The Election is looming

So, there is an election next week in Canada and I still don't know who to vote for.
But this I do know, where my citizenship lies.

 

"Certainly the Old Testament shows God dealing with national entities: the prophets called down judgement on Israel and Judah as well as Philistia, Assyria, and Babylon. But the New Testament seems to introduce a major shift: God in now working not primarily through nations, but through an invisible kingdom that transcends nations. Jesus stressed ?the kingdom of heaven? as the central focus of God´s activity on earth, a kingdom that permeated society so as to gradually affect the whole, like salt sprinkled on meat.

As I now reflect on Jesus´ stories of the kingdom, I sense that much uneasiness among Christians today stems from a confusion of the two kingdoms, visible and invisible. Each time and election rolls around, Christians debate whether this or that candidate is ?God´s man? for the White House. Projecting myself back into Jesus´ time, I have difficulty imagining him pondering whether Tiberius, Octavius, or Julius Caesar - not to mention Nero or Caligula- was ?God´s man? for the empire. What took place in Rome was on another plane entirely from the kingdom of God.

The apostle Paul cared deeply about individual churches in Galatia, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, but I find no indication that he gave any thought to a ?Christianized? Roman Empire. The Book of Revelation continues the pattern: that book records specific messages to seven churches but dismisses the political entity of Rom as ?Babylon the great the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth.?

Some historians argue that the church loses sight of its original mission as it moves closer to the seat of power. Witness the era of Constantine, and the Dark Ages, and Europe just before the Reformation. We may be seeing history repeat itself. The church has faced the constant temptation of becoming the ?morals police? of society.

In 1991, as communism fell in Poland, 70 percent of Poles approved of the Catholic Church as a moral and spiritual force. Now only 40 percent approve, mainly because of it´s ?interference? in politics. Modern Poland does not practice church-state separation: a new media law says radio and TV broadcasts must ?respect the Christian system of values,? and the state funds the teaching of Catholicism in Polish public schools. Yet the new coziness between church and government has resulted in a loss of respect for the church.

At various points in US history (the 1850's, the time of Prohibition, and most recently during the Moral majority movement of the 1980s), the Christian church has marked and ascendancy into politics. Now, it appears, the church and politics may be heading in different directions. The more I understand Jesus´ message of the kingdom of God, the less alarmed I feel over that trend. Our real challenge, the focus of our energy, should not be to christianize the United States (always a losing battle) but rather to strive to be Christ´s church in an increasingly hostile world. As Karl Barth said, ?[The church] exists . . . to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to [the world´s] own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise.?

Finding God in Unexpected Places
Philip Yancey