180909 Theology & Government

In a recent speech to Evangelicals, President Trump said, “Evangelicals are one election from losing everything.”  It was an incredibly bold and foolhardy comment to make to people who supposedly call on God and not government for their well-being.

Which is the huge problem with the current mindset of people claiming to be followers of Jesus.  There is a heretical blending of faith toward God with reliance on the Federal Government.  It’s not unlike the unions that ancient Israel formed with the nations around them along with the false gods of those nations such as Baal and Ashtoreth.  We know where this led them as a nation.

In fraught times such as ours, it is good to have a reminder that it is foolish to attempt to “gain the whole world but lose one’s soul,” Matthew 16:26.  And that Jesus himself said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” John 18:36.

The President forgets that we preach and live according to the pleasure of God and not the government.  In fact, Jesus warns that the ethic of the Kingdom of God is most often topsy-turvy with the values of the world.  The weak are the strong.  The first are last.  God loves the alien and the leper and doesn’t build fences to keep them out.

Let us pray with Jesus, “may your kingdom, O God, come and your will be done on earth, in the same manner in which it is done in heaven.”  If I pray this prayer, I must be able to imagine how governmental practices would play in the courts of God.

Then, and only then, can I speak for God rather than the government.