is all about in a post-Christian culture. We need to gain an understanding of what God is doing, what He wants us to do, and how He wants us to do it before we charge full-throttle into the post-Christian era, never having thought through or prayed through the implications of our activism. I’m not sure what Christian activism should look like in our present context, but I do know that we need to devote much thought and prayer into finding out rather than assuming that we should try to use political power in an attempt to make the U.S. “more Christian”. We won’t know what our political and social involvement should look like (or even if we should be involved in politics at all) until we’ve invested some serious time into praying this through and thinking this through, always returning to the pages of the New Testament as our guide and model and reality check rather than assuming that our unchecked knee-jerk reactions somehow represent the will of God. Otherwise we end up making stupid mistakes, and God’s name gets dragged through the mud because we have failed to take the time to think and pray before we dare to speak and act. We become “unsalty salt”.[viii] We are called to be ambassadors of another kingdom[ix] but we end up misrepresenting both our kingdom and our King. We celebrate what we think is a “victory”, but Heaven weeps. Jesus never involved Himself in power struggles. Repudiating the quest for power that some of His would-be followers demanded (and that Satan, through Peter, tempted him to undertake)[x] He instead chose the way of love. He was expected to take over the world by force, but instead he chose the way of compassion, servanthood, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness. His way involved not the use of power but its renunciation. The religious people of His day missed Him for that very reason. They wanted the Kingdom of God here and now, on their own terms, and they were happy to engage in a power struggle in order to force society to go their way. This is the lesson of Palm Sunday and Good Friday. On Palm Sunday they hailed Jesus as King. On Good Friday they crucified Him as a criminal because they realized He was not their kind of king and because He had no intention of bringing about their kind of kingdom (one gained through power struggle, as the result of a political and/or military tug-of-war with the existing societal leadership). Their only hope came but they missed Him because they had their eyes and hearts set on power and control. Do we miss Him for the same reason? By engaging in a power struggle that we have neither thought through nor prayed through, a cultural and political tug-up-war in which God never directed us to be engaged, we will push people away from Jesus. We will succeed only in misrepresenting Him and making Him distasteful to the ones who need Him. We might as well tie a millstone around our necks.[xi] By living our lives in a way that highlights the magnificence of Christ and the beauty of His way we will draw people to Christ. We need to make a decision. We can’t have it both ways. The idols must fall. Scripture quotations taken from the NASB. [i] 1 Samuel 5:1-5 [ii] Mark 8:34-35 [iii] 2 Corinthians 5:17 [iv] John 10:27-28 [v] Matthew 5:13-16 [vi] L’Engle, Madeline (1980). Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. New York, NY: North Point Press. [vii] See “Commentary: In supporting Trump, evangelicals are reaping what they’ve sown”, The Salt Lake Tribune, May 10, 2016. http://www.sltrib.com/home/3870954-155/commentary-in-supporting-trump-evangelicals-are [viii] Luke 14:34-35 [ix] 2 Corinthians 5:20 [x] Matthew 16:23 [xi] Mark 9:42
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