Outline

Both of us believe that Christians must be extra cautious when engaging with political powers. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. When we are continuously forced to choose the lesser of two evils, we slowly lose our ability to identify evil. The greatest power we have at our disposal to change the world is the power of God’s Spirit present in God’s kingdom. 

So, I want to focus on the implications and application of this belief. 

How can we harmonize a rightful caution about political powers with the liberation theology proposed by theologians who are a part of groups who have been historically oppressed and marginalized? 

• Position of the privileged 

What does it look like for Christians to speak truth to power? When should we do so? 

• Abortion
• Health Care
• War

What should Christians do when egregious things are happening around us? 

What should Christians do when they are invited into the political meetings?

• Can and should Christians hold political office?

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Watch the Entire Series

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Transcript

I am very weary of what goes on in the seats of power, and I think there is a definite thread in Scripture that tells us to be quite weary and to not always expect, great things to happen in those seats of power.

Hello, and welcome to the Thinking Theologically podcast, where we teach you how and why you should think theologically. I am your host, Spencer Shaw, and this is another episode in the series of episodes that we’re doing throughout the course of this month. As we are thinking theologically about politics. And this episode, we have a guest with us who is a good friend of the podcast.

Not the first time that he’s been on, and I’m sure it is not the last time that he will be on the podcast. Jake Dobyns. Jake, thank you so much for being on once again.

You know, Jake is one of my favorite people to just talk theology with and that also means, though sometimes we can get ourselves into trouble when we talk about theology. We can be tempted to wade into some of the theological questions that can get a bit controversial. I guess. and that’s exactly what we’re going to do as a part of this episode.

So if you’ve listened to the ones before this, Jake and I have begun giving a bit of a theology about politics and what Jake and I are wanting to do as a part of this episode is we’re wanting to continue that conversation, but transition a little bit away from the theology of politics and start to think about the implications and the applications of our theology of politics that Jack and I are laying out through the course of this month.

So both Jake and I, and I’m going to let Jake talk for himself here in just a moment. But to kind of set the stage, Jake and I tend to be on the same page with a lot of the theology that Jack and I’ve been talking about throughout this month and will continue to. We believe that Christians must be extra cautious when engaging with political powers.

That absolute power corrupts absolutely. I know that I, we, I was talking about politics with the youth group class that I teach on on Wednesday nights, and just how horrible the political system is. And they were like, why don’t you run for president? And that was my answer. I was like, well, I’m a little nervous of of power because I do believe that absolute power tends to corrupt.

Absolutely. We believe that when we are continuously forced to choose the lesser of two evils, we slowly lose our ability to identify evil. I think we’ve seen that a lot within Christianity and the church’s relationship to politics, particularly in America, when time after time after time, you’re choosing the lesser of two evils. Eventually you run the risk of it no longer looking evil to you, because that’s just what you have become accustomed to.
 

We believe that the greatest power we have at our disposal to change the world is the power of God, spirit that is present in God’s kingdom. The power that is seen in the cross and the resurrection of Jesus, and not any human or political power that we can achieve for ourselves. I will say before I turn it over to Jake to talk a little bit about where he’s coming from theologically, about politics.

I think I could say that when it comes to like political engagement, both Jake, myself and Jack are all, like I said, cautious and wary of what that looks like because there are a lot of pitfalls to fall into. I think Jack, of the three of us, may be the the most pro political engagement, though I wouldn’t define him and nor would he as pro political engagement.

And then there’s me. And then Jake is probably the least pro of all of us, but we’re like, all at the same place for the most part. We’re just a slight see things slightly differently, which is why I think that Jake will be a good conversation partner in this series that we’re doing. So, Jake, I’m going to turn it over to you real quick to give some of your thoughts about some of these theological things, about politics so that I’m not speaking for you, and then we can transition into thinking about some of the implications and applications of that theology.

Yeah. It’s. It’s funny you say that about, like, a recovering. I don’t remember the exact language that you use, but you could kind of define me as that as well. I know in in high school, I was very, very interested in politics and government and, and things like that and very outspoken about it. And I’ve, I’ve changed my tune over the years, and I think it’s been a lot of the Holy Spirit working on me and in my heart to, to do some of those changes.

