As I have wrestled with myself in my own head, and with others on social media, I have tried to express myself about the Gospel, the church, and politics. I have been very unsatisfied with my grasp on why we all find ourselves where we are given my knowledge of the people involved. It all seems so clear to me, and yet some of my friends, who are so much like me, see it so differently, and equally clear. I have not felt like I really understood the motivations of myself and others like me. And these motivations are usually not known or understood by us, and this has been on my mind a lot. Since opposite conclusions are being drawn with similar information, observation, and like background and beliefs, I have been at a loss to understand why there is a divide where one normally won’t find one.
I woke up early this morning and could not stop thinking about it and so I got up and thought I would write down my thoughts. This normally helps me clarify and then set aside any preoccupation I have. And maybe it has.
I am wondering if this is tied to the spiritual path God has taken me on lately. I have come to appreciate the need for the Gospel to inform my thinking of myself and my relationship with Jesus. This change in how I view what Christ desires for me, and from me, has also impacted how I see the world. I think this may be why I do not see politics like so many in my demographic circles. Here is an early effort to document my thoughts.
We boomers, and really some Gen-Xers, tend to be nostalgic. At least those that I associate with, tend to be anyway. We look at our upbringing and we think ours was the best. As we look back, we had better music, better movies. There was imagination and creativity that is not seen today. We were freer and safer, did things and went places as children with out care and often without supervision. Parents had strong discipline and seldom took the side of the child in a behavior dispute with teachers or neighbors, but that somehow felt right. Anyway, I could go on, but you have all seen the memes explaining what we did when we were young and implying how it was better. We just look back and are quite proud of who we were as a people and a nation. The world seemed like it was a good place, and for us it was. And while this was true for my circle of friends, I now know it wasn’t true for everyone.
While still very nostalgic, I see this world as horribly broken more today than ever before. Part of this stems from me seeing myself as FAR more sinful and broken, but also I have learned that the world is a lot bigger than my little piece of it and it is a lot more colorful than the world I grew up in. I was blessed to have lived as a child in a fairly ideal environment and at a time and place that was unusual, at least for me and those like me. This is why MAGA is so appealing. We would like to get America back to what it was when we were growing up. I know as a parent this desire to have my kids be raised like me was strong. It is why they had to suffer through me making them watch shows I grew up with and listen to music I thought was great. It was me being nostalgic about the past, and the desire to make America what it was for younger me is strong and powerful. I get why so many desire this. I think this drives our politics today.
Younger people today do not share my sense of nostalgia about their childhood. I know my kids don’t, but to my surprise as an adult, neither do many that are my age. Most blacks that grew up in the 60s and 70s don’t look back on their childhood with the same wonderful and rosy view that I do. Many families that did not live with me in the suburbs don’t look back and feel the security that I did. Many of these people do not want to take America back to what it was, but see a better future where it is going because there is only one way to go from the bottom. I think this different image of the past is why we feel differently about the future.
It gets complicated for some of us as Christians. If we were fortunate, and grew up in the ideal environment I did, we see the America, and world, as getting worse and on the decline. It is so hard to remember what it used to be like and how we used to live and not yearn for that day again. Some of us were so very fortunate to have experienced this and wish so much for our kids and grandkids to have the same kind of life. But we have to grapple with the truth that this was not everyone’s experience, and we know from our theology that this world is fallen and broken and ravaged with sin. We look at a more distant history and see that through most of time, man has always abused man. This little slice of history in suburban America in the 60s and 70s does not fit our understanding of the history of sin in the world, and it is out of place and out of step with our theology. But somehow we mistakenly believe our experience is how life should be and we are grasping and clinging to get it back.
How we view of America, and how our theology informs what we expect and hope for, is what I believe is at the root of this chasm I feel between my friends that see our current political landscape differently. I see myself as far more broken and in desperate need of the Gospel today than I did most of my life. So I look back at the church, then and now, and I see a comfort and ease that has created a false “goodness” in ourselves that is driving the younger person away as they seek a more authentic response to the sin, brokenness, and evil around them. I have traveled the world and seen this brokenness in such vastness and have been overwhelmed by the sinfulness of man and how that leads the few to dominate and oppress the many. Seeing man’s inhumanity to man has forced me to see the futility of political solutions and driven me to my knees and wrestle with a sovereign God that continues to tolerate us.
It is this backdrop for me and my journey with Christ that I come to the US political arena with. I do not see a culture war that can be “won.” We may change laws and we may make it easier to be a Christian, like when I was growing up, but that is not the war we Christians are fighting. The war we are fighting is not one culture against the other. It is not us vs baby-killing Democrats. We are waging a war against sin and evil both inside and outside of us. There are no laws that will impact this. There are no laws that can change a man’s heart. Only the hope of the Gospel has any impact on the evil in this world. We are so very fortunate to live in a democratic republic where we have a voice in choosing our government and need to vote for a just and right government, but we cannot put our hope for change there. It is a seductress mistress that calls out and temps us, and so we must be cautious of the political arena. We must cling to the Gospel for change. Seek to promote Christ and his incredible care for those that are hurting. These hurting soles surround us in the church and outside of it. We must put others interest as more important than ours and be willing to sacrifice our comfort and convenience for others, just as Christ did for us. We must promote and protect hope, the hope of Christ to others, and not the false hope of turning America back to what it used to be by political means. That is not how the world of my childhood was created, and it won’t get it back.
Now why does this all impact why I say that we as Christians should not support Trump? Well, what we support we endorse. What we endorse reflects our values. Our values reflect on Christ and the gospel. Trumps policies are great for the culture war, but his character, and how it reflects on us, is harmful to our efforts to promote the gospel in the fight against the spiritual war. And this is finally where I see the difference between those that I wondered why there is a difference. It is not moral high ground, it is not a spiritual elitism, it is not really a character problem. It is a difference in the importance of wars. I know my Christian friends think they can fight this culture war AND fight a spiritual war. But I believe that to fight in the political one, will weaken the fight in the spiritual one.
We all have this flesh that we drag around with us, and it lures us, and our sinful heart, to be deceived in so many ways. So while I am quite convinced I am right, I am not arrogant enough to believe I am not self-deceived, are you? Let us all, with true humility, continue to seek God’s wisdom and ask, where shall I battle today, and can I win a war on two fronts?
Letters from a Fathers Heart 