Once every four years our nation becomes overrun with politics. That’s all anyone talks about in the build up to the presidential election. Every political buzzword is floating in the air, adults are arguing—sometimes for fun, often these days angrily—and even to the most political savvy adult it can be overwhelming. There is just so much to keep track of, so many insults being hurled, so many causes we need to care about. Overwhelming is really the only word for it.
So today we’re going to talk about politics. Just to set this up, we’re not going to talk about specific political candidates or even specific ideological causes. We’re going to talk higher level than that—we’re going to talk about what it means to be a Christian in a world of politics, how we can do our best to navigate all of this.
Because the thing about being a Christian in America is that politicians are always trying to use your faith to get you to vote for them. They are always going to try to say “look I’m a Christian too” or “look I support your values vote for me.” I mean I just did a quick google and here are some headlines I found in like five minutes about candidates and faith—and of course the clincher “How would Jesus vote?”
When I was a kid there was a big saying “What would Jesus do?” People wore bracelets. Our pastors encouraged us to ask this question about everything we did—what would Jesus do in our situation. And that’s not bad advice at all! But it gets weird and hard sometimes, because it can be an abstract question. Jesus was a Jewish man in the first century. We are American Christians in the twenty-first century. So it’s not that we can’t look at Jesus words and think about them and come up with an opinion of what we think Jesus would do—we can certainly do that. No, what’s hard, is that we do have to use our imagination and come up with an opinion—not a fact—which means two different Christians can come up with two different answers to the question of “how would Jesus vote?”
That’s not to say that Jesus was completely silent on the matter of politics. Let’s open our Bibles to Matthew 22:15-22. While you flip there, a reminder of the political world that Jesus lived in.
Jesus was a Jewish man living in Israel during the Roman Empire. Once upon a time the Romans had a Republic, but not during Jesus’s time. Jesus was born after Caesar Augustus became the first Emperor of Rome. Rome still had a Senate, but it didn’t work like our Senate, you didn’t get to vote for Senators, and the Senate’s power was extremely diminished during the Empire.
Jesus wasn’t considered a citizen of the Roman empire. He had no say in how things went in his government. He couldn’t vote for a Senator; he had no choice in who became emperor. Israel—or rather Judea as it was known—wasn’t considered a firmly Roman area. Rather Judea was a hot bed of dissension. Most Jewish people didn’t like that they had been conquered by the Romans. They didn’t want to be part of the empire. They wanted to be free.
Jesus would have had no right to vote, no say in his government, no ability to control any part of anything. The Romans ruled, and the Jewish people in Judea were just trying to survive it.
So one day Jesus is out and about and the religious leaders of his time ask him a question—a political and religious question. So someone read Matthew 22:15-22.
15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. 16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” 21 They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.
So these Pharisees don’t like Jesus and they’re trying to trap him, to get him in trouble. The Herodians that are there too? They are basically a political party who support Rome. So here we have a religious group and a political group, Jesus, and some of his followers. And the Pharisees ask Jesus a tricky question. They’re like “Hey, we know you’re sincere and want to follow God to the best of your ability. So tell us, do you think we should pay taxes?”
A lot of people at the time felt like they shouldn’t be paying taxes to Rome, for a lot of reasons, some religious and some political. The Pharisees view Jesus as a radical, they expect him to say something radical. And if Jesus had, if he said they shouldn’t pay taxes, the Herodians would have told on him to the political leaders of the time—said that Jesus was defying Rome and trying to start a revolution. They could have gotten Jesus arrested for sure.
But what does Jesus say? He says “Give unto Caesar what is Caesars.”
That verse is quoted quite a lot, sometimes even outside of the context of the Bible and Christianity. But what does it mean? What do you guys think Jesus was saying?
[Let them answer]
Jesus tells them that Caesar’s face is on the coin and therefore it belongs to Caesar, and because it belongs to Caesar they should pay it back to Caesar, obey his laws. Just is basically saying “Obey the law of the land.” These laws are Caesars and they don’t interfere with any of God’s laws, so they should pay their taxes.
So if there is one political point that Jesus is super clear on, it’s we should pay our taxes.
