Waiting
Public Domain Photo from PICRYL
Now – at last! – we turn to ask what God’s thoughts might be on the big issues of our day, like race, the right to life (or choice), poverty, immigration, marriage, war, guns, and a few others. I wish it were simple. Political question #1? Here is a Bible verse that settles it! Question #2? Another verse. But no single Bible verse clinches anything. We read the Bible across a gulf of 2000+ years and on the other side of the world, in a vastly different culture and technological epoch. The Bible is like a giant mural, with thousands of brush strokes, and we’re meant to step back and ponder the whole thing. When we do, we realize that it’s complicated!
… which makes the Bible strangely helpful for us with complex, not easily fixable problems. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the mess we’re in didn’t develop suddenly in the last session of Congress or in a single Supreme Court decision. Multiple events, cultural drift, good decisions with unforeseen consequences hidden inside, and poor decisions muddle things. We live in a fallen world, and we are broken, sinful people – the most maddening result of which is we constantly find ourselves having to choose between two unhappy options. No wonder we can’t agree on policy.
But there are issues on which we as Christians should have total clarity, even if we lack clarity on specific policies. Example #1? God’s people have an absolute obligation to care about and for the poor. We love Jesus by loving the poor (Matthew 25)! Voting, for followers of Jesus, cannot be reduced to Who will fatten my pocketbook? We hold in our hearts those who have no advocate, who cling to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, children without means – and we strive for a politics that will lift them up and empower them.
A fair test of the holiness of any campaign was voiced by Jim Wallis: “When the voice of God is invoked on behalf of those who have no voice, it is time to listen. But when the name of God is used to benefit the interests of those who are speaking, it is time to be very careful.” It’s a “Soul of the Nation” issue. God would not have us jettison as our motto Emma Lazarus’s words (in bronze on the Statue of Liberty base!), “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.” Freedom, in Christianity and in America, is rising to this calling.
Of course, we’ve been warned about “toxic charity,” how many programs designed to help the poor don’t, or actually serve the well-off – or harm the poor. But no glitch in a given effort to help the poor to flourish absolves us of the responsibility to be relentless in our passion to care, share, sacrifice, get engaged, and befriend.
Mind you, knowing and abiding by this biblical mandate doesn’t settle which candidate or which party might actually achieve the most for the disenfranchised. But as Christians, we lean toward those who care. I love what John Kasich said during his ill-fated campaign for the Republican presidential nomination: “When we arrive in heaven, St. Peter won’t ask if we kept government small or toed the party line; but he will ask What have you done for the poor?”
Rev. James C. Howell
Myers Park UMC Photo
The Rev. James C. Howell is senior pastor of Myers Park United Methodist Church in Charlotte, N.C. This post is republished with permission from his blog series, The Election, Your Spirituality, & the Soul of Our Nation