Regarding Christians and politics, a really super question that has been posed is:
"Is it better to back an honest athiest, who has the integrity to admit he is not a man of faith, or a man who says he is a Christian, because he thinks he ought to, but doesn't back the words up with any action."
This is a question that really brings many of the political issues into close focus and highlights many issues for the Christian, especially when it comes to having a vote that support the right things and the right people.
There are a number of issues by which people seek to define 'Christian' and these bleed over from Church (universal) into the political scene. Some examples:
I meet many Christians who support abortion and meet others who would regard this as a non-Christian stance and would therefore deny the Christian status of the first group.
I meet many who support homosexuality as a lifestyle seeing Civil partnerships and 'gay marriage' and having the view that fidelity not sex is all that matters when it comes to relationships. Those holding the opposing views see the first group as liberal and effectively flawed or even non-Christians.
I meet many who support euthanasia and 'assisted dying' and yet, again, there are many who would doubt the Christian reality of these people.
The list is endless and the views are more diverse than the polarised extremes given above and, of course, the combinations of views mean that there are more combinations and permutations of view than there are people to hold them. To vote for a 'Christian' Party might be a salve and even a source of (self?) righteous political outworking but what if that vote is impotent and leads to the election of one who will do things that are contrary to God's commands?
In Isaiah chapter forty-five we find Cyrus, the King of Persia, being referred to as God's 'anointed'. Regarding this (and the other four Persian kings too I presume?) the comment has been made, "I think we have to say, better a wise atheist than a stupid Christian."
Now there's a challenge to me. Is it black and white or must we engage with the grey areas too?
3 comments:
Excellent Question!
Individual conscience seems to me to be the answer to the question here. People's views differ on a range of questions, and I am in favour of social action, I am pro-life but perhaps liberal in my views on sexual matters. I do not see it as my position to judge others, rather to engage with them and to love them as God has commanded. Exclusion does not seem to me to be the way of Jesus or his message.
We are pretty good at attaching labels to people and using that as an argument for some form of discrimination or disagreement with them. I am sure that I would be labelled in that way for my views.
Taking up judgmental positions seems to me to be both morally indefensible. God will be the final judge, which is where individual conscience will be in evidence.
An interesting comment from you.
I rarely see issues as black and white, and that mindset is also part of the way I view faith.
Life is not lived in the extremes, but in the middle space where the greys are made of varying proportions of black and white.
That's where I'm called to work and to share my faith. Hence my unwillingness to 'pronounce' that anything in the blanket of God's creation is impure.
Our temptation is always to try to narrow the gateposts - which seems to me to be a way of keeping people out. Jesus came to blow away so many of the barriers that I have to ask which model - the inclusive or the exclusive, is most Christian?
Which is not to say, "anything goes", but more to accept that we look from different angles.
Many of the people I deal with (Christian and otherwise) are extremely black and White. As you read my thoughts you will see that I seek more than that - but many (and I don't just mean Christians) are quite stick in their ruts.
This is why I'm trying to provoke done thinking.
Pax
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