Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Keep Your Faith Out of the Voting Booth? | Questions You're Asking

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

The separation of church and state is fundamental to American politics—one of the core principles established when the nation emerged. But https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastors Keith Simon) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) believe that this doesn't mean that we should (or can) keep our faith out the voting booth. To the contrary, Jesus has a politic and Christians must be guided by it. Interested in more content like this? Check out our earlier episodes on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/what-are-heavens-politics-questions-your-asking-matthew-5-7/ (What Are Heaven's Politics?) and https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/does-claiming-your-giving-on-your-taxes-negate-spiritual-blessings-questions-youre-asking-deuteronomy-14-22-23/ (Does Claiming Your Giving on Your Taxes Negate Spiritual Blessings?) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. So, Keith, after our little critique of the debate in the last episode we did together, do you think anyone's still listening? Well, I don't even know if my family's listening. No, I think maybe people could have been a little bit turned off by it and thought that maybe we were getting a little too partisan in it. That sure wasn't our goal. But I understand if people were a little bit uncomfortable with it, that's the thing on our podcast is we're not afraid of dealing with uncomfortable issues. And so we don't really apologize for it. That's kind of what makes it fun for us. And you don't have to agree with us to get something out of it, I hope. I learn a lot of things from people I don't agree with. Well, while we're on the topic of uncomfortable things, let's go. We're going to go back to politics now. We will, because that's where we're at, and we need to think about it. There's no reason for Christians to shy away from this. There's reason for us not to be unkind and hateful and divisive over it.

That's not our goal, but we do need to think about it. Well, in some sense I know that what we're trying to do is just say that our loyalty needs to be to Jesus, not to a political party. Our loyalty needs to be to Jesus, not even our country. I think of that Babylon B, Babylon B, Babylon B, the satirical website, where I had a picture of this church with a big American flag in it, and the headline was, dozens accept America as their Lord and Savior. And I just love that line. I'm sure we've mentioned it before, but I just can't get down on my mind is that dozens accept America as their Lord and Savior. And I feel like that's kind of how we are.

And you could go, well, dozens accept the Republican or Democratic platform as their Lord and Savior. And all we're trying to get all of us to do, us first, and then, you know, is to think, no, my loyalty is to Jesus more than political party or even country. Well, and it's interesting because some people think that we should really separate our faith from public life. I'll hear a lot of Christians say, well, doesn't that transgress the separation of church and state? Whenever I get those comments, I always kind of laugh because I think there are some people who think that that's a biblical idea. It's not. There is no separation between Jesus and state. He is a king. He is the state. Those two things, they go right together.

Well, I'm always curious because when people say that, they don't want Christians to bring their beliefs into the voting booth or into the public square. First of all, how in the world do you ever separate your worldview from how you live your life, what you believe about important issues of the day? And second, I don't think they expect anyone else to do that. Everyone brings their worldview, their values, their core beliefs into every part of their life. You can't separate those. It's impossible to separate. The real question everyone faces is what do we put first and what do we put second? In other words, we probably are all a grab bag of different worldviews that we're living our lives

out of whether or not we want that to be the case. The question is, in which worldview am I consciously trying to put first in my heart? Which worldview am I actually going to let shape my politics? Is it going to be secularism? Is it going to be progressivism? Is it going to be? But what's it going to be? A great example of this came back in the 60s when JFK was running for president, and he was the first,

I don't know if he's the first Catholic to ever run for president. He was he the first Catholic? We don't know. I think he might have been. Yeah, he was, and that's why he went to Houston to talk to the Protestant ministerial association because he was trying to convince the country that they could trust him that would be okay to have a Catholic president. Yeah, because the fear at the time, even though this sounds silly to us now, was that if he was elected, the Pope would become the de facto president, that he would just call John F. Kennedy and tell him, hey, here's what you're going to do, man, this is on my papal authority. You must listen to me. Yeah, so Kennedy goes down there and he gives the speech to allay people's fears. And you've got

the quote, Patrick. Why don't you read it? So this is what he says, what kind of church I believe in should be important only to me. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair. So did you catch what JFK said? He said, look, my religious views, my religious ideas, those are private. I keep those separate from my public life. I keep those separate from my public policy. Those are two different things. So you don't have to worry about the Pope telling me what to do because the Pope can only tell me what to believe privately. He can't tell me anything about what to do publicly.