But this idea of us obeying the law of the land, it is something that is reiterated later in the Bible, something that Paul also speaks on. Paul writes about it in his letter to the Roman church, the church in Rome, the seat of the Roman Empire. Rome is like Washington DC to us, except it’s even more powerful-it’s like if you took Washington DC, New York, LA, and Chicago, and rolled them into one city, and if you didn’t live there you wouldn’t really have any political voice. It’s not just A city, it’s THE city. So let’s see what Paul says in Romans 13:1-7.
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. 3 For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; 4 for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. 6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. 7 Pay to all what is due them—taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.
Remember that Paul is a subject of the Roman government. He is a citizen, but that didn’t give him the ability to vote, it just gave him a few more rights.
This entire section here, Paul is talking about how you need to obey your government. You need to understand that back then, just like now, tax money was taken from people and put into things they didn’t believe in. The emperor could use tax money to build a temple to the Roman gods if he wanted, and that was definitely not something Christians were cool with. But taxes also went to good things like roads, like they do now.
Paul is also writing during a time when the Roman emperors were a little off their rockers. The Roman emperors of this era did things like put their favorite horse in the Senate—yes a horse. They also actively jailed and persecuted Christians.
So Paul is telling people here to obey their government…but the government has also told them that Christianity is illegal, so…how can I obey my government and be part of an illegal religions. Isn’t that a logical fallacy?
Well Paul’s underlying assumption in all of his words—the underlying assumption of every Biblical writer—is that faith in Jesus and practices of the church come first, come before the government. Always, always God first.
We see this in Acts. Remember the book of Acts is basically the history of the early church as written by Luke, the same guy who wrote the gospel of Luke. In this section, Peter and some of the other apostles are jailed by the high priest and the Senate of Israel for preaching about Jesus and they're told not to preach anymore. But an angel comes and releases Peter et al in the night and tells them to go and continue spreading the word. The high priest then demands them to be recaptured and brought before him. Okay someone read Acts 5:27-32
27 When they had brought them, they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than any human authority. 30 The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”
So is Peter obeying his government here? The high priest and if you look back even the Senate of Israel told them NOT to preach anymore, but he's still doing it. Why?
"We must obey God rather than men."
Boom. There it is.
It's one thing to give tax money to your government and then they use it against your conscious. It's another thing entirely for you yourself to personally do an act that goes against God.
There's several Old Testament story that exemplifies this. The most famous is probably Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who refused to bow to a false idol—even though that is the law of the land. Because bowing to false idols goes against God’s law. And because of that they get punished, thrown in a fiery furnace.
If you know the story, you know God saves them from the furnace, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we have to stand against our government and we get fed to the lions, as it the case of the Christians during the early church.
But first, backing up, to this is America! We do get to vote! We’re not like Paul, or Jesus, or Shadrach Meshach, and Abednego, trapped in a government where we get no voice!
We do get a voice! We have a constitutionally protected right to speak our voice, the first amendment. We also get to vote! We get to choose our leaders! Welcome to the twenty-first century and America! Welcome to democracy!
Democracy. We live in a democracy right? We get to vote and have a voice and make decisions, right?
Well sort of. We don’t live in a direct democracy. In a direct democracy the people vote on every single law, every single item there is. The people directly govern. Direct democracies are very hard to have on a large scale. There hasn’t really been any outside of city sized places, I think, like ancient Athens, and even then one of the ways they controlled it was by limited who was a citizen, who was actually allowed to vote. Trying to arrange a direct democracy in the USA where we have 300 million people, it would be a lot!
We don’t have a direct democracy, we have a Republic. It’s right there in the pledge of allegiance. So what does it mean that we live in a Republic? It means we vote for people to represent us in governing. We vote for senators and congressmen who then vote for us on laws. Their job is to represent us, and sometimes they do it well and sometimes they don’t.
So I’m going to tell you something contradictory: you should always vote. You should always use your chance to affect our government and who represents you, but you also have very little control over what your government does.
There is a song about this in the musical Hamilton, it’s called “The Room Where it Happens.” In the song, Aaron Burr talks about how politicians do a lot of work we don’t see, behind the scenes. They make deals, and trade things away, and other than the ability to elect them, we have no control over what they do.
So you can elect someone you think will be great, but once they’re in office they could do something completely crazy and against everything you stand for. That is the nature of Republics, the nature of our government, and the politicians know that.
Politicians want to be elected. I’m not saying they don’t have personal beliefs and values, things they want to see enacted or passed, but they know to stay in the place of power—the place where they can enact things—they need to be re-elected, or elected in the first place.
