Christian Politics

Musing for today: Christianity is political. It has to be. Read the Gospels, read the prophets, and you'll see politics everywhere.

Not politics as we see it in the American media - debates, candidates, polls. The "contest," the "race," is not the heart of politics, even though that's what takes center stage today. Politics is, according to Wikipedia, "the process by which groups make decisions." It's how people live together. It's how we, together, decide to order our lives.

And Christianity is about building a kingdom - "kingdom of the heavens" or "kingdom of God." Not to be established by force, certainly not by violence. But to be informed by a particular perspective, which essentially recognizes that your purpose, my purpose, is to live for everyone else, for God.

That doesn't sound particularly political - but it is. The essence of a Christian in the area of politics is to apply this principle of selflessness as ruthlessly as possible.

High aspirations that I, for one, am afraid to fully apply. But I'm working on it.

There is a significant overlap between ethics (individual values, personal responsibility, development of good/right character) and politics (or so said Aristotle), and "a truly ethical life can only be lived by someone who participates in politics" (again, Aristotle).

I submit to you that this is true, and especially so for the Christian.

More could be said, but let me say that I am not advocating being "right-wing" or "conservative." I'm advocating living, through and through, ethically and politically, like Jesus. And for that, we need to look back into the Gospels and spend some good time identifying (and then practicing) his paradigm.