And I think one of the reasons is, oddly enough, I think there is a connection between politics and ministry in a weird way, because I’ve known some people who were in politics when I was in Oklahoma, and they mentioned to me they were like, you know, you would be a good politician. And that the the way they were like the way that you carry yourself and being able to speak and explain things, and that’s what they have to do a lot of the times.

And that’s a more positive look at what they do in, you know, there’s also you talk about politics in the church or in business. There’s a lot of, you know, you’ve got to shake a lot of hands. You’ve got to kiss up to a lot of people. The money’s always an issue, but that kind of a thing. And then I knew a woman who was a big time lawyer back in the day and mentioned that she was like, the way that you read and interact with the Bible is very similar to the way that we have to interact with the law and that, you know, you’re reading something like the Constitution that was written a long time ago and how does it apply today, and what were the intentions there? And I always found those comments very interesting because I was like, yeah, in a way, there is a, connection there, which is why I think we’re weary of it, because we both you and I, have seen the problems that it causes when we become too political in the church, whether that’s with specific political parties or just with ministers desiring power and control and money and manipulation and all the church hurt that has come because of that deconstruction, that’s come because of that.

I know you’ve talked about that on your podcast. Hopefully one day I will talk about that a little bit as as well, for those of you that are listening, but there’s there’s a lot of reasons to be weary of it. And some of the implications and applications that we want to talk about in this episode. A lot of them have to do with some pushback that people give for everything that Jake and I have said and everything that Jack and I are talking about in the course of this series, on this podcast of of when you’re weary of political power, when your position is we address this with a bottom up approach.

We live as the church. We live in the power of the spirit. We display the love of God and a cruciform life in everything that we do. And that’s the way we impact and help our world. And we hope that that moves and carries forward. There are some pushback and some questions that people ask, and I think a lot of them are legitimate.

I think whatever your theology of politics is, there’s always some shortcomings to it, because I think I’m one that believes that government is almost like a necessary evil. You don’t want the world to just be anarchy and let everybody do what they want to do. But at the same time, if absolute power corrupts absolutely, there’s always going to be problems.

When you have institutions of power. So there’s not a perfect way of dealing with it. I don’t believe either, but with that being said, that’s why I want to address some of the, pushback here. One, we’ve got four questions that we want to talk about that are, try to balance out this approach to politics. The first one is how can we harmonize a rightful caution about political powers with the liberation theology proposed by theologians who are a part of groups who have been historically oppressed and marginalized?

This is the question of. Is this position that Jake and myself and Jack are speaking about? Is it one that’s only able to be made from a position of privilege that is liberation? Theologians who are a part of groups that have been marginalized and oppressed, have tended to believe will sense the gospel reaches out, as Jesus does in the Gospel of Luke, to people who are poor and a marginalized and pressed the poor, the widow, the orphan.
 

All of these groups sometimes comes to care for them and to pull them out of their oppression, especially when their oppression is by government and by rules and by laws. You might have to get political. So you think of in American history issues such as slavery or the civil rights movement, where there were a lot of, churches and religious figures that spearheaded those movements and did it through political means.

It was we have to pass laws that prevent the oppression and the marginalization of groups of people. We can’t just sit back and say, this is wrong. We have to actually do something about it. And so some would say that to say, be weary of politics, start from the ground up is something that you can say if you’re not marginalized or oppressed, you’re in a position of privilege.

And so I can say, hey, don’t worry about that, because it’s not actually affecting me. But for those who are impacted by leaders and by policies, they sing a different tune. And you could even turn this into people today that are struggling with putting food on the table because of something like the price of groceries, like the the price of groceries affects us all, but some it affects a lot more than others.

And so when your, socio economically poor or struggling, your concept of how God’s liberation impacts you may be something as simple as political things happening. So inflation goes down and the price of goods goes down. So you can better feed your family, which is something that you’re concerned with, that maybe someone who is a little more privileged position isn’t.

Anyway, that’s a lot of introduction to that question. I’m sure I could say more, but Jake, I want to turn it over to you to get some of your thoughts about, how maybe we balance a bottom up approach, allowing on the power of God rather than political powers with some of these liberation theology questions that I think are right to ask.