Those should be two separate spheres. And he makes something really clear. What comes first, at least in his job and role as president? Well, it's not the Bible. It's not his religious convictions. That's not what comes first. What comes first are actually his own. own personal convictions, his own politics. That's what comes first. And I would say, I think

JFK got this exactly wrong. I think that if you're a follower of Jesus, the thing that should always come first is what can Jesus say about this? So Frank Bruny, the columnist for the New York Times, and I don't agree with him on too much, but I really enjoy his writing. I think he's a smart guy, and I like how he puts things. And a few years ago, he said this. Now, he's talking about Christians specifically. You can go back and read the column if you want, but here's what he said. I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish in their pews, homes, and hearts. So you hear what Brune is saying. If you have faith, and I don't think he would just say Christians, but that's who he was primarily referring to at this point.

If you have faith, that's awesome. Just keep it out of the public square. Keep it out of the public conversation. Keep it out of the voting booth. Whatever it is. You can have it in your pews, your home, your heart, do or say, or believe anything you want. but don't let that affect how you live your life in the public sphere. There's kind of a Christianized version of this where you have Christians out there who will say,

we shouldn't talk about politics. Some Christians go as far to say you shouldn't even participate in politics. You shouldn't even vote because that's not the main thing for God. God cares about people's souls. God cares about rescuing people from hell and getting them to heaven. That's the kind of stuff that God cares about. So don't get fixated on what's happening. in the here and the now. That has nothing to do with Jesus' mission and purpose. And that's the

Christianized version. It's not saying that your ideas have no place in the public sphere. It's just saying we have no interest in the public sphere. It is nothing to do with us. Yeah, but it seems completely out of step with the Bible, out of the prophets of the Old Testament, and how they spoke truth to power in Israel. It seems to ignore that Jesus told us to pray that His kingdom would come, a kingdom of love, justice, and mercy, a kingdom that it has a certain kind of political organization to it, it seems to ignore what Jesus said about himself. I mean, in Luke 418, he says, The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And so when you read that quote, it's funny, you can tell a lot about a person based on what they get out of it. There are some people who hear that, and they think it's entirely metaphorical. Ah, yes, sin has blinded my eyes, and he's come to let me see truly and clearly. Ah, yes, sin has oppressed me and it has enslaved me, but he's come to set me free. And I want to say, yes, of course Jesus came to do those things, but it's a both and, and we know that because Jesus did both things. He actually gave blind people sight. He actually set people free from prison. Luke, in his second edition of the book of Acts,

tells multiple stories of people literally being set free from prison by God. He came and he actually announced good news to both spiritually poor people, people who knew that they didn't have anything in themselves to offer God, but he spent most of his time talking to literally, physically, materially poor people. Jesus doesn't let us do the either or of he only cares about social issues or he only cares about so-called spiritual issues. He doesn't even separate things into those two categories. He sees those things all as one thing that he's come to deal with as the true king of the universe. So can I give you a more positive example than JFK? There was a guy named Tim Ferran, who was the

leader of the liberal Democrats in England, and he was a very committed Christian, a genuine believer. And like I said, he led their political party. Well, that political party, as the name would tell you, was more liberal than Tim Farron felt comfortable with on social issues. And so Tim Farron was comfortable being the leader of the party, but he personally had different positions than the party did on homosexuality and abortion, those kinds of issues. So he started getting a lot of flack, not because of his leadership,

not because of how he was handling the controversies that he was expected to deal with as a person in that position, but simply because of his own personal beliefs rooted in the Bible. So Tim Farron just got to a point where he said, look, I'm not going to be able to continue to lead this party. It's just not going to work. He was getting so much heat from people within the party. Again, not for his job performance, but just because of his own personal biblical convictions. So he wrote a letter of resignation that he sent out to his party.

I want to just read the last little bit because I think it's really powerful and has a lot to say to you and me. So again, here we go, Tim Farron. I want to say one more thing. I joined our party when I was 16. It is in my blood. I love our history, our people. I thoroughly love my party. Imagine how proud I am to lead this party.

And then imagine what would lead me to voluntarily relinquish that honor. In the words of Isaac Watts, it would have to be something so amazing, so divine, that it demands my heart, my life, my all. So you know what Ferran is doing here, right? He's quoting the lyrics of when I survey the wondrous cross. He's quoting the lyrics of that hymn to say that what demands my life, my soul, my all is Jesus, is the truth, is the gospel. And so as much as I believe in the things that we're doing, I can't give my loyalty to my party at the expensive Jesus. So I'm going to have to step out of this role because I'm loyal to Jesus, and I won't give that up just for my own personal ambition.

