Why Jesus Isn't Running For Office

The frenzy has begun. The DNC is an hour drive away and the swirl of election buzz is about to burst open with gale-force intensity. Decision ‘08 (or whatever dramatic title the news outlets designed to christen this presidential race with) is only a few months away. The speeches are being honed, candidates are being smeared, and radio talk-show hosts are bursting veins and developing ulcers. 

Last election season, I found myself surrounded by a lot of busy and bothered people. I had no idea there were so many politically-concerned Christians all around me. It seemed like they were coming out of the woodwork. Acquaintances-turned-activists were handing me pamphlets and giving me their best two-minute speech on why I should vote for their cause or their candidate. You should have seen the look on their face when I apologetically told them that they were wasting their time on me. 

I can’t vote. 

I’m not an American citizen. Though my beautiful Iowan wife affords me the privilege of residency, I have not held my green card long enough to become a citizen. As a Permanent Resident, I can do everything but vote.

So, while I watched many Christians trying to rock the vote like their eternal security depended on it, I amused myself with this thought: Jesus would be a good president.

Think about it. If the Lord were around today in the flesh, we would be whipping our Christian political action groups into a frenzy. Churches would be a hive of activity, with media crews swarming, and publicists buzzing. I can hear the campaign now: “Bring God back to America! Jesus for President!”

It would seem so right, so natural, so Christian.

And yet so wrong.

We can’t be blamed for trying to elect Jesus; believers have been trying for centuries. The very first followers of Christ were so taken by their leader’s charisma and wisdom, they gave their lives to see him crowned. John and James, with the help of their mom, Mrs. Zebedee, vied for cabinet seats in the Jesus Administration that was sure to come. Peter cut the ear off a priest when they came to arrest Christ. Their behavior is not so ludicrous when you consider that they believed Jesus was the Messiah, the chosen one from God who would bring salvation to Israel. (It was Peter who first had this revelation.) To a Jew, serving God always had political implications. By definition, being the “people of God” meant belonging to a specific ethnicity and living in a specific geo-political nation-state. To be a Jew was to be a citizen of the Kingdom of God.

And that’s the way God set it up. He called Abraham out of the land of his father so that he could make Abraham a great nation. He blessed Joseph with wisdom and favor in Egypt so that he and his brothers—the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel—could be saved during the years of famine. He raised up Moses to deliver them from the oppression of the Egyptians and to lead them into a promised land. He called Joshua to bring them victory over other nations, driving them out of the land they would claim. He gave them instructions on how to form an orderly, safe, free, and godly society, and orders on how to preserve it but not inter-marrying. He gave them a king that to this day is loved deeply by all Jews, and stands as the model of the kind of leadership that brings blessing to a nation. But then their sin became too great, and they were taken captive by other nations. Some tribes were scattered across the earth, lost forever. But still, they clung to a promise—the promise that God would restore, that they would return, that Jerusalem would be a shining light in the earth once again. It was the Messiah that would bring all this to pass.

But it was the Messiah who turned it all on its head. Jesus, the Son of David, Israel’s greatest king, had no desire to be king. His lack of political ambition was only the beginning. He began to teach about God and His enterprise as a heavenly kingdom, not an earthly one. For the first time, Jewish people were told how to be a citizen of a wicked earthly empire while following the God of Heaven. “Give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s,” he said. You can imagine the slow shock of Christ’s Jewish disciples as everything they had been raised to believe about God and his work on earth began to unravel. Instead of trying to overthrow a wicked ruler, they were told to obey. When asked by an oppressor for their coat, they were to give their inner garment as well. When struck on the face by a heavy-handed ruler, they were to turn the other cheek. Then the worst came true: Jesus lived out these teachings, leaving no doubt as to the literal nature of their application. To the horror of his followers, Jesus allowed himself to be carried away by wicked Roman soldiers, tried in the court of a weak and unscrupulous ruler, and killed like a vile criminal. And with the Messiah died all hope of God’s Kingdom-- as they had known it-- being restored on earth.

Christ’s arrival on earth marked not the beginning of the Kingdom of God on earth as the ultimate nation-state, but the end. Israel was God’s chosen nation to bring salvation to the world and they had failed. Christ’s mission was to make the way to God open to men and women of all races and nationalities. That’s why the Apostle Paul claimed so enthusiastically that in Christ there is neither slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile. Even Peter, likely the most thick-headed disciple, saw the light. He wrote that followers of Christ are a “royal priesthood, a holy nation.” The Kingdom of God comes to earth now not as a political nation, but as a spiritual community of “called-out ones”.