I really like your point there about the people remain. So government and government leaders are going to change the people in the church here where we are, and our cities and our towns in this country, that’s going to remain. And when we get. Because I wonder if part of the collapse of the church is because the church got so connected to government, and we have a government in the United States that it seems to be collapsing, not like tomorrow, but things aren’t going great politically.

Things aren’t going great in the church. And I wonder if some of that is that if if we’re so tied to the government and the government collapses, the church collapses with it, which shouldn’t be the case. And so I really like what you say about where we’re going to be. What one thought that I have is I’m teaching or I’m preaching through first John and in first John chapter three, John, he the first three chapters in first John is kind of hints at what we think of with first John, and that is love.

John kind of hints at that of what it means to know God and to follow God, to be known by God, to be filled with the spirit, to live in truth. All the different things that John talks about, he he mentions loving one another, loving your brother and sister, love, love. And then he he dives into a long discourse about what that means when you get into chapter four.

But at the end of chapter three, he has the statement that the love for God is when you have the actual Greek phrases the life of the world. The NIV translates that material possessions, which is the idea that when you have a good life, when you have the things that the world has to offer, and you have a brother or sister that’s in need, and you don’t help them, do you really have God in God’s love?

Dwelling in you is his question, which is similar to what James says of you know, someone is hungry and you’re like, just go and be filled. Who does that actually help? And that idea of that our love actually puts things into action and helping people and some scholars, this is debatable. Some scholars think that sitting behind John’s words is Deuteronomy 15, and whether or not Deuteronomy 15 is sitting behind it or not.

I think Deuteronomy 15 is a good conversation partner, because that chapter starts with God saying every seven years all debts are forgiven, and the purposes that Israel goes into the Promised Land and God is going to constantly fill them and bless them. And life happens. People get into debt. But if every seven years it’s forgiven, you keep people from being perpetually in debt and poor and marginalized and oppressed, and they get to be filled and prosperous, that God’s intends for them to be in the land.

Now that leads in to the statement that it says, I don’t remember the exact language, but the NIV says something like, don’t let this evil thought enter your mind. And the thought is that I when you see a fellow Israelite who’s poor and in need, you don’t help them because you say, well, the seventh year’s coming and they’re going to have their debt forgiven then anyway.

And the in the text there talks about don’t be close fisted, but be open handed in the way that you’re caring for the poor and don’t have the evil thought of, well, in the next couple years they’ll have everything figured out. And I wonder if sometimes that’s what we do with politics, if we’re like, well, yes, there’s these poor people, but if we just get so-and-so into the office of president, that’ll fix their problem.

And that’s my rationale for not helping them now. And in Deuteronomy, God says that’s an evil thought, to push it off to something and not helping them now. And so I think one of my things would be, yes, government in certain instances is important, especially when you’re talking about caring for the oppressed and marginalized. But we can’t use that as an excuse not to do things.

Now as people of God, as churches. And I think sometimes our problem is less that the government’s doing this and that, and the problem is that we’re doing nothing. And so one thing that I’ve told my church is a bottom up approach says, I’m going to do everything that I can. We as a church are going to do everything at our disposal.

And at some point the things that we’re doing are going to bump up against politics. When you say, I want to help the poor and you’re doing everything that you can, eventually that’s going to bump up into questions of policy and what policies are keeping the poor, poor and you’re going to have to do something about that. And I’ve got we’ve got some more questions that will dive into that.

But at some point it’s going to bump up against politics. When you care for the health of people, at some point that’s going to bump up into policies relating to health care, and that’s just what it’s going to do. And if, as Jack and I have mentioned in the series, if we’re going to be people who engage in politics, speak about politics and vote in politics in a way that loves our neighbor more than ourselves, like if our goal is to help other people and not to be selfish about what’s going to help me, then at some point, we have to ask those questions of policies and things that are harming the people that we’re trying to care for. But what I always say is that’s not where we start, which I think Jake is what you were saying. It’s not where we we don’t put all of our eggs in that basket, even though we can’t ever get separated from it, like you think of. I think of the civil rights movement that began really in pulpits and churches.

