I had an interesting discussion on Facebook yesterday.
A page about “defending marriage” posted a link to a story saying the UN was working to legalize prostitution. The comment on the link being shared was:
“We need to take back control in the world…”
I assumed the “we” is Christians, given the audience of the page. This made me wonder.
When did we have control?
Were we supposed to have control?
How did religion having control go for the world?
What did Jesus suggest (err… command) that we do in the world?
Did He not know that one day we might have a chance at establishing a Christian nation? Did the possibility slip His mind?
Does He come across as someone who is not very careful with words?
So maybe He said what He meant and vice versa.
Religions holding political power have a history of working out poorly. That’s part of why the first colonists came to America.
There was every opportunity for the Founding Fathers to make America out to be an absolute Christian nation, but they chose not to.
There was every opportunity for Jesus to command His followers to establish a kingdom, but He said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” He could very well have explained theocracy and suggested it as a plan, but we don’t have any indication of that. Governance clearly wasn’t on his personal agenda.
The Bible – particularly the New Testament – portrays the world as fallen, corrupt, and under the spiritual authority of the Devil. For example, Jesus was tempted by the Devil, who offered Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if He would simply bow down and worship the Devil. Jesus didn’t dispute whether Satan had such power to make such an offer. Likewise, Paul wrote about the spiritual darkness in the world, saying it did not belong to God but to our adversary.
We’re living in occupied territory. We’re living behind enemy lines.
Jesus never told us to set up a nation here. We’re not establishing a base or negotiating a treaty. To be clear, our “enemy” is not those people who disagree. We’re not fighting against flesh and blood… or at least that’s what the Bible tells us. Fighting flesh and blood means collateral damage.
Maybe some of us forgot that.
I expressed my concerns about what the post implied. I was told something like, “Our representative government isn’t representing all of us, its people. We have to fight in the political arena to ensure that the representative government actually represents us.”
That sword cuts both ways. That argument can be made by either side.
It basically boils down to “majority rules,” since there are two groups with opposed goals that both seek representation. Majority rules is a system that hasn’t always done well for us either. In the Sixties, the local, vocal majority would have voted to keep segregation going in some parts. That doesn’t make it acceptable or right.
Likewise, from the biblical perspective, we were never told to follow the majority. In fact, Jesus said that’s the road that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:14).
We were meant to be the minority. We were meant to be different.
But we look just like everyone else.
The divorce rate in the church matches that of the world. Western Christianity looks just as self-centered and greedy as the culture it is supposedly working to save. Instead of going and making disciples, we’re going and making new recruits for our political parties. And our young people are leaving the church in droves.
Yeah, maybe we need to take back control…
We need to take back control of ourselves.