Christ did not restore a nation; he formed the Church.

The Jewish people of the Old Testament were given principles for making a society godly, free, safe, and orderly. (Read the books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy for a sampling of these laws.) These impulses are still alive in us as Christians today. But when Christ brought the sword between earthly citizenship and heavenly allegiance, we were left to wrestle with how to act on these impulses as a Christian in the civic square. There are gray areas now. And that is a good thing. I don’t think Christ intended to make it clear how every Christian should carry out his civic duty.

Our highest priority is the task of making men and women godly. The Scripture is clear that men and women only become godly through rebirth in Christ. It is Christ in us that is our hope of glory—not behavioral reform or a legislated morality. The Church, then, is the best vehicle for making men and women godly through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The civic square—the ballot box, political action groups, etc—becomes the vehicle for making society free, safe, and orderly.

How Then Should We Vote? (Simply my opinion)

1. A Christian should vote Christian values insomuch as those values contribute to making society free, safe, and orderly for all people, even the ungodly. Remember that the original covenant that began Israel as a nation, was God’s promise to bless Abraham so that he could be a blessing to all nations. Not just the nation of Israel; not just the nations that surrendered to Israel and its God; ALL nations. A Christian’s role as citizen, then, is to be a blessing to ALL people within the society, by making it safe, free, and orderly.

2. A Christian should also vote Christian values when his view on a specific issues is asked.

I, like all Christians, want the society I am raising my family in to be godly in the way that Christians define godliness. But I know that if I give in to the temptation to use civic, lawmaking channels to make society godly, my children may wake up in an America governed by Sharia (sp?) law. After all, if Christians can muster enough of a “moral majority” to outlaw Christian sins, what’s to prevent Muslims 50 years from now from working the system to ban the vices of an Islamic worldview?

This much is clear to me: the mission of the Church in its culture is to lead people to godliness by the power of the Gospel, and to make society safe, free, and orderly for all people through the power of the ballot. The latter leads to the former. A free, safe, and orderly society provides the Church its best opportunity for presenting the Gospel.

But the way it plays out is something we must wrestle with. Perhaps the wrestling will make us better Christians and citizens in the end. We would stop trying to make men and women godly through the ballot box, and truly become a blessing to our society.

And maybe then we’d stop trying to elect Jesus. After all, He took himself off the ballot a long time ago.

Comments

[Josh]

Wow, very nicely said. Great thoughts. Thanks.

[Marcia]

You're right, Jesus really isn't all that interested in being our "president" In fact, I'm pretty sure that the title of "President" just isn't good enough for God. Only "King" will suit Him. He's not interested in subjecting himself to our man-made systems of rule.
He already established His own system...one that His own people rejected! He wanted his people, Israel, to continue in a Theocratic rule, but the Israelites demanded an earthly king. Thus Saul was appointed king. (Boy, that went well, didn't it?)
We are plagued by that decision today. God's people no longer have a place to be ruled by God alone. We are now all subject to a lesser standard of sorts ("The law is for the lawless.")

Makes you rethink the concept of liberty that we are all so proud of. Does liberty really give us religious freedom, or does it do more to envoke a spirit of self-serving independence, that probably hinders our understanding of how to follow, surrender, submit to a Holy Unseen King? Democracy promotes and supports and individual's rights while God's kingdom clearly functions very differently than this. While democracy can run very nicely for those with moral values, it becomes a 3-ring circus for those who have no value system in place.

While I will vote as an American citizen, I feel less confident than ever that even the righteous candidate can do any more than fight off a little longer the inevitable continued corruption. Its a man-made system! What else should we expect?
Time to focus on a Kingdom not of this world, folks.

[David]

Well said. Schaeffer said that "Christians should avoid wrapping their Christianity in the American Flag." Too many Christians are patriots and nationalists instead of being Kingdom minded followers of Christ. If we are to love the Lord with ALL our heart, soul, strength and mind then there is no room for our country. We "love" our country indirectly through our love for God, the rights he provides us i.e. freedom to worship; and we respect that nation which has deemed these sacred rights as God-given. We give to Caesar what is Caesars and get about the Father's business.

America is headed, quicker then we realize, toward becoming a socialist autocracy. While the nation of America will most likely still bear the name "America", patriots will then be far and few between.

We vote as the salt of the Earth in the preservative sense; to preserve the freedoms that enable Christ's church to spread the gospel and disciple the nations. You are totally right, the Church attempts to vote based on creating an Utopian Christian Kingdom just as the disciples believed Christ would do, even directly before His ascension!