But that’s my point. It began in pulpits, in churches. It began with proclaiming the Word of God. It began in a liturgical worship context and then grew from there. And that’s what we see the early church doing as well, is out of their worship and things. Things grew and spread. And eventually you get Christianity as the religion of the empire, which does not go very well historically.

By the way, if you know your history of the West, that was it. Some good things happened because of some laws were passed that that did help things a little bit, but then you get a very bloody history after that, which is should caution us a little bit. But I think that’s what I would say of you do have to balance it.

You can’t have both feet in one camp and just say, well, no politics or all politics, but I think you start with the church and then discern when that that bumps up against politics, which eventually a lot of these issues. Well, Jake, you have any more thoughts before we.

That’s a great point, because you think about our job as the church to be. You know, people, I. I hear people talk about that. The church is, like, supposed to be the conscience of our society. And I don’t disagree with that. My caution is what you just said. Is that his store historically, we’ve done a terrible job at that.

We used the Bible to support slavery. We used the Bible to support segregation. The churches in Germany aligned the national church, aligned with the Nazi Party, and went along with it because of issues of of of power. You think of in Europe throughout most of its history. When you flip, you flip flop between a Protestant, especially after the Protestant Reformation, you’d flip flop between a Protestant and a Catholic leader who would kill everybody of the other group.

And so we killed each other because of Protestant or Catholic alliances. And so the church historically has done a poor job of this and a lot of cases. And that’s not every Christian I don’t even know. That’s the majority of Christians. And I don’t know how you prove any of that. My point is, is that the church is not immune from some of these issues.

And so we have to be, I think, very introspective about who we are and who were caring about and maybe the place to start in dealing with these. A lot of a lot of these things is for churches to move beyond being people that merely believe something. maybe we need to define a Christian. Not at not so much, though.

It’s important, but not so much as someone who believes the Bible or believes this creed, or goes to church or whatever it is, but a believer in Jesus who then cares for the people that Jesus cared about and I wonder if if sometimes we as a church have placed our focus in the wrong place, and it’s led us to sometimes be on the wrong side of history, and that’s something else that we have to be cautious about.

So along that line, the next question that I have is, what does it look like for Christians to speak truth to power, and when should we do so? So a lot of these examples that we’ve been talking about of when the church is doing the right thing and hopefully we are, though historically we know sometimes we have problems with that.

But historically when we are doing the right thing and things bump up against political powers, we want to care for the poor and the marginalized, and there are laws that are preventing that from happening or actively oppressing people or whatever it may be. And sometimes we have to speak truth that these things are wrong. A slavery is wrong.

Segregation is wrong. The killing of Jews is wrong. The killing of Catholics or Protestants is wrong. If you want to to go through history, I list a couple of things here about our world today. if you think about abortion, if we as Christians want to be, I want to say that all life matters. And so, by the way, that’s not just people before they are born, but also after they are born.

At the end of life, from conception to the tomb, all of those. Then sometimes we have to say, hey, some of these things that are being done is wrong. It’s evil. It’s it’s bad. And b vocal, health care. I put that that’s a big pull. Health care is so tied up in politics. And again, if we care about life and say we care about the health and life of people, then sometimes we have to speak out and say, hey, these things that are going on, the decisions that people in power are making or negatively impacting the health of real human beings created in the image of God, issues of war that are government things going to war again, most of the things just have to do with our sanctity of life if we want to people to live, if we want to be pro-life, as I think God is, then sometimes we might have to speak out and say, hey, this war, this killing that’s going on, whether it’s us or other countries, sometimes we have to speak up and say, that is that’s wrong, that that’s evil.

That’s not the way that God would have it. And so I’ll turn it over to you. What does it look like for Christians to do this? When do we do it? And we do have a biblical precedent for it. And a lot of people point out, you know, John the Baptist, when Herod was with his brother’s wife, I believe it was.

And he spoke truth to power. And it didn’t end very well for him, by the way. but we do have a biblical precedent that the prophets did a lot of that speaking truth to power, particularly because of the poor in the marginalized and the oppressed. But, Jake, what might that look like today?

