Sunday, July 19, 2015

REGARDING TWO PRIMARY MODES OF CHRISTIAN POLITICAL ACTION

If the Bible and two-thousand years of Christian tradition teach us anything they teach that there IS no universal Christian way of living one’s life or structuring one’s society and that God in Christ’s ultimate judgment regarding any SPECIFIC action or event is not within the realm of human knowledge, even divinely inspired human knowledge.

One should pray with all one’s heart, soul, and mind to DO the will of God, but it is not in our capacity to KNOW the will of God and anyone who tells us otherwise is a charlatan.

But if one takes an expansive view of politics to include ALL action, private or public, that affects society then there are two MODES of action that, it seems to me, are appropriate in every age and every culture.

The first mode involves working WITHIN the existing structures of one’s society and culture - a society and culture that the principles of Creation and Fall describe as essentially good yet thoroughly corrupted by Sin.

These principles should empower us to work to PRESERVE such good as such fallen entities retain through defending them and working to change them from within.

The second mode involves preaching and resistance  AGAINST the existing structures of one’s society and culture when they become overwhelmed by corruption from Sin.

The two modes are not, in principle, opposed to each other though, in extreme circumstances such as the Holocaust, they may be mutually exclusive of  the other.

Political action, whether within one’s family, one’s nation, or one’s culture by way of EITHER of these modes necessitates the inevitable compromise of one’s personal virtue through working within environments that are systemically corrupt and sinful because the Bible teaches that ALL people  and movements and institutions and societies are systemically corrupt and sinful.

And the gospel frees us from a morbid or even vain preoccupation with our own personal moral purity.

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