This is an enormous challenge. If you want to be someone who gets their loyalties right, puts King Jesus first and everything else second, and if you want to be able to do that and simultaneously say, King Jesus does care about politics, King Jesus does have a politic, that King Jesus does have something to say in the public sphere about how we live and do life together, if you want to do those two things, you are going to be a political orphan. You're probably going to spend a lot of your life feeling pretty misunderstood and not quite knowing where the right place is. Yeah, you're never going to be a home in any political party, and that may mean that you aren't able to have leadership in a party. I'm not saying you can't have leadership. I'm just saying the realities of

the world we live in might make that difficult, just like Tim Ferrinn found out. But let's get a little spicy here, Patrick. Given that we said that we're always Christians who are loyal to King Jesus are always going to feel a bit uncomfortable in any political party, what do you think about this idea that 81% of white evangelicals voted for President Trump in the 2016 election? That is thrown around a lot. And I think it's thrown around as an insult. Like this is a problem.

At least that's the tone. That's what I pick up on when I hear. it in the news. So how should we think about that? Patrick, is it a problem? I like how you ask me the hard question. It's smart. Yep. You went to private school. I did not go to private school. That is a false statement. You say that. You would be shocked how many texts I get from people after you make this. They're like, you did not go to private school. It's like they've caught me that they think I'm a faker or something. I know I didn't go to private school. It's called a joke. He drops Latin on our podcast. He curses in Latin around the office. I've never cursed in Latin.

You did stop me from seeing a customer in the podcast once, so we can all be thankful for that. Let's answer your question. I actually want to start with my own personal experience, not in the sense that I voted for President Trump. I actually, just to be perfectly candid, didn't vote in the last election for a major candidate. But when I hear this... In other words, you wrote someone in it. I wrote someone in. Okay.

Just trying to be clear. Yes. For us public school kids. Go ahead. As I talked to a lot of Christians who were white evangelicals who did vote for Donald Trump, the vast majority of people I talked to did not like him. They weren't excited about it. They weren't thrilled.

They were pinching their nose and they were voting for someone because they believed in a party platform. They believed in things like being pro-life. And that was driving a lot of their decision-making. And yet, I also knew some white evangelicals who were really excited about Donald Trump because here's a guy who's finally going to put us back on top. He's Cyrus the Great. He's going to beat up our enemies. He's going to take us out of exile and give us the throne of power again. And I saw some evangelicals who took on that attitude. Now, those are two really good case studies. In the first group, if 81% of evangelicals voted like that with their nose pinched, but trying to do

what they thought was just best for the nation, the policies they believed in, I don't know if there's a problem with that because they weren't being motivated because they saw Trump as a state. that honestly, they didn't seem as someone that they liked very much. It was just the choice that they had to make. They can only pick between two. But if we pick Donald Trump, because we think that he's going to be our savior, that he's going to be our rescuer, that he's going to make the world the way it should be. If that's what 81% of people did, well, I do think that's really problematic, because that means that we've elevated him and his promises, Donald Trump and his promises, over the promises of Jesus. By the way, the exact same thing can be said of the opposite side.

if the remaining 19% voted for Hillary as their savior, hey, guess what? She's going to rescue it. She's going to save the nation. Well, that's just as despicable and non-Christian as the person who did that for Donald Trump. But if they were able to pinch her nose and say, look, I don't agree with her on everything. But I had to pick between two options, and I think on the whole, her perspective and policies are going to be what's better for a nation. Then, again, I don't see any problem there. So you're saying that motive is really important here, that you could have voted for Trump or Clinton, and I guess if we fast forward a few weeks, Trump or Biden, for the right or the wrong motives. A faithful Christian could vote for either candidate or neither candidate. So we're not

trying to bind your conscience. We're not trying to say this is what you've got to do or what all good Christians do. Not at all. We're going for heart, motivation, perspective, not who you vote for. To press even further, I think what we're trying to do is I think what's happened to both of us, which is we're trying to shake our listeners out of their partisan loyalties. Not in the sense that we're trying to make you change your perspective or to become a moderate, suddenly. That has nothing to do with our goal here. What we're trying to do is get people to say, okay, my political party does not get my chief loyalty.