No, I. I think you’re right. I, I saw in an interview it was, Matt Chandler who’s had a bit of a questionable history a couple of years ago, so I. I don’t know a ton about that, but he was talking about politics, and he was, talking specifically about into. Right. And Michael Bird’s, new book on the political powers.

And we’re going to have a little bit more to say on that as well. And I don’t know if he was quoting from them or summarizing or if this was his own thought. I’m not exactly sure where he got it from, but. Oh, I liked what he said. He said when he was talking about the problem of Partizan politics, he said that the left wants the kingdom without the king and the right wants the king without the kingdom.

And he gave examples of some of this things. He said, you look at, you talk to the left about caring for the poor and all for the poor, the marginalized, social justice, all for it. But when you talk about some of the the bigger ethical issues and truth and some of that kind of stuff, that’s where you sometimes get into areas of of relativism and everyone just kind of do their, their own thing.

And you, you kind of lose the king of no, like you said, we we believe that God created us and designed us, and there’s a way to have the fullest life in the midst of how God designed us. Not everybody just kind of doing whatever is true to them. And then he was like, but then you go over to the right and you talk about some of these issues of, of truth and of design and of law and of order and like, yes, let let’s go in and do all those things.

But then, you know, you want to start talking about social justice or the poor or health care or something like that. And they don’t want to have those kind of conversations. And so you do get into some issues with the just the way our political system is, is aligned and that when we speak truth to power, we that’s being political.

But how do we do that without being and being Partizan? Because one of the other things that that we fall into, and I think it’s a big trap, is when we start ranking issues. So when abortion, so caring for unborn life, which I think is absolutely essential, becomes more important than something like health care, which is caring for people after they’re born or even in the process of being born.

I don’t know how many people listening know how much it costs to give birth, but it’s way too much. I the that’s that. So when when abortion becomes more important than the health of everyone who is born, we have a problem. Because when that becomes more important, it becomes obvious of, well, this is the only party that you can vote for as a Christian.

And the opposite is true as well. So. So I don’t want to be biased in what I’m saying here, because I know some that do the opposite of well know that the health of people who are born is more important than those who have yet to be born. And if that’s the case, then Christians can only vote for one party.

But when we say no, both are important because both are human beings created in the image of God. Now things become difficult, things become gray, and we we have to be very discerning of what we do there. And speaking truth to power in those cases would tell both sides, hey, good, we celebrate you’re doing good in caring for these people.

You are failing at caring for these. And I, I think it does go both ways of we have to be willing to celebrate where people get things right and where people get things wrong for all candidates in all parties. And because I see a lot of I’m of this party and nothing the other one says is right, it’s all wrong.

It’s all horrible. It’s all that. There’s nothing to be to celebrate in the. And that’s just that. That tends to not be correct, not to get I don’t want to get to political in specific instances. But right now there are things that both candidates are saying. There’s some over the there’s some overlap in their tax policies. And what’s interesting is people on both sides don’t recognize that their well, their tax policy is terrible.

All of it. And I’m like, well, there’s a couple points that both are saying like there’s overlap. And so maybe the correct thing would say like that’s good. And I don’t like that because of x, Y or Z. But we tend to put our blinders on when we’re looking at the other party. And so that’s that’s also one of my cautions of speaking truth to power is both sides of the partizan coin.

Yeah, I, I think that’s a good point. It’s, We’re. It’s a lot easier to first off to to critique what you know, but, you know, from a preaching perspective, if I’m getting up to preach and pretty much all of my audience are Republicans, what? What good is it going to do us for me to critique a Democratic, a Democrat position because they already know the critique like they already know it?

What they might be blinded to is maybe some good things about the other party, or some shortcomings of the way that they’re thinking about the world, that that’s where their blind spots are going to be. And the opposite would be true. If I stand up in front of the congregation, that’s pretty much all, Democrat or liberal, progressive leaning.

Then they know all the critiques of the conservative Republican side where their blind spots are going to be is is the opposite, where the other party might have some good things to say and where they might have some shortcomings. And so I think that’s important as well. And that, that that gets us into some problems sometimes of when we hear people speak and critique our mind goes back to Partizan politics, and we want to accuse that, well, you’re only saying that because you’re a Republican, or you’re only saying that because you’re a Democrat.