Most politicians will say anything to secure your vote. They will promise things that never come to pass. They will play on your fears and appeal to your beliefs, because what they want from you is your vote. And often we take them at face value and we vote for them, and then they get in office and do nothing that they said they would. Because all they needed from us was our vote.
That’s why you need to take everything a politician says with a grain of salt. That’s why you need to be skeptical of them, and above all—never, ever put your faith in a politician. We want our leaders to save the day, but they won’t. They can’t save us.
Only Jesus can.
This means that sometimes your government, even your elected government, can go off the rails. It can do things you don’t want it to do. And we can feel helpless, because who are we? We are just people. Not powerful people. At best we’re average people. Sometimes we’re just small people. We can feel completely powerless.
We can’t control what the government does, but we can control what we do. In Micah 6:8 it says God requires three things of us: (a) do justice, (b) love kindness, and (c) walk humbly.
Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. How can we do this?
Most of you guys know about World War II, about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. How Hitler rose to power, how he oppressed people, how he rounded up the Jewish people, put them in camps and killed them. What you may not know is that Hitler and the Nazis were elected. They were put into power by voting people, by people who claimed to be Christians.
And terrible things happened. Some people applauded it, some people—people who claimed to be Christians loved it—and others didn’t, but they also didn’t know how to fight it, what to do about it.
Some people who disagreed, who were powerful and brave men and women were able to save dozens, hundreds of people. But the average person isn’t very powerful. The average person isn’t very brave. What does the average, scared person do in these scenarios?
Do justice.
Love kindness.
Walk humbly.
How do we do that?
I know two stories of average people in Nazi Germany: a janitor and a bus driver. About as unpowerful and low on the pecking order as a person can be.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Sophie Scholl. She attended the University of Munich in Nazi Germany, during the heart of the war. She was an anti-Nazi activist. As part of her activism, she created anti-Nazi pamphlets and handed them out at her school.
One day the school janitor—his name was Jakob Schmid—saw her handing out the pamphlets. Jakob Schmid was an average man. He didn’t know or care what was on her pamphlets, he just knew it was against school rules. So he reported her.
Sophie Scholl was arrested by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, tried for treason, and put to death. She was 21 years old.
So a janitor saw a student break the rules, and because of that the student died.
Once upon a time there was a woman named Irena Sendler. She was a Polish woman who worked to smuggle thousands of Jewish children to safety. She was a hero who did great work.
One day she was on a bus with a little Jewish child. She was moving the child to a new location via the bus. Then in the middle of the bus ride the child spoke to her in Yiddish. A whole hush fell over the bus, suddenly everyone knew she was with a Jewish child, doing something illegal.
The bus driver stopped and made everyone get out of the bus, except Irena and the child. And Irena thought to herself, this is it. This is the moment I am caught. We are about to die. She surely thought the bus driver was going to take her to the authorities, and that is surely what the people who got off the bus thought as well.
Instead the bus driver turned to her and asked her where she wanted to go, said he would take her anywhere, anywhere she needed.
A janitor and a bus driver—two people who had no control over the actions of their government. Two small people in a large world. Two people who made small, but very different choices.
In a world where you have no control over the big picture, all you do have affect on is the small, the things around you. All you can really ask yourself is “how can I bring justice to this moment?” “how can I bring love to this moment?” “how can I bring Jesus to this moment?”
Am I the janitor, enforcing the rules with no understanding of them, and getting a girl killed? Or am I the bus driver, risking everything to help a woman and a little girl?
America isn’t Nazi Germany. We use Nazi Germany as an example in these sorts of discussions because it is extreme. But we have injustices here, things we don’t agree with that we can’t control. We need to work to bring love to our friend groups, to spread love and justice in our circles. To affect what we can.
Because in the end, you guys are kids. You have zero control over who get elected to be the next President. And that can make you worry about it quite a bit. That can make you anxious. Let’s look at Matthew 6:35-34.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[j] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
This is Jesus talking in the Sermon on the Mount. In this sermon he talks about many things, but here he tells us not to worry, that God will take care of us.
Now you may be like “Mandy you just told us about Nazi Germany. How can we not worry? What if that happens again here or somewhere else? That would be concerning!”
Yes, that would! Jesus says a lot here about not worrying—that God takes care of the birds and the lilies, surely he will take care of us. Sometimes people use these verses to say you should never ever worry or be anxious about anything and to do so shows a lack of faith. I do not agree with that. I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying. I want to focus on the last verse, verse 34.
