Politics are important. For most of my life, I’ve followed the news and politics pretty closely. Everyone knows that we live in an especially polarized season of American life (I am actually optimistic that this phase will not last forever, but I’ll save that thought for another day).
But one of the unfortunate things I see form Christians is this political legalism that we’ve created. And I’ve heard people on both sides of the aisle do this where people say they just “can’t believe a Christian could support (insert issue or candidate).”
Nonsense.
A person can genuinely be a Christian and be wrong about something. I think that’s important to keep in mind. A person can be a Christian and be misled or misinformed on an issue. A person can have a wrong view on an issue, become a Christian and still hold to that incorrect view. Just because a person is a Christian does not mean that they suddenly see everything in the world from a perfect and righteous perspective.
And the danger is that Christians too often elevate politics to being a gospel issue. Politics are important. They’re not that important.
I think some Christians get too preoccupied with trying to evangelize people to their political views.
There’s one message that the world truly needs and that message is the gospel. The Biblical teaching on our salvation is that we are justified by what Christ has done. The call upon all Christians is to make that message known to a world that is dead in its sin.
Now my point isn’t that we should disengage from politics, but that Christians need to keep the main thing the main thing. In a country where there’s so much division and disunity, Christians should rise above that and be loving and unifying. We should be able to put differences aside and build relationships, not so that we can change a person’s politics, but for the sake of the gospel and building relationships with people because a person who changes their politics but does so without Christ is just as dead in their sins.
I realize that there are many important issues. I have my own political convictions too. But I think it’s important to remember that souls are not won or lost in the political arena. And that an easy temptation in these highly politicized times is to inflate the importance of politics and act like our party is society’s only hope for freedom, peace, and security.
As I’ve said many times: politics are important, but they’re not all-important.
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Josh Benner 