And at least for a lot of people that I know, it’s like, no, we’re citizens of the kingdom of God. And that’s what we’re speaking from. And a lot of the times that critique both sides and it’s not. I’ve heard people say this, and I think it’s true. The kingdom of God is not like the party in between the Democrats and Republicans.

That balance is that it’s it’s own separate thing. It is outside of the political spectrum. It is not. You don’t put the kingdom of God on the political spectrum. It is outside of the political spectrum. And it critiques the entire spectrum. And that’s when we speak truth to power. That’s what I think both of us are saying that we have to be better at is critiquing the entire system, and not just the the other party.

And in doing that, we we enter into politics. Like you said, I think very well without becoming Partizan in that process, the yeah.

Yeah.

So we’ve. We’ve kind of talked about this a little bit, but I specifically want to think about this in the context of, what should Christians do when egregious things are happening around us? So it’s it’s one thing. And this is where you get back to some of that liberation stuff that we were talking about earlier, which I agree with you, Jake, is the I think, the strongest argument against what we’ve said and where we’ve got to find the most balance with.

So when I’m thinking of egregious, of, I think it’s one thing to say something like health care, which I think is very important that we as Christians don’t think about enough, is caring for the health and the bodies of human beings who are created in the image of God. And I think part of that is a bad theology of a bad anthropology, a bad theology of the human being and of the human body and of of heaven and of resurrection and of new creation.

And here on this podcast, we did an entire series on new creation where I said just about at every turn. The reason this is important is because it impacts how we care for human bodies who were created in the image of God. If we’re waiting for a new, renewed creation and the resurrection of our bodies. But that’s important.

But I think things go to another level when you when you bring up some of the issues that we’ve brought up of, like slavery or the Holocaust and Nazi Germany of like really egregious things that are these problems that we’ve brought up, but like times ten, like things where I’ve mentioned how we have a problem when we rank things, but there are certain things that do rank at the top, right.

And I would put something like enslaving a race of people, as that’s something that kind of rises up to the top, killing millions of people who are part of a particular race. That’s something that kind of rises to the top, that maybe we have to do something more in those cases, then just speaking truth to power, maybe like, is there, there’s one thing to say, hey, we need a better health care system, or we need to lower inflation and make food more accessible.

And the genocide of millions of people. And and maybe part of that is the urgency of doing something. I don’t know, but but I think that that would be another strong critique in the midst of all of this is someone could say, yeah, what you’re saying may work in these cases, but does that hold up in some of the major oppression and genocide that has happened by governments throughout human history?

And so I’m just curious what you would say to that aspect of what we’ve been talking about.

Yeah. And I think this is.

Very difficult. And I liked what you said about how we. We can’t deny that these exceptionally egregious things have happened in history and that things will continue to happen, but that we can’t we can’t build our day to day theology on them, necessarily. And so this would be my suggestion, and I’ve kind of been, pushing this at my church lately, and it might end up being our theme for for next year.

But I’ve talked a lot about the, the story of the Bible, the story of, of God that I think is a story about a person. It’s a story about Jesus. And I think that the reason that God gives us this story is so that we we can become a part of the story, that that we can become such a part of Jesus story, that we begin to think like Jesus and speak like Jesus and live like Jesus and see the world as Jesus sees the world.

And and recently in a sermon I gave this example, I said, you know, if God gave us a list of, of rules and one of them was murder, you know something that’s it’s wrong to murder, which is true for all times and all people in all places. But it’s still contextual because I said, think about some of the issues that we’re dealing today that didn’t exist, at least not in the same way in the first century, for example.

So abortion, there was a form of it, but not like modern abortion war. There was war. But it’s not the same as modern war self-defense. People, defended themselves in the first century, but it’s very different than what we’re talking about in self-defense today. And so we have to ask the questions. Is it murder in those situations? Is modern abortion is modern, war is modern self-defense, is that murder?

And we have to ask those questions. And for some people it may be, well, that’s a simple answer. And maybe it is a simple answer. I would argue it’s not, but maybe it is. My point is you still have to ask the question. And so a list of rules doesn’t do us all that much help because things do change.

