The Theological Center of Our Current Political Battle

A lot of good thoughts here and I appreciate the deeper dive into principles and ideas that shape, or ought to shape, policy efforts and political tactics.

I think we need to be careful to avoid either-or thinking on “seeing the world properly.” People do not comprehensively see the world properly just by becoming Christians. Profound changes occur immediately when we believe, but lots of changes are gradual and many never happen at all in our lifetime.

So people see the world/truth properly in degrees.

Blessedly, this is also true of non-believers. They can see a whole of the world properly without being born again, if they arrive at various convictions that are foundational. And they often do that (though it would sure be great if it happened a lot more).

The implication is that, at the practical level, more people becoming Christians wouldn’t fix everything, even if happened on a large scale. Plenty of believers are deeply confused about lots of things (this is why the epistles exist). Plenty of unbelievers have a whole lot straight in their worldview.

So we can’t really think of social/political solutions solely in terms of gospel conversion. Really thorough discipleship would go much further, but also not really be enough.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This is objectively true. It is how wisdom is built. But the fear of the Lord is incorporated into the mindset of people in a wide variety of ways in varying degrees on both sides of gospel belief or unbelief. (Which is why wisdom can be found almost anywhere: Prov 8:1-3.)

So should “make more disciples” be our political philosophy? Well, yes and no. There isn’t going to be a perfect society—or even a really excellent one for long—until Christ is enthroned literally on the earth. As they say, the eschaton. In the mean time, in a society where the governed are also a component of the government, political philosophy has to be persuasive to lots of unbelievers if we’re going to mitigate the evils of society.

So, for the church, it’s got to absolutely be “make disciples.” For individual believers with citizenship in heaven but also here below, political philosophy has to include a lot of arguments and truths that you don’t have to be a Christian to recognize and accept.

Our church is doing a 10 week series on "Christ & Politics" during our midweek service. It has nothing to do with Trump or Harris, or who to vote for. It is a pretty interesting approach to looking at the challenges of today, and the key topics that we are facing in the political spectrum through the eyes of Scripture. I was wary of it at first, but am actually enjoying it. The main focus on the first week, was much of what Don covers in this article.

Hi Dave, I'd like to get audio for that series, if available.