My Response To The Election

This is a letter I wrote to respond to a letter a friend had sent me. He was and is very discouraged by the election and the moral state of our nation and the failing of conservative politics. My response is  something that has been on my heart for a while and I have been struggling to express. Although I think there is much more to talk about and think through, it is something my heart is feeling and seeing right now and it is something that is changing me:

One thought that I have continually had up to the election and now even more after is that, although I agree the nation is turning its back on God I also see it is the church’s fault. The church that has turned its attempts to bring change in our country by creating legislating and forcing rules on a culture that is rejecting the premise for these rules, The Bible and God. I don't discount a Christians place in politics but I have been saddened by how it appears the church has chosen government, conservatism and legislation as a means of changing or saving culture in lieu of actually living out the Gospel through being the church of Jesus Christ to a lost world. Legislation does not change lives, laws don’t change lives. As we have seen, a culture can change laws when they no longer believe in them (i.e. abortion and same sex marriage). However what does change lives is the message of Jesus Christ being living out through the Church into the local communities we are called to and seeing that spread up and out from there into our city, our state, our nation, and our world.

Basically we are doing this backwards. We see a lost world. We think "our America" has turned it’s back on God and we work to fix that with legislation, protesting, and attacks. We want to force others to accept the gospel as their way of living by the laws we create, but the Apostle Paul spoke against that in 1 Corinth 5 when he challenged the church by saying they are not to judge those outside the faith, how can one expect someone outside to act like a Christian, instead focus inward and actually start living the call of the Church.

Our country was never a "Christian nation" due to its laws. It was the people that made it great by choosing values and a way of life guided by biblical principals because they embraced the Gospel. So when we try to make a nation “Christian” by creating laws and forcing political agendas we have already lost, it is not how it is done, it is not how Jesus or the early church did it. We have to start over. We have to start living the church, living the gospel. When people encounter God that is where change comes from, not from creating laws.

I think this is a primary reason conservative politics and Christianity is failing. Let the politics be about politics, but church, lets let our lives be about Christ and lets live in this world to see change through Jesus Christ, doing what Jesus did. Encountering the sinner with love and mercy, going to the sinner where they are at, getting rid of religious laws that create “white washed tombs” that look good on the outside but still have hearts far from God.

If we want to protect the sanctity of marriage lets not have the same divorce rate as the rest of the world. If we want to stop abortions, instead of holding signs calling them murders, lets start to love on the woman that feels so desperate they see that as the only way out. If we want to see envy and selfishness end as motivation for a “entitlement society” then lets help people encounter the gospel that turns us from takers to givers. (However we first have become a people that are known for being givers like James talks about)

Are we known for what Jesus was known for? Do they see Jesus in us and in how we live? If not then we have only ourselves to blame when the world does not see Jesus.