Even something that’s like eternally true is that the application, as things change can become a little bit tricky. But when we can immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus and begin to think and live and speak and see the world in the way that Jesus did, what that allows us to do is you can place us in any situation at any time, and we can ask that age old question, well, what would Jesus do?

What would he think would be the right thing to do? How would he see this situation? And we can discern what to do. And I think that discernment takes place best in the context of a community of people who are immersing themselves in that story of Jesus. So within the church. And so I think my answer would be that going back to what we’ve said, to start out being the church and immerse yourself in that story, and when we find ourselves in these situations, we can discern what to do.

And the more immersed we are in the story of Jesus, the better we’re going to be able to figure out what to do. And that goes back to your point of doing what we can. And that changes in in different situations. And so, you know, right now when we’re talking about politics, we can bring up some of these things that have happened throughout history which are important to think about.

But at the end of the day, right now, we have to develop a theology for what you and I as Americans in 2024, what we need to do. And so before we got started, I brought up, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And I think he’s a perfect example. You know, Bonhoeffer talks about cheap grace, grace that doesn’t require anything of you.

And Bonhoeffer, in essence, said, in essence, what all of his writings did was say, we have to live as the church, as Christians live like Jesus. And Bonhoeffer, in dealing with one of the most egregious things that’s happened in human history, in the Holocaust and in Nazi Germany. He and other Christians like him. What they were doing was they were figuring out in this situation where we are with the things that we have at our disposal, what would Jesus do?

And they sought to live that out. And you and I may not agree with everything that Bonhoeffer did or wanted to do, and that’s fine. Hindsight’s always 2020. Right? But but the point is, the way that people like Bonhoeffer or the way that that people who were a part of, as you mentioned, like the Underground Railroad to help slaves with a lot of what they were doing, were just asking those questions of of how do we live out who we are, how do we live like Jesus in this situation?

And so that just brings to light that we can’t you can’t build a theology that perfectly answers every single hypothetical. That’s just not necessarily realistic. But what you can say is that if our goal is to be like Jesus and to immerse ourselves in Jesus story, that’s the foundation for us, then to build a theology for anything that faces us.

So, you know, Jake, the last time you were on, we talked about technology that that’s a prime example of that something new that we have to build a theology around, and we build that on the foundation of the story of Jesus.

All right. Last question. last thing that that that we’ll discuss here is what should Christians do when they are invited to the political meetings? I steal this question from into right. And Michael Byrd’s book on the the powers and one of the things that they ask in there is if you live is the church power of the Holy Spirit, cruciform life, bottom up approach that we’ve been talking about.

And society, culture begins to change. One day you as a Christian might be invited to the political meeting. You may be invited to the table to give your thoughts and opinions on what should happen. And that question arises from into right in the UK, where people like Kim actually do that, that that they’re part of the House of Lords and they’re actually invited in to, speak.

And so some of that does happen still, today. And so that, I guess, also leads to the question, can and should Christians hold political office? So a lot of our theology is built on me and you and most of us who we can engage in politics through voting. But that’s kind of the extent, right? We can donate money to a candidate or a party as well, but we’re not actually the people in the meetings at the table making the decisions, voting in Congress.

We’re not the ones doing that. But one day we may be asked to be. And what do we do in that situation? What do we do for us to to run for office on a local or a state or even a a national level? Being invited to the table as a Christian. And that might be our caution about power.

That’s where things become a little bit difficult when those scenarios happen. And they do happen at times. So, Jake, what are your thoughts there?

Yeah, I I kind of I kind of feel the same way. It’s it’s something that I don’t. I don’t have a good answer to the question because it’s. You’ve got these two sides of. Well, yeah, I think we need and should want that Christians who are involved in what’s going on. Because if we care about how government and policies is affecting and treating people, then we should care about that a little bit.

But that that belief that I do think that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Can you engage in politics that is all about winning certain demographics and making compromises and still hold on to your values is something that I’m also weary of, and I, I don’t know, I’m I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m not saying it’s it’s possible. And I’m to a degree, a lot of this has the same thing as speaking truth to power, right?

