We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Jesus and Democracy
Question: I’ve heard that the reason Jesus didn’t speak up on political issues was because he didn’t have the benefit of living in a democracy. Since we do, don’t we have a duty both to God and our country to be involved in politics?
Answer: If the reason Jesus didn’t speak up on political issues was because he didn’t live in a democracy, how do we explain the fact his contemporaries were constantly speaking up and arguing about politics? The fact of the matter is that, while ancient Jews obviously couldn’t vote by casting a ballot, they had plenty of other ways of “voting” if they were interested in trying to alter the political landscape. Some refused to pay taxes. Others sabotaged various Roman endeavors. And still others took up the sword and assassinated Roman solders. These were the very political issues ancient Jews debated so intensely. Yet, neither Jesus nor his disciples (once they got clear on how Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God differed from the kingdom of the world, e.g., Mk 8:27-38; 9:30-37; 10:32-45) showed any interest discussing these options.
On top of this, Jesus had plenty of other ways of affecting politics if this is what he was interested in doing. As he told his disciples, he could have called “twelve legions of angels” to defend himself and defeat his opponents if that is what he was concerned with (Mt 26:53). In fact, at one point in his ministry he had all the authority of the kingdoms of the world offered to him on a silver platter. He could have instantly given the entire world the best version of worldly government imaginable. Yet Jesus rejected this offer as a temptation of the devil (Lk 4:5-7), for the Kingdom Jesus came to usher into this world is not a new and improved – or even “the best imaginable” – version of worldly government.
Clearly, Jesus’ lack of interest in worldly government was not merely due to the unfortunate form of government he happened to be under. Rather, his anti-political stance reflects the radically unique way of Jesus, and, therefore, the radically unique way we who follow him are called to live.
Photo credit: garrettc via Visual Hunt / CC BY-NC
Category: General
Tags: Jesus, Kingdom Living, Politics
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Related Reading
The Cruciform Beauty of Horrific Divine Portraits
“Only a person who is aware of the crucified Christ can properly understand Scripture.” Luther (Table Talks) In the last three posts I’ve been wrestling with how insights from Matthew Bate’s book, The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation might help us interpret violent portraits of God in the OT in a way that discloses how…
A Blessing for 2015
Image by Jean-Michel Guisiano via Flickr In the Kingdom, there is no waiting. There is only now. The time to be fully awake and fully alive is now. The time to abide in Christ and to live passionately in love is now. The time to live in God’s presence and let God be “all in all” is…
Enemy Love
Rob Hogeslag via Compfight Zack Hunt over at The American Jesus shared the story of Paul Keane who offered his own burial plot to Tamerlan Tsarnaev if his family could not find a cemetery that would accept his body. You’ll remember that Tsarnaev was one of the men who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings and…
Revolting Against Classism
All fallen societies and religions have a tendency to rank people according to class. All have ways of separating the insiders from the outsiders, the holy from the unholy and the more important people from the less important people. Jesus revolted against classism by the way he lived, a way defined by the Kingdom. Now,…
Myth Become History
The Gospel of John tells of the coming of Jesus in an unusual way. John writes: In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. Everything came into existence through him. Not one thing that exists was made without him. He was the source of life, and…
The Cross and the Witness of Violent Portraits of God
In my previous post I noted that the prevalent contemporary evangelical assumption that the only legitimate meaning of a passage of Scripture is the one the author intended is a rather recent, and very secular, innovation in Church history. It was birthed in the post-Enlightenment era (17th -18th centuries) when secular minded scholars began to…