Friday, the second week of Easter

I Peter 3:13-4:6

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

You would have to be completely disconnected from the world to not have realized by now that we are living in a contentious season in American life.  The whole population seems to be engaged in one fight or another, to be vigorously defending some stance or another, and it only promises to get worse. 

What is the Christian's place in all of this?  For many this is a no-brainer, but for different reasons.  There are those who feel like it is the absolute duty of Christians to be deeply engaged in the political process, to lobby and campaign and protest, to vehemently fight to sustain the so-called "Christian values of the Founding Fathers."  For others, political involvement is not the purview of Christians at all.  There are those who would find even a Christian voting to be at best a waste of time and at worst inappropriate involvement in the sinful world's business.

Well, it seems to me that, as with most things, the right answer is somewhere in between.  Like all things, the Christian's involvement in politics is a matter for discernment.  St. Peter gives us a good framework to think about how we should be involved in society. 

We should be zealous for what is good.  We should lend our support to good causes and raise our voices against evil.  There are issues worth fighting for.  We are called as Christians to defend the defenseless, to bind up the broken, to set free the captive, and if political action is required to do those things then we should engage in it.  However, It takes serious discernment to decide what those issues are.  Abortion, for instance, is certainly one.  Tax reform, however, probably isn't.  Where do things like same-sex marriage, health care reform, jobs, war, education, and entitlements fall?

What we must realize, however, is that our job is not to police the morality of the population.  We cannot expect to stop sinners from sinning by enacting laws.   We live in a society which at best only ever had a Christian veneer, which may have in the past agreed to follow a standard of morality that was Christian-like, but not one that was ever a society that as a whole was dedicated to Jesus Christ.  (I hate to burst bubbles, but the Founding Father's were not Christians.  If you want proof look into Thomas Jefferson's version of the New Testament.)  Now, to make matters worse, even that standard of morality has been thoroughly abandoned.  Yet, we make a serious mistake when we use our energies to try to claw our way back into that Christian veneer.  We should not expect to be able to make our society truly Christian.  Read the Gospel for today, what we should expect is to be hated and ill treated. 

We cannot make the world or our society Christian, we can however with God's help change people's hearts.  Our earliest Christian ancestors transformed the violently pagan Roman world (one much like our own) not with rallies or revolts or elections or legislation, but by bearing witness with gentleness and respect, even on the floor of the Colosseum.  They never strove to institute their beliefs or morality by gaining political power, but rather fearlessly asserted the power of the Risen Christ which was theirs, and which overcomes the world and death itself and thereby they won countless millions.

Our job is not to hold signs or wear buttons or shout slogans, it is to be zealous for what is good, to be ready to make defense for our hope and to suffer for righteousness, to do all things with the gentleness and respect that we see in Christ, and to await the day when Our Lord will indeed make all things new, when every knee will indeed bow and every tongue indeed confess.