The Christian Right's 2 Masters

It seems like I've seen more headlines concerning Christian "persecution" this week than any other. Here's a sampling: The conservative Parents Television Council says that television is anti-religious. Here in Oklahoma, there's a lot of controversy over a Nativity being removed from a school play. The superintendent of an Ohio high school cut a Christian band from a school event. And, various corporations aren't supporting the traditional Christmas rhetoric in their sales promotions.

Of course, the response from all the conservative pundits and all the talking heads seems to be this: We need a campaign to stop them. The prevailing wisdom amongst the right-wing Christian community says that if we could just boycott enough corporations, re-call enough politicians and flex the collective muscle of evangelicals, then we can win.

I can't help but step back from this whole scene and ask the obvious question: Win what? With the majority of this readership coming from a politically conservative or libertarian standpoint and having traditional ideas about morality, I ask this question: What matters? I know we're all going to name God, family, friends and on down the list of priorities. But, let's think about this: If God is truly at the top of what matters, how is that reality fleshed out in the political scene? As fellow WND columnist Jerry Falwell re-ignites his "Moral Majority," it's important that we think about what the proper relationship between Christians and politics is.

I've been writing my column for over three years now, and I've been following politics for at least that long. Coming from such a perspective, the more I think about this relationship between a Christian and the political scene, the more I think that there's something wrong going on here – that the way the evangelical community flexes it muscle isn't really that Christ-like.

Looking at the Bible as a whole, it seems as if God is concerned about community. The way He communicated with people throughout the Old Testament was in addressing communities and leaving messages for humanity. In the New Testament, we see the majority of teaching addressed to communities. In Acts, we see a beautiful picture of Christian community fleshed out.

Traditionally, in America we value individualism – we have a capitalist market and a constitutional republic. And, that's probably as moral a system we could arrive at. However, this Western idea of individualism when grafted onto Christian spirituality creates a problem, because it immediately turns into a power struggle.

Self-interest is a very important part of capitalism, but it doesn't work when applied to Christian spirituality. Everyone immediately recognizes this, so we compartmentalize our lives. In politics, we realize that the selfless nature of Christ doesn't work, so we espouse a double standard: endorsing "Christian values" while leaving behind selflessness.

The Christian right wing is sincere, it appears, in its ideals of government and society, but the means by which to accomplish these things requires us to shed a Christ-life selflessness and join the power struggle. Politics is dirty, and even the morality candidates use scare tactics and empty rhetoric.

I received a lot of letters because of my latest column, and a lot of them supported this basic argument: If we don't do anything, then immorality will increase and Christianity may even be outlawed. That's a fine thing to be concerned about, for sure. However, let's assume for a moment that the "moral preservation" of government and cultural integrity is the chief end of man. What lasts? What will really change things? Laws will not. Strangely enough, we act as if legislation will change everything. Here's the truth: Our nation will change when the desires of its people change. A lot of people on the right buy into this idea of desires, but they speak of revival as if the end goal is its political influence.

That's a sick way of looking at revival – as a means to gain more power. At the end of the day, if conservatives run everything and America becomes the utopia Jerry Falwell hoped it would be, we still need to face up to our own mortality.

I have to say that I disagree with Kyle on several points. It gets kinda confusing because he argues rightly that Christians are to be selfless.

However, the selflessness he argues for is not individual selflessness of one person with another. Rather, he seems to advocate a group selflessness where Christians as a group don't fight for what they believe in politically but rather yield to the wills of the other ideologies and beliefs in the community.

The problem with Kyle's viewpoint is that it leaves Christians as moral jellyfish, merely yielding and adjusting to what the culture dictates, so that we may seem to be orderly and not insistent on our own ideas as public policy.

The problem is that this has not been the consistent history of the church. That has rather been that when Christians have moral authority or political capitol, they use it for the cause of righteousness. This goes back to the 4th Century when St. Basil of Caeseria inspired the Roman Emperor Valentian to ban abortion, infanticide, and abandonment of children. By Kyle's standard, St. Basil should not have fought against the exposure walls and lobbied the government. He should have stood silently by and not been so selfish as to demand human life be respected.

Alan Keyes had a pretty good explanation of the "Give Unto Caesar" passage in his speech to Mountaintop Community Church in August :

This passage has given me a lot of trouble over the years. I mean, they marveled, and you think at first in a superficial kind of way that maybe they were marveling at how clever Christ was, because here He was in a fashion that, unfortunately, we would find altogether too familiar these days, I think.

There was an ancient god in Rome, he was called Janus. He was the god of boundaries, as I recall, and that's because he had these two faces. One looked this way, one looked that way, and when you set him on the boundary, he kind of symbolized the fact the he had looked all around and marked the boundary. That would be a perfect symbol for a lot of our politicians, don't you think? Talking out of both sides of their mouths, telling some people one thing, and other people something else.

This is the perfect image of the clever politician! And here was Christ, they come to Him with a question, He said, "Well, just give everybody a little something that they want. Give Caesar what he wants, give God what He wants. You'll be safe and sound!"

Sounds like our politics these days: promise everybody whatever it takes to get their vote!

Now, that is very clever in politics, but guess what? It never seemed very Christ-like to me. If I asked myself how Jesus would do it, that's not the first thing that would spring to my mind. God has three persons, but only one face. He speaks to us consistently. Doesn't contradict Himself.

