Hours ago, the President of the United States stood up at a press conference and told lies. He lied about the postal votes in the US election being illegal, he lied about controlling the Senate, he lied about the Democracts stealing the election and he lied about voter suppression and interference. Ironically, the one truth he told was concerning the record number of Republican women being elected - seeing as just days before the election he sniggered while warning that it would be terrible to have a Democrat in the White House - "especially female".
It is tempting for Christians to invoke the sovereignty of God as a comfort blanket that we put over our heads to block out the noise and roar of worldly politics. God is in control, so we can passively let the elections happen and the leaders speak. We can cast our vote and do our bit, we may email our MP once in a while - but other than that we accept bad stuff will happen, they'll mess up and we chalk it up to living in a broken world that Jesus will come back and fix one day. For now, we'll just muddle through.
The Sovereignty of God is more like a two-edged sword than a comfort blanket. It cuts to truth through lies. It's a lamp exposing the darkness, setting a standard far above what we can expect on earth. In an age where truth is at stake and the very concept of truth is being eroded, the existence of God is what we pin our belief in truth on as Christians. We know God to be just, and justice to have an absolute definition. We know him to be good and to demand fair treatment for the poor, alien, fatherless and the widow. God's sovereignty is what gives us a moral framework that we believe to be an absolute truth.
Why do we fall into the trap of using God's sovereignty as a get out clause to not engage with politics? Several reasons I think.
Firstly, in the post-war era we have lived in a time where in the Western world, there has been a general political and social consensus that is fairly moderate. Leaders such as Thatcher, being clearly more to the right, invoked far more unrest, but generally speaking we have not seen a fascist or communist threat having any chance of power for decades. This has lulled Christians and probably the population at large into a false sense that we can sit back and relax. Unfortunately, with populist far-right parties on the rise and polarisation intensifying, this is no longer true.
Second, we have fallen into the cultural trap of thinking "they are all the same". With lies and corruption periodically exposed, such as the MP's expenses scandal in the UK, there is a growing feeling that all politicians are as bad as each other. The Christian community has even more impetus to think in this way as, adhering to a set of beliefs that are at odds with societal norms, we have a sharp sense of being culturally different anyway which throws the political realm into less focused perspective.
Third, we often forget that eternal life starts in this world. There can be a false sense of just "passin' through" this life to get to eternity. In reality we are saved now, life to the full starts now, and God's kingdom is coming on earth now. Even the new earth will be a real, physical place. The physical world we are in now is designed for us to steward, subdue and rule, in line with God's good principles. This is particularly pertinent to issues such as environment. Simply because we know God has promised to renew or remake the earth is not a free pass to destroying the planet. Rather, because we know God values the planet so highly, so should we.
There are probably other more general reasons like politics sometimes being difficult to understand and there being a regretful lack of education on this area in our school system and homes. It can seem like a different realm for a different kind of person, and the people who have the power tend to want to keep it that way to protect their interests.
Here's why God's sovereignty propels us into political engagement rather than away from it.
1) God is truth and as his people it's our calling to proclaim this in the world. What is truth? This very notion is under threat. Yesterday Trump's tweets were labelled 7 times by Twitter as spreading misinformation. When the most powerful person in the world can stand straight-faced at a Press Conference and lie about facts that are so easily checked, it is obvious that truth is under threat - and sadly his followers buy into everything he tweets and says. Social media has enabled evil people to weaken truth with its lightspeed dissemination of misinformation and our lack of propensity to check what we are reading. I've fallen into this trap as I'm sure you have too. If you watch The Social Diliemma, their rallying call is to find truth, interestingly. As people of the Word, we know what truth really is. This means calling out lies when we see them. For a UK example, take the lie in the Leave campaign that the NHS would get £350 million extra a day from leaving the EU, and Tony Blair's illegal Iraq War was based on the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction (he didn't). We went to war on an untrue premise which cost hundreds of thousands of lies and has left Iraq (and the Christian church there) devastated.
