Election Week Musings (3)

 

A couple of weeks ago I asked folks to read an article by John Piper regarding the election and the president. I wondered whether or not I should make any comments about the piece and I decided not to because I didn’t want to filter Piper’s words. In retrospect maybe I should have, I’m not really sure. I received comments that ran the spectrum, including; “I don’t understand this and it’s confusing,” “This has me reconsidering not only my thinking, but also the way I’ll vote,” “I couldn’t disagree more,” and then there was, “Piper is spineless and disgusting.”

 

How anyone could call Piper spineless when he went against the grain of much popular “Christian” thinking is beyond me. It isn’t just that he went against the grain, it is that the grain he went against is often vitriolic, contra James 3:13 – 18.  I am going to return to some specific points of Piper’s piece in a future post, but of the responses I received that were vehemently opposed to his article, here were two elements that they had in common:

 

The first element in the responses opposed to the article was that there was no tension, no doubt, no question, as to the rightness or wrongness of the many issues that Piper raised – Piper was totally wrong. There was no acknowledgment of the possibility that Piper was concerned about legitimate issues. There was no consideration that just maybe we ought to think through what he was writing. Why this refusal to consider the thinking of a man whose life and ministry ought to, at the very least, provide warrant for a fair hearing? I do not “follow” or read John Piper closely, and we likely have different approaches to some elements in the Kingdom, but I certainly respect him and his fidelity to Jesus Christ and the Gospel, and I have never sensed that John Piper seeks to make himself the center of attention, the center of his ministry and message, or to manipulate others by hyperbole and fear.

 

These responses are troubling to me because we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, and if we do not acknowledge that we “see through a glass darkly” and that “the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” and that “he who trusts in his own heart is a fool,” then we are in the fast lane of arrogance and self-deceit. When professing Christians style others as their enemies, when they vilify them, when they want to “call down fire” on others, we ought to be afraid of what we have become.

 

This is one of many reasons that we need our Lord Jesus Christ, because it is only in His Light, the Light of His Presence,  that we can begin to see anything for what it really is, and this itself is a journey, a pilgrimage, a process. It is also a pilgrimage that requires others, we cannot make this journey alone.

 

The second common element in the responses that rejected Piper’s piece was that they accused others of socialism and warned that if the “left” was not stopped that we’d have another Hitler. The irony here is that the Nazis were not of the “left” but of the “right” and that in their quest to Make Germany Great Again they employed a Red Scare.

 

Many in the German church aligned themselves with the Hitler regime because it was all about Making Germany Great Again. Ponder that one. Excuses were made for Hitler’s words and actions. Those who stood against the merging of church and state were marginalized and persecuted – ponder that. Much of the German church failed to distinguish between the German nation and the Kingdom of God. Let’s remember that Germany was the birthplace of the Reformation – the German Church could look back and say, “We are God’s chosen nation!” We, in the United States, seem to have forgotten this. Did we ever know it?

 

Another irony is that many who think John Piper unquestionably wrong are quick to hold Dietrich Bonhoeffer up as an example of faithfulness to Christ in the midst of state persecution – this includes a recent biographer of Bonhoeffer (a poorly written biography). This fails to acknowledge Bonhoeffer’s view of a Church without national borders, and of a church within national borders that eschews “cheap grace” and seeks to mediate God’s grace to all segments of society, most especially to the disenfranchised and threatened. Dietrich Bonhoeffer did not confuse the state with the church…and he was increasingly in the minority.

 

The heart and soul of the Church of Jesus Christ can only be wedded to one spouse, which is it? If we truly care about our earthly country, then we must first and foremost be the Bride of Jesus Christ, and there should be no question about this. Nothing in life should compete with Jesus Christ. If we are to be decent citizens of an earthly country, we first must be whole – hearted, heavenly – minded, citizens of the Kingdom of God (Phil. 3:20) and there should be no question in our words, our deeds, our singing, our worship – that we belong to Jesus Christ.

 

Syncretistic Christian nationalism, in any form, is poison. We may as well say that it is okay for a married Christian spouse to date others, to sleep with others (2 Cor. 11:1 – 15).

 

Have we come to the place where we need to apologize to other Christians that our hearts and souls belong to Jesus, and to Jesus alone?

 

I do not fear the persecution of the Church; I do fear its seduction.