And that raises another problem, because you go back to Matthew chapter 6, and what do you find? You find in Matthew chapter 6 that the Lord is telling us with reasonable clarity that we actually cannot serve two masters. Remember that one? No man can serve two masters. Verse 24:

For either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Puts us rather on the horns of a dilemma. Here is Christ in chapter 22 saying give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's--just like here you have your temporal worldly master, and here you have your religious faith master, and you just give them both what they want, you serve them both. And then there He is in Matthew telling us it doesn't work.

Why on earth would be giving us advice in one chapter that He's already told us doesn't work?

Turns out this doesn't solve the problem. It actually creates a problem for us. It puts us in mind not only the possibility that Christ has two faces, God forbid; it puts us in mind of the possibility that He contradicts Himself. Not my idea of Jesus. Don't think this happens.

See, and when you think that Christ is contradicting Himself, then you have to reexamine your thinking. Maybe there's something we didn't understand about all of this, because this can't be happening. So, you go back and you look at the passage again, and it turns out that maybe we did miss something. Because, after all, Christ is the Word made flesh. That means that He is here, and His very presence here is a word of God. His actions, His very being is a word from God--so, we can't just hear what He says, we must respect who He is, and we must watch what He does.

And what did He do in this case? Well, we know. Our attention was arrested by the fact that He did something very uncharacteristic: He asked for the money. So, we go back to that and we think, "Why did He do that? Maybe that has something to do with it." And it does, because in point of fact, it's the key to the whole passage. He asked for the money, He looked at the money and said, "Whose image is stamped upon this?" When He did that, He then gave us this famous phrase "render to Caesar," and He had already by His action both begged and answered a question. He begged the question, "What belongs to Caesar?" And He answered it: what belongs to Caesar is what has Caesar's image stamped upon it.

Now we get close to that point that we all realize this is why they marveled. You're thinking to yourself, "Yes, I got it now! That's why their jaws dropped"--because He's also begging another question, and that question is, what belongs to God? And the answer is, what has God's image stamped upon it.

Well, what has God's image stamped upon it? We go all the way back to the beginning of the scriptures, the beginning of the whole Jewish tradition, the very first words that were spoken, practically, about how God is in relation to us, how He was in relation to our creation, what He intends us to be. And what does it tell us? "Male and female, He created them"--we'll get back to that--"in the image and likeness of God created He them."

What does that mean? Well, it means, in this particular passage, when you asked the question, "What belongs to God? What has God's image stamped upon it?" Well, what has God's image stamped upon it? You have God's image, I have God's image, all of us who are human beings created of His will have God's image--and that includes, who? That includes Caesar.

Isn't that wonderful? So, it looks like Christ is saying you can serve two masters, but He's not. What He's actually saying is that when you think it through, don't be fooled. Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's, but remember when you do that it all belongs to God!

That's what this passage is telling us. You and I and Caesar and everything else about our human community, it all belongs to God.

I rather stridently disagree with this person, so I'll address issue by issue.

The prevailing thought isn't, "If we flex the collective muscle of evangelicas, then we can win". The prevailing thought is, "As a people we either stand up to those who would erase us from society, or we disappear from society." The anti-Christian group-think being exercised by the anti-religious bigots today, is little different than the precursor actions that took place in 1930s Germany. Nope, don't for a moment consider the idea that shutting up and being complacent is the route of preservation. Stand up, scream out, be counted and let the bigots know that they will be challenged and defeated at every turn.

Win what? Bud, if you have to ask, my tellling you isn't going to impart wisdom.

Yes, what is the proper relationship between Christians and politics? Could it be that if more Christians were in politics, this nation might be a little better off? LOL, the corruption, the outright lying to the American public has reached a deafening creshendo, and this person raises the question of what part Christians should play?

Imagine, this person has been following politics for three years now. In a word, YIKES! He's a three year old. I couldn't tell. Could you?

He writes about Christianity not being compatable with the business community and politics. My goodness bud, you just chopped off a lot of territory that is not compatible with the Christian life. I always thought that Christians were supposed to conduct themselves with honor where ever they went. If this world were full of Christians, who would be our business, community, city, regional, state and national leaders? Evidently this guy thinks we'd have to do without.

Self-interest is not incompatible with Christianity. Christ did not expect Christians to submit to destruction, live in poverty or shirk the work ethic and responsibility. You treat others with dignity and develop win/win relationships. This writer sounds as if they are 22 years old, and haven't a clue what adult life is all about yet. Judging seems to come naturally though.

Living the selfless life does not mean you take it on the chin 24/365. Trying to treat others as you would like to be treated is the real Christian ethic. Not crushing your business competitors, but competing with them is just fine. It's not anti-Christian to run a successful business while others go under. Who would support the church financially if not for successful church members?

This writer puts down the desire for political influence. Frankly I think people of good moral fiber should be the ones in positions of power. They more than anyone else should understand the pitfalls and guarantee all citizens a fair shake. Does this writer think the moral depraved will do better? Should we allow the morally depraved seek office and win, because politics and religion don't mix? What a ding-bat...

No, our nation won't change when enough people want it to. Not enough people will want change, if good decent men abandon the public arena to the morally vacant.

And that's why this writer should find another profession, and let someone with at least a minimal understanding of morals step up to the plate.

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