I believe that when Christ warned the Laodecean church (today's church) that they would have to buy from Him what was once free (Revelation 3), that He is warning of a coming persecution and lack of freedom to worship. What we took for granted caused us to become complacent and refrain from our Kingdom duties. We, as Christians, will know the value of being salt to the Earth in a preservative sense when it is too late. It is then that the Christian patriots and nationalists will be transformed into single-minded, single-heart Kingdom minded Christ followers.

[Cameron Schaefer]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

[Justin Steinhart]

Bro, thank you for writing this. I remember a debate that we had four years ago, that was quite the discussion around the office

Post the DNC, I had the one thought in watching all that transpired. Some of these people are so immersed in political activism that they'll continue to buy stock in faith and hope that the "new guy" will change everything. However, if they would just apply all of their energy in devotion to God, they would make more of an impact. As Christians we need this kind of wake-up, because we have Jesus as our savior...not our politician.

[Nico Perez]

Ya man goood stuff... i remember being up in Denver there last weekend. It was nuts there were two cops if not more in every street corner. Tons of people selling shirts and all sorts of poop, And even more people walking around wanting to express their political view. I remember two men came up to me and just went on about bible,Jesus and abortion. I never even ask to talk about it.. This how political thing is a very scary thing. It almost makes me sick how it is. I saw the DNC it was a rock show in a stadium. I dont know where this country is going. But honestly i dont think one man is going to change to much ...its up to us. Thanks glenn keep it up man

[Cynthia Alderman]

Glenn,

I have always enjoyed your teachings and the depth with which you provide them. I wanted to just make sure I have clarity on something in the article. Since what I am asking had nothing to do with the intent of the article (however it was mentioned), I wanted to see if you would expand a bit. On this comment: Israel was God’s chosen nation to bring salvation to the world and they had failed.- Can you explain what you mean by they had failed? Thank you and God Bless. Cynthia

[Cheryl]

Thanks for this post. I've been thinking quite a bit about we ought to vote as Christians. I think it's an important civic right and duty that we are not to take lightly - the elections in Malaysia in March this year proved that to be true.

I agree that Jesus won't run for presidential election and appreciate how you've maintained the ambiguity about how Christians ought to participate in the civic public square.

Sometimes Christians tend to vote a candidate based on the fact that he's a Christian (maybe even overtly one, here in US). This is not a criteria for judgment of character nor suitability for the position, but may cloud the one's considerations on the issues. Those who are placed in position of government are serving God and are to be His ministers. They fulfill this calling by acting faithfully in their given role, regardless whether they profess the Christian faith.

Since coming here, I've realized how American politics is closely linked with the Christian faith. I guess that's nothing new considering the Jews in the Old Testament. I used to think that in this age of secular government, this is a tendency for Muslim countries.

Spelling suggestion : Shari'ah

[Glenn Packiam]

@ cheryl: great to hear from you! thanks for your comments...and for the spelling help!

@ cynthia: to answer your question, is. 49: 3 and 6 says, "you are my servant, Israel, and you will bring me glory...[then to Isaiah] You will do more than restore the people of Israel to me. I will make you a light to the Gentiles, and you will bring my salvation to the ends of the earth." Israel-- from God's message through the prophets-- was supposed to be God's vehicle for drawing all nations to Him. By the time Christ came, it had not happened. Israel had been repeatedly disobedient and and had been in exile. Paul in Acts 11:47 applies God's word to Is. 49:6 to Jesus, indicating that even though Israel as a nation had failed, out of Israel came the Messaiah who brought salvation to all the world. Of course, God knew no nation, not even Israel, could bring salvation to the world. Israel played an important part. Whether or not Jews are saved simply by being Jewish of only if they accept Jesus as Messiah is somewhat debatable and not really my point here. All I'm saying is that from Paul's sermon in Acts 13 and later in Romans 9, God's ultimate plan to save the nations came not through Israel as a geo-political nation-state but through the God-man Jesus who was a Jew. Does that help?

[Lori Forster]

Brilliant and insightful. Thank you for articulating for me the difference between regulating people by godly rules and growing godly people. I have known this in my heart but didn't know how to say it. I'm not sure I am even expressing this concept correctly now but I really understand the difference.

I totally agree with your #2 under How Then Should We Vote. Too often we do forget that if we (Christians) force our values on society through government, what is to stop that same government with a different religious belief to force their values on us. Maybe we all need to really think about what a free, safe and orderly society for ALL people looks like. I am re-inspired to be a blessing to my society, vote to the best of my ability and let God take care of the rest.

"Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are His. He changes times and seasons; He sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning." Daniel 2:20,21