“So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.”
I think what Jesus is saying here is “don’t borrow worry.” What does that mean? It means focus on today, today is problem enough. Don’t borrow worry about things that haven’t come to be yet. You have a test tomorrow? Fine! Worry about that! That’s today’s worry as you study for it! But don’t let that worry run away from you. I used to do this when I was kid where I would worry that if I failed a test, I might fail out of school, and then never find a job, and then die homeless. That is borrowing worry. None of that is even close to stuff that I should worry about.
Just focus on the next thing. Don’t worry about the hypotheticals. Focus on what you can do, on your actions, and how you can affect things.
So yes, when you’re old enough, vote. Because that is one small step we can take. Vote on who you think is the best candidate. But you can’t control their actions. You can only control yours.
Remember politicians will try to woo you, to bring you to their side, but your faith is not in them, it’s in Jesus. Don’t believe what they say on face value. Look them up, do your research, look at their records. And remember we do not belong to a “team.” Being a Christian does not mean you should automatically be a Democrat or a Republic. Our team is Christian. One of the biggest traps Christians fall into is thinking that one party is God’s party.
Neither party is God’s party. Both parties are human parties, full of human corruption and human failings. And even the parties aren’t monoliths. Look up each individual candidate for yourself, and never let anyone feel bad if you vote a certain way, as long as you did your research and feel confident.
Know what you believe. Know why you picked a person. That’s the important thing.
And lastly, I want to come back to Micah 6:8. I want to talk about walking humbly. You guys are middle schoolers and there is a lot of emphasis on being mature. There are two mistakes kids make when it comes to what it means to be mature in politics.
The first is thinking that maturity means agreeing with the adults around you—parents, teachers, grandparents, whoever. Adults will sometimes accidentally encourage this—because sometimes when you say something that parrots back their beliefs, they say “oh you’re so mature for your age.” And sometimes when you say something that disagrees they say, “you only think that because you’re an immature child.” The reality is agreeing just to agree is not maturity. Disagreeing just to disagree is not maturity. Look things up for yourself. Listen to the adult sin your life for their thoughts and wisdom, but in the end you are responsible for your believes.
Knowing why you believe what you believe, and coming to it yourself is maturity.
Secondly, it’s mature to hold your own opinions and beliefs with humbleness. Teenagers and young adults often go through a phase where because you’ve done your research on why you believe what you believe—because you accomplished step one—you think only idiots wouldn’t believe as you believe. This is what causes people to treat everyone else with disdain, treat people without love, and to yell angrily at people for disagreeing with you. Maturity is holding your own opinion humbly, and being open to the fact that maybe you might be wrong. Listening to other people to try to understand why they believe what they believe.
That doesn’t mean you have to change your beliefs. Not at all. In the end after listening to them humbly, you might be like “I don’t believe that, and I think you’re incorrect to believe that.” But the mature thing is to then either state that respectfully or walk away from the conversation. Often these days, I just don’t even engage with people.
I will only discuss politics with someone if I know them personally, and I always couch my thoughts in understanding language. Coming in guns blazing, argumentative, and treating everyone like their stupid has never won anyone to another side, and certainly never won anyone to Jesus.
Now its true, there are some beliefs that shouldn’t be tolerated—but it takes wisdom and understanding and research to know which believes those are. Racism shouldn’t be tolerated, for example. But even with these horrible sorts of beliefs, there are ways to engage people that will bring them to your side, or just walk away.
Politics is a fraught subject. It can be difficult and hard, because so much of it can be tied up in what we believe. We want to believe the best in our politicians. We want to believe the ones we voted for are the good ones. But sometimes they’re not. Maturity is being able to admit when we’re wrong, being willing to change our minds, and knowing which beliefs are the foundational ones.
Wisdom is understanding what we can control and what we can’t, and acting within that. And most of all it’s remembering that our hope is never in a politician. It’s in Jesus.
The world may be dark. Things may seem anxious and fraught, and sometimes things go horrible wrong. God is ultimately sovereign over all, but it doesn’t mean that sometimes he doesn’t let us make our own terrible and bad decisions.
So be the light in the dark. Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly. Love.
And don’t borrow worry from the future. Focus on today. Tomorrow will figure itself out in time.