Jesus in '08

Apparent of my spiritual development has been my growing knowledge that having faith doesnt equate with a specific political point of view. It has bothered me for some time that people blindly vote for a candidate that has wooed over a certain group of leaders and they say " a vote for this person is a vote for jesus!".... i was reading slate.com this morning and two writers were debating a new book about a extremely conservative college, John Henry College. One of them made some remarks that I liked,



"Virtually all surveys show that 30 percent to 40 percent of Americans go to church once a week. There are a lot of evangelicals out there even if, as you point out, they lead lives that are virtually indistinguishable from other Americans when it comes to divorce, abortion, and the like. I've argued that part of the reason for that is the political obsession of many evangelical leaders, which has in turn seduced so many evangelicals. It is that obsession and seduction that is so beautifully and horribly laid out in God's Harvard. As you recounted over and over, there was no differentiation between Jesus and politics. There was the absolute understanding that to serve Jesus meant to grasp power and manipulate the political system for God's gain. Sadly, this isn't anything new. It is precisely the sort of thing that Jesus came to defeat.
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About halfway through the book, something struck me. Not a single student quoted Jesus' sayings to you in justifying their politics. Their justification came from Old Testament admonitions about power. They didn't quote Jesus—at least as related in the book.

Why? It is because it would be impossible to quote Jesus urging young Christian men and women to tackle the political battlefield as if going unto war. It is because Jesus' commands have everything to do with sacrificially loving others and nothing to do with influencing the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am not saying that Christians shouldn't have a political voice. They should. But they should do it as citizens with opinions in public policy and not as "Christians" presuming they have Jesus' answer to problems—because on virtually every position, they do not. It is perfectly possible to be a Bible-believing, Jesus-loving, born-again Christian and have different perspectives on everything from abortion to Iraq. And that perspective is what is missing from Patrick Henry."

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