If you’re invited to the table, if you’re invited to the meeting, then speak truth to power. Taking the position of power, though, becomes a little bit difficult and I guess one thing that I would say is I don’t think anybody is called to power in, in, in terms of, if you feel like you are called to a position of power to fix things, you’re not, I, I think though sometimes we’re, we’re called very reluctantly to do these things.

And so I could foresee an opportunity where kind of this ground up approach, things begin to change. And you might have people that are pushed into positions of power because the culture desires these ethical Christian voices in these positions, which is a very different scenario than the world we live in now. And I guess that’s one thing that I could I can see foresee situations like that.

But to me it begins with the ground up approach. And I’m very weary about the state of things now and whether or not this is a realistic thing of being able to balance Christian faith and politics, because I I’ll say this, I would be very wary of politicians who claim to be Christians because nine times out of ten, I don’t want to speak for everyone, but nine times out of ten, what they’re doing and what they’re supporting is in order to win votes, to keep power and to make their party happy.

I’ve, I’ve, I’ve heard politicians talk about what it’s like to be in Congress and talk about how the people that you see on news and social media that are always upset about something, none of them are like that in real life. They do that because they need to, for one reason or another, that a lot of what you see these politicians, when they get on CNN or Fox News or wherever they’re on, are very, very different than they are.

If you met them on the House floor or something like that, because they have to be this type of person for camera, because of all those things, because of the party and because of votes and because of the state that they’re in and whatever it it may be. And that’s not who they really are, which in that case, it’s a good thing.

It’s like, well, maybe it’s a good thing that they’re not always angry about everything, but in some other cases, that something for us to be worried about, of people who claim to be Christians. And that also goes back to, you know, maybe we need to look beyond the words into some of the policies and that speaking truth to power is the entire system, as the kingdom is outside of the system.

And you speak to the entire system, the entire political spectrum. And so I’m not sure if that’s much of an answer about the actual political office, but something that I would just be. Be cautious about that. I think that’s kind of the fundamental thing that we’ve been talking about, of just being cautious about power in general, whether that’s political power or even church power.

We have to be careful with what power can and does do to us the kind of people that it can transform us into when it’s not the the power of service. Because I think that’s the way of Jesus. The power of Jesus is in serving the needs of others, not taking things for ourselves, which goes back to immersing yourself in the story of Jesus as being the way to discern what to do in any given situation.

Jake, you have anything else to add?

Yeah. I, I, I appreciate the point of, of Billy Graham. I think that’s good. I would encourage people if you haven’t looked into his life check out the, the, the truth podcast is as Jake said and there’s other if you read some things about his life from I would say both sides of the aisle, because a lot of it tends to be pretty biased.

At least what I’ve seen. He’s the best ever or he’s the worst. But, I think he’s a good example of the problem that we’re talking about, because I think he did, a lot of good things. I think there were some problems, though, as you mentioned, when he got in bed with power, we see some times where he probably shouldn’t have spoke, he should have spoken up and he didn’t.

And perhaps that’s because, well, you know, he’s friends with this person and and in power. And you talked about him regretting some of that towards the end of his life on reflecting. So he even seemed to, to notice about some of the he he didn’t that’s a fine line to toe and that he got some things wrong, along the way.

And that’s kind of what we’re talking about, of being weary of it. Is that he in, in, in some way, a lot of the times that the power is going to compromise you in some way or another. So just having to be cautious about that. Well, Jake, thank you for being back on the podcast once again. It was a great conversation.

I hope those of you listening got something out of it. I’m not sure we provided a ton of answers, but maybe help to think about some a little bit of the implications and application of some of the theology that we’ve been talking about.

Yes, yes, it definitely let let us know if if you figure out how to do all this, we’ve got a few more episodes, a coming on, thinking theologically about politics as the this month continues as we get ready for the elections from. So make sure to check those out. You can find this episode and all of the the episodes, not just about politics, but everything else that we do at our website: thinkingtheologically.org. You can also find us on all, social media, on YouTube, on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. We’re everywhere. If you find us on any of those places, subscribe to us or like our page that will help us support what we’re doing here. you can also reach out to us with any questions, comments, concerns, criticisms, whatever you have at strongchurchministries@gmail.org.

Thank you for joining us. And that’s the episode.