The question in the title arises from a meeting at a local church on the same subject. My wife asked me to go with her, so I did, and when the pastor asked for discussion on the topic, I gave them my opinion. After just a few minutes, I was told by some unknown person to, in essence, sit down and shut up. Which I did, then sat through an extended period in which the entire rest of the group explained all the reasons why Christians ought to be involved. None of them asked me for any further explanation. After an hour or so, I just got up and walked out. I will never go back.
Politics. Before answering the question, it should be important to understand what politics actually is. If you do not know what politics is, then you cannot answer the question. Most people associate politics with government, as in this definition, taken from Merriam-Webster:
a: the art or science of government
b: the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy
c: the art or science concerned with winning and holding control over a government
Now, I do not dispute the description, but the word “politics” is multi-faceted (as admitted by Merriam-Webster) and can have many different meanings and connotations. During my comments at the session, I mentioned the saying that, “Politics is a dirty business”, and asked them if Christians should be involved in dirty business. To my surprise, a lot of people nodded their heads affirmatively, which only shows that they simply do not know what the “dirty business of politics” is all about. But then, American Christians, at least the modern kind, have never been known for their acumen and understanding of the way the real world works.
I also brought up a line from Billy Joel’s song, Piano Man, which should be familiar–“And the waitress is practicing politics as the businessmen slowly get stoned…”, and explained that politics, outside the government angle, is nothing more than the manipulation of people for personal gain, which, if true, ought to provoke outrage on the part of Christians toward the practice. It was at this point that I was quite unceremoniously booted from the floor and the rest is history.
“Politics is the practice of getting what you want by manipulating other people and is always at their expense, to their detriment.” (My own description of politics. Click the link, scroll down until you find it.)
Unfortunately, politics, even in government is manipulation of some people by other people, all with one purpose (usually unspoken) in mind: control and power. Control and power. Virtually everyone is consumed with gaining power over others so that their behavior and actions can be controlled. Christians usually bring up the subject of “morality” and the dire need to make people behave the way they ought to, that is, in the manner that Christians think they ought to, because, you know, the country is diving headlong into the sewer of “immorality” and needs to be rescued. Or else, there will be hell to pay. Of course! There always is. Whether anyone else wants their version of morality or not is irrelevant. It must be done! We must get involved! We must vote! Vote! Vote! Vote for the lesser of two evils, even if that means the System as a whole becomes more evil, which mechanism is really a rear-guard action that does nothing to stop the onslaught of evil, but only slows it down a little. In the end, evil wins.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.” — H.L. Mencken
“Voting is nothing more than choosing whose hand holds the club with which you are beaten. It does nothing to stop the beatings.” — another of my own quotes. You can quote me on that.
Should Christians be involved in politics? If politics is a “dirty business” and the manipulation of people for personal benefit, then the answer is an unqualified “No, they should not.” This comports with the message of the Gospel of Jesus to keep oneself unspoiled from the world and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. However, as Christians, we are also enjoined to act as leavening agents to affect the world condition in which we find ourselves so that the entire structure is bettered by our actions. This seeming contradiction can be resolved in only one way–by determining where and in whom we place our trust and faith. As Christians, we are enjoined to have trust and faith in God alone, yet we continue to disregard this advice in preference to putting our trust and faith in man-made institutions, especially the modern form of government, that is, the totalitarian State, which encompasses and controls everything. As Christians, we have sold our souls for a pot of message, and it is coming back to bite us as a very bad case of acid reflux and dysentery. If we continue to gorge ourselves on this feast, it will kill us.
Belief and participation in the world system lead to death. This is a fact we must face and recognize as truth. Yet, knowing this, we still labor under the illusion that we can sway and impact “politics” in a positive way, for the better, if we join in, work with, and merge into the prevailing protocol. We think that we can “clean up” politics and The System if we just engage it and add our voice to the cacophony, yet we fail to understand that, in doing so, we soil ourselves and reinforce the message that men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil.
At heart, we refuse to trust God. We would rather trust government. We would rather be practitioners of “the lesser of two evils” than turning away from evil entirely. We would rather beggar our neighbor through the application of law than to love our neighbor in service to him. We prefer to think we are holy because we go to church on Sunday morning and practice all the “accepted” perfunctory deeds that are expected, yet we do not know that our lives are as filthy rags in His sight. Yes, indeed, and I am the greatest of sinners, to paraphrase the apostle Paul.
What, then, shall be done? How, then, shall we live? Well, there is nothing to do except to change myself into and in conformance with His likeness, to become holy as He is holy, to accept that there is no other name except His by which I am saved. This alone brings freedom. It is the only path to life. Nothing else will work. Everything else will fail.
You can rationalize all you want. You can make all the excuses you want. You can delude yourselves until the chickens come home to roost. In the end, you are only deceiving yourself. There is only one way. Everything else will fail.
Everything else will fail.
Poor Roger's Almanac 