Christians and Politics: Part 1

I am going to preface my discussion by stating that I am a Christian, and that I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. This influences how I look at everything in my life. This post will be about how I got to this point (I guess this should actually be the intro, but it is too late for that). Growing up, I was in a very political family. There was never any question about whether or not Christians should be in politics. In fact, when I was 10, I remember reading a book titled The Political Christian.

I have just finished my first year at Criswell Bible College in Dallas. My brother attended there, and talked me into going there for a year to figure out if I was really a Christian, or if it was just because my parents were Christians. After that I planned on transferring to UT for pre-law, and intended on getting in to politics after I finished my law degree. However, Criswell changed all that. For the first time, I have been faced by people who have spent their entire adult lives studying what they are teaching, who are so good that they can read the Bible straight from the original languages, translating on the fly. And these professors presented the Bible in a different way than I had ever heard before. All of a sudden the Bible was not a disconnected set of principles that could be used to fuss at gays.

Through these profs, I came to a correct view on ecclesiology, which is just a five dollar word for: "What the church is supposed to be". I discovered that the church, when done correctly, is very geo-political, and that it is to be a standalone society. The church should offer an alternate way to view the world. We are supposed to be differnent in almost every way, from our way of persuasion, to our care of other people. Now, obviously this is not the way the church actually is, but I am dealing with how is SHOULD be, not how it currently is. The main conflict with politics is that the political system is based on power which they obtain through manipulation, force, deception, etc. The Christian obtains power through weakness. Christ was led to the cross like a lamb. He told us to not try to fight those who hurt us. That is weakness. This is the problem that any Christian would have to deal with in order to be in politics. How do I be in the system, and yet not work it the way everyone else does?

The next few posts will be expounding this further, as well as dealing with a few individual issues that would be affected by Christians' involvement or non-involvement in politics.

Christians in Politics-Introduction

Well, I have finished another semester. I took 21 hours this semester, which is why I have not had time to write. However, life is slowing down now, and there is a topic that I am going to start exploring. This topic is the relationship between Christians and politics. What is the role that Christians should play in politics? Is being involved in politics really the best way to change things? Is being in politics even biblical? These are the questions that I am going to start answering over the next few posts.