Last March I saw firsthand the danger of treading close to this political read line when I wrote a post entitled, "God loves you too much to ignore your sexuality". In that post, I wrote about God's perspective on human sexuality, not about American laws or politics, focusing upon sexual sin as defined in God's Word in both its heterosexual and homosexual forms, but one comment that I saw in response to my post was, "I used to respect this pastor until I read this..." Although I was able through conversation to repair that impression, and I think keep that individual from ignoring my words in the future, it pointed to the grave danger facing pastors and Christian apologists all over America today, when we involve ourselves in anything remotely political, half of the audience are hearing our words with their own political rose colored glasses, and the other half are plugging up their ears in disgust.
What does it say of Christians, and those purporting to be Christians, that so many of them are willing to place their devotion to political issues above the Gospel, the Word of God, and the men and women called by God to proclaim it? It says we're in grave danger as a Church. There is no such thing as a Republican Church and a Democrat Church, but we've fooled ourselves into thinking that God's Church is really so limited, that God is on our side, whichever one that is, and against their side, that the issues advocated by our politicians are 100% Christian, and those advocated by their politicians are inspired by the devil. We've cheapened the Church, cheapened the Gospel, and fooled ourselves into thinking Christ died only for people like us. I say we have done this because it is so widespread in the Church today, I hope that I and my church are free of this disease; I've striven to keep my own mind free of it, and to keep such partisanship out of our congregation, but I'm not proud enough or naive enough to think that it could not infect my own mind or my church in the future.
When Pope Francis spoke out against the danger of the love of money and the need for God's people to have compassion upon the poor, he was branded a communist by loud-mouthed political pundits, and that antipathy toward the Pope was cheered by many Christians. The problem here is, the Bible absolutely says that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil and demands of God's people that they show compassion to those in need. The only way to justify condemning such concerns from Pope Francis is through either anti-Catholic bias (i.e. condemn the message because we hate the messenger) or a rejection of what the Church, and Israel before it, have preached (if not always followed) for the past 3,500 years.
We should not be overly surprised by such things, however, when Jesus declined to choose sides in the contentious issue of his day regarding the paying of taxes to Rome, it only angered further those who wanted to use him for their own narrow purposes, or condemn him based upon his politics. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus remained focused upon his mission, the one thing that he needed to do that nobody else could, not allowing himself to be distracted by today's issues when eternity was at stake.
If I tell you what I think should be done about school shootings and other gun violence, half of you will no longer listen when I proclaim the Gospel.
If I tell you what I think America's immigration policy should be, half of you will no longer hear me when I proclaim the Word of God.
And so I hold back, not because I don't have the right to my opinions, not because I can't ground my opinions in Christian theology and a Christian worldview, but for your sake because you NEED to hear the Gospel from God's Word far more than you need to hear my political opinions, whether you agree with them or not.
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