Faithful Engagement: Navigating Politics with Kingdom Values

1. "And it lays the groundwork, the theological groundwork. It was just like a tour de force through the scriptures of how we're to think about political engagement at like level one. Where our ultimate allegiance lies. And I'll do little bits of recap today throughout it, just to make sure we're all tracking along. But today's teaching is a little more, yeah, a little more of a, I would say a teaching than a preach, a little more teach than a preach. Some of you know what I mean by that. Some of you don't, and that's okay. But it is the, we fundamentally believe when we look back through history, it is the job of the church. To engage with what's happening in our world." [00:00:40] (48 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "If you are a follower of Jesus, the invitation, as clear as day is to pledge one allegiance and that is to the kingdom alone. If you have a nuanced view towards why you feel okay about still pledging allegiance to the US, that's great and okay. That by the way is a very recent iteration. It's not in the constitution. Nowhere are we invited to do that. That said, regardless of how you may nuance that as a follower of Jesus, you have to at least nuance it to say that some sort of allegiance to country never in any way, trumps allegiance to the way of Jesus, of his kingdom." [00:04:28] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Tremendous hope surged through these early churches. I urge you as foreigners and exiles, live such good lives that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. Their care was about the integrity of the kingdom, not offering suggestions for government. Now what comes next is really interesting. And we don't have all the time I would love to to get into this, to do a more thorough teaching. On what I'm about to get into, but we're going to get a little glimpse of it." [00:11:38] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "So the idea is that God has set authorities, governments, and governments to do what they want to do. And God has ordered these powers and governments in place to bring some level of order. And this goes all the way back. God uses empires in Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Persia. These, by the way, were brutal nations. If you think the U .S. is this broken, corrupt power, they got nothing, U .S. has got nothing on these empires. Brutal nations, yet they served a purpose in God's larger story. They were used at times to bring judgment, to hold evil in check so the world wouldn't be completely overrun. So the bottom line, the governing authorities has a role as followers of Jesus. We see them as agents that restrain chaos, but the church, again, we have a different calling." [00:15:08] (49 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "Bearing witness, if you're taking notes, just write this one down, is a term I'm going to use a bunch. Throughout the rest of this talk. Because it is all over the Bible. All over the scriptures. This is how we engage. We submit as far as we are able to the governmental powers. They have some role to play in helping order the chaos of the world. We'll get to how they can even be utilized for good. But ultimately, our primary responsibility is to live as foreigners and exiles, bearing, witness to Jesus. Bearing witness." [00:19:09] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "To tell the world about who he is, what he's done, and the hope and transformation they've experienced because of him. Like a witness on a stand, this isn't about manipulation or forcing a decision. It's about being a witness. It's about being a witness. It's about being a witness. It's about being a witness. It's about putting on display the reality of God's kingdom. Now this can take many forms. This is where the courtroom picture breaks down. This can take the form of words, but also of actions and of a lifestyle that embodies the way of Jesus. At its core, bearing witness is about living in a way that reveals the truth about who Jesus is." [00:21:03] (37 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Engage it however you're able to best engage it. We'll get to that in a minute. But ultimately, the way we engage that is we bear witness to the way of Jesus. This is how we actually shift things, how we resist, how we transform culture. We bear witness to the way of Jesus. And if we're to bear witness well, we have to think about the what and the how. I think these two words are incredibly critical to consider this political season. Jesus and the writers of the scripture don't show us what our priorities should be. Don't just show us what our priorities should be, but they show us how we should go about pursuing them." [00:22:26] (48 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "Because how we communicate literally shapes, literally shapes what we communicate. How we communicate shapes, what we communicate in one way or another. I have over the last couple of years, has been discipled by the great Sarah Cowan Johnson. And so I made a chart. Next slide, please. If we were to think on the left side, how, what are the methods that are used in moving the kingdom forward? There are Christ -like methods that we just described and there are worldly ones. The bottom axis, the what?" [00:27:07] (46 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


9. "And so when we run political engagement through the lens of love your neighbor, we can see how our current governing system can be used to some degree. My favorite example would be Dr. King, who once said this, it may be true, that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me. Historically, there have been ways to harness the powers. Let me say this about Dr. King again, just as a reminder. The way he engaged wasn't through going and being elected in office. It was a prayer movement, was the civil rights movement in the black church to which he bared witness to. His famous letters is actually references the book of Philippians a number of times in it. A letter from a Birmingham jail is basically just like Philippians rewritten." [00:31:49] (55 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


10. "And so again, to do that, to work for the world that is to come in a sinful broken world means we must consider not only the what, but the how. How, which means at times we will be faced with a choice. Do we win or do we witness? Do we seemingly win in the moment or do we bear witness, which might look like losing in the moment? This is gonna happen, right? Because we are playing the long game. Our history is filled with people who were willing to forego immediate political victory. And I put that in quotes, in favor of faithful witness. Our history, not the US, our history as followers of Jesus is filled with people who choose to let go of the need for immediate political victory in favor of being faithful to the what and the how." [00:43:04] (74 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)