2) God is just and he calls out injustice throughout his Word in the strongest terms. The evil that God spends the most time denouncing, both in the Old Testament and as the man Christ, is unjust and cruel treatment of the poor. People often talk about the "moral issues" being of Christian concern, meaning abortion and gay marriage. The economy IS a moral issue. How we spend and organise our money as a nation is the most fundamental and far-reaching moral issue in question. We must pray for justice and act for justice, knowing that that either outcome will be applied to our Christian brothers and sisters as well as every precious human being in our nation. The recent report about anti-semitism in Labour under Corbyn, written after hundreds of survivors of systemic racism within the party submitted robust evidence of the mistreatment they had suffered, should shock, sadden and motivate us. We must stand with them and other survivors of injustice.
3) God is good and he defines goodness. He is kind, he is loving and he values each human being. Compare this to Boris Johnson calling black people "piccaninnies", gay men "tank-topped bum boys" and compared Muslim women wearing the niqab to "letterboxes". Donald Trump has boasted of sexually assaulting women, saying, "Grab 'em by the pussy...when you're a star, they let you do it". What a heinous abuse of power. He said these things before he got elected. Not all politicians are the same. There are men and women who are kind, and good, and have integrity - more than others. John McCain, the Republican who lost to Barack Obama, made one of the most gracious concession speeches in history, praising Obama, rejoicing over the election of an Black president and calling for unity. Simply because everyone is sinful and the world is fallen does not mean it is impossible to find people with better characters than others. Again, because we have lived in an era of relative democratic consensus and peace for several years, people tend to think that now all politicians fall into an area of moderation. They do not any more. We are on a real trajectory towards nationalism and authoritarianism and unrest and if we do not speak up for these values then we contribute towards a very dangerous path.
The one time that Christian leaders do most engage in politics is when our own freedoms are at stake. The basis for this activism is usually that the government's actions are violating our own constitutional law, such as the most recent move to argue legally that churches meeting is an essential service and that lockdown of our services violates freedom of worship. If we believe it's worth fighting for when it affects us personally, surely we should fight for justice when it affects the most vulnerable? There are many Christian organisations that do this; Hope at Home which works to protect the human rights of trafficking survivors is one such example. But I do not think that these issues should be solely the domain of specific charities. If Christian church leaders speak up when the injustice reaches our mostly middle-class, affluent churches, should they not speak up for the most vulnerable too and speak out against the utter evil and lies that are being propagated by those with the most power?
John Piper recently wrote an article condemning "flagrant boastfulness, vulgarity, immorality, and factiousness" as "self-incriminating, but also because they are nation-corrupting. They move out from centers of influence to infect whole cultures. The last five years bear vivid witness to this infection at almost every level of society." He wrote that he would not be voting for Trump or Biden based on their values. This is sorely overdue and very much needed and welcome. The Christian church should and must be standing up against this kind of vile leadership.
We often shy away, or are told to shy away, from talking about politics or "being political" because of the risk of division. Of course, Piper has received a huge backlash, but that kind of division is the right kind. To oppose violence and cruelty we must divide. Jesus was incredibly divisive. He constantly called out the religious leaders for their hypocrisy, injustice and mistreatment of the people. He ended up being killed by them, he was that divisive. Unity in this sense can only accelerate us in a dangerous direction. Of course, when we talk about these things we must put every effort into doing so in a respectful and gracious manner - something that is difficult when the issues are emotive and the stakes are high, but all the more important because of that. We have the Gospel and Jesus as the source of grace to oil the wheels of conversation.
The Christian church is called to have a prophetic voice. We must speak to eternal matters, and eternal matters start now. What do we have to offer? The God we serve offers truth, justice and goodness and we must show that now. Unless that pervades the earthly sphere of politics it is meaningless to people, and rightly so. We've lost our voice in recent years, and it's no coincidence that meanwhile society has plummeted down a trajectory of untruth and corruption. We must pray and act so that we find it again.
