True Grass Roots Politics
Walter Bennett
I cringe every time I hear the word “evangelicals” in the context of politics.
Throughout history, this has been a term that simply refers to people who love Jesus and have a deep desire to share Him with the world. Unfortunately, in the current culture, at best it carries baggage associated with extremists whose stances don’t accurately represent Christianity or Jesus. At worst it comes across as an ideology that is bent on forcing everyone else to believe the same thing they do through legislating behavior. In nearly every case of Evangelical Christianity being associated with politics, it is counterproductive.
When I think of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the interest of furthering Christianity through politics, it drives me to despair. Particularly when the very organization that I lead struggles to gain the funding we need just to survive.
God was free will long before the enemy co-opted that concept using a different popularized term. He invented free will. Jesus does not force anyone to choose Him or to act like Him. In His example of making disciples during His three years of ministry on the earth, He spent His time revealing who He is and who God is. His efforts were to help individuals arrive on their own to a true understanding of right and wrong and to choose the right of their own volition—to choose Him.
"The politicians would end up taking care of themselves and we would be much closer to fulfilling the command to go to all nations (including our own) making disciples who make disciples."
In Matthew 28, Jesus did not command that His disciples go and force people to behave. He told them to go and make disciples – people who willingly will follow Jesus to learn more about Him and to eventually be faced with a decision, prompted by the Holy Spirit, to choose to relinquish their pursuits and to commit themselves to follow His will in their lives.
The idea of legislating people into Christianity does not have a very good track record. Just look at the Spanish Inquisition—how did that turn out? God’s deepest desire is that His people would freely choose Him—to the point that they would willingly sacrifice anything in their lives just to be in His will. He does not want His followers to subdue the populations into a false following that outwardly accepts Him and secretly despises Him for fear of enforcement and retribution.
If we want people to embrace Christian values, we need to introduce them to Jesus, one at a time. Every Christian needs to actively seek deep and meaningful relationships with those who do not know Him so that we may follow Jesus’ example of revealing Him to them, over time, as the Spirit leads us.
Please don’t misconstrue my message as a call to abdicate our responsibility at the polls in a democratic society. We must participate in the political process and vote with our Bibles open, led by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. What I am saying is that we need to consider where all of our money and efforts are going when it comes to changing the outcomes of the political process at large. Imagine what would happen if every Bible-believing Christian invested the same amount of energy, time, and money in introducing the lost to Jesus Christ. The politicians would end up taking care of themselves and we would be much closer to fulfilling the command to go to all nations (including our own) making disciples who make disciples.
