Oil & Water

I’m glad this election cycle is coming to a close. In general, politics turns my stomach. It just does. But, in recent years, do you know what’s most unnerved me about politics? How faith has become so intertwined in it. For some reason, "evangelical Christians" are now known as a voting bloc, and if that’s what we’re known as, something’s really wrong.

I mean, faith and politics are basically oil and water. They don’t play well together. Faith should basically transcend everything on Earth, and when Christians put so much effort and time and resources in such a profoundly Earthly thing as politics, it diminishes who we are.

Let’s take an example...how about a really controversial example...abortion. Now, I believe that God values all life, but I don’t think that overturning Roe v. Wade is the way to show that to others. Why? 1) Prohibiting abortion will not stop abortions—-think Cider House Rules. 2) Taking such an important belief and reducing it to the stuff of lawbooks totally removes God from the equation. I mean, Christianity deals with the hearts of people; that’s how the issue should be handled—in one-on-one relationships. The point is that, if Christians were doing what we were called to do, it wouldn’t matter whether the government allowed abortions or not. The fact that we’ve had to take the battle to the political arena shows how ineffective we’ve been.

You see, Republicans don’t want you to know that. As long as Christians think that we NEED Republicans to do our work for us, then we’ll keep using our "Christian" organizations to send millions of dollars to them.

Oh, but the Democrats aren’t off the hook either. This election cycle has seen a notable chunk of Christians, particularly young Christians, move to the Democratic side of the coin. Well, the Democrats have hijacked Christian ideals as well. As an example, let’s use charity and benevolence...giving to those less fortunate. There are several Democratic tenets that match up nicely to that idea--after all, government assistance is also giving to those less fortunate. But yet again, all that does is remove God from the equation. When a Christian directly helps someone in need, he/she has the opportunity to share Love with them, in the exact same way Jesus did. If you outsource that act to the Government, that removes opportunities for us to do what we’re called to do.

And, Democrats don’t want you to know that, for the same reasons I noted above for the Republicans.

You see the risk here? If we try to mesh together politics and faith too much, we can lull ourselves into thinking that our vote--our support of one party or another--somehow covers our responsibilities. But, I’ve yet to find any scripture that tells us that God wants us to help get laws passed. And, I’ve not seen any verse that says we should look to our government to care for our fellow men and women. We’re just called to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that the parties are so inferior that Christians shouldn’t vote at all. We each have preferences on how our Government should be run, and because this is America, we have the right to express those preferences. But, for those of you who are Christians, guard against letting your politics obscure your faith. It can happen more easily than you think.