I am not a partisan. Jesus gets my chief loyalty. Jesus gets to shape my ideas and my values. So let's think for a second about what the right and left each offer Christians that is tempting to us. So we're going after the heart motivations that are not right that are unbiblical. And I think one motivation that Christians have when they vote on the right is that, again, one wrong motivation is that there's a desire to be in control. There's a sense in which Christians are afraid. We're afraid that we are going to have our religious liberties taken away. We're afraid that we're going to have

another social agenda that's out of step with the Bible and Jesus forced on us. We're afraid that we're not going to be able to say what we believe anymore. And that fear compels us to vote for someone who's going to put us back in power so that we can have the votes to protect ourselves and our families. I get that fear. I think there's certain parts of it that are legitimate. But when we make decisions out of fear, usually leads to a bad place. And this fear, I think, is leading to a grasp for power, a kind of tribalism that says we win, you lose, we got the votes, elections have consequences. I don't think that's the way of Jesus. I think a different way of framing what you're saying is that it's tempting to buy into a

leader cult and to buy into a strong man leader who says he's going to give us everything we want. Great example of this is I'm shocked the amount of people I have seen compare Donald Trump to King David because they'll say, well, King David did a lot of immoral things, don't you know that? And God forgave him. Never mind the fact that I'm not sure we've ever heard our president apologized for some of the things, which David wrote a penitential Psalm to make the point that he was wrong. Well, specifically, I mean, President Trump in the last election was asked if he'd ever asked for God forgiveness for anything. And he said no. So we don't have to guess. I mean, he just said it really clearly. So David repented. David repented. There's a big difference.

A big deal. And so then people. move on. They say, okay, well, he's not King David. He's King Cyrus. Now, Cyrus was a Persian king who took the Jews out of exile and brought them back to their home. And you're starting to see the alignment. They had a Jewish way of life that they felt like was under threat, under fire, and this king comes along who gives them a way to live out their lifestyle. And so that's the comparison. But Cyrus the Great was a violent, terrible, not so wonderful human being, if you know anything about Persian history. And so that becomes the comparison. And he eventually face the judgment of God, right? As all world leaders do. And so again, the temptation here is to

buy into a leader cult where we start celebrating him as one of these figures from biblical history. And I think it's easy to buy into a leader cult because, again, what does it promise us? It promises us power. And that's a really dangerous temptation because it's exactly the temptation that the devil gives Jesus in the wilderness. In Matthew 4-8, we read one of those temptations. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. So Jesus is tempted to trade all of his glory. All he has to do is worship the devil, and then he gets everything. Now, Jesus will get everything in the end, but the way Jesus gets everything in the end is by means of the cross. So the devil's saying,

hey, I've got a great bargain for you. You don't have to go do this crucifixion thing. I can just give it all to you. All you have to do is worship me. And sometimes, I wonder if that's what's happening when we're trying to defend our lifestyle. And rather than following the pattern of Jesus, which is a pattern of self-sacrificial love for our enemies, instead we buy into the lie and we say, you know what, I like power to be a little cheaper. So I'm going to find a bully who can stand in my place and make sure that my way of life is protected and prioritized. So if the religious impulses that we have are unmoored from Christ in the Bible, they may very well go down this idea of that Patrick's out of kind of a leader cult that we're looking for someone to be our hero, our King David.

I think that the left has the same problem, that there is a sense in which the leftist or progressive thought has taken on a lot of similarities to religious thought. Andrew Sullivan has called the left's philosophy, the Great Awakening. And he's obviously kind of being humorous here, saying it in jest, but referring to the great awakenings that came through American history that saw a big revival. And in the great awokening, according to Sullivan, you have your eyes opened to the truth. But the truth isn't something about Jesus. The truth is something about our power and our privilege and how we've misused that power and privilege. And so therefore, then Christianity becomes a tool in the left's

approach to social justice, that we're going to get to a better world by all admitting that we have committed the original sin of white privilege, and that a Christian is born again, so an activist gets woke. To be clear, we're not trying to say things that are offensive. We've had lots of podcasts that talk about race relations, and we think that's a serious issue that needs to be dealt. In our next podcast, I think that's what we're going to be talking about. Well, in the last podcast, we were pretty clear that President Trump blew it in the debate. Yeah. When he can't say the white supremacy is evil.

But the problem with the modern progressive left is that they want the kingdom of God without the king. They've taken on the Christian concept of the end times. So Christians believe that Jesus is going to return. He's going to make all things right. He's going to bring God's love, justice, and mercy. Make all relationships right. He's going to make all the world right. And again, people on the world right.

the left. They actually believe that as well. We can make the world right. We can bring justice, but that justice doesn't come from King Jesus. That justice comes from moralisms. It comes from you have to speak a certain way. You have to think a certain way. You have to confess certain things. And when I start talking like that, you should start thinking about a group that Jesus had a lot of things to say to. The Pharisees. What the Pharisees believed and why they were so moralistic was that if the Israelites would just walk in God's ways, then God would finally bring His kingdom on earth. And so they saw it as their mission and their purpose to publicly call people out and shame them if they fell short of God's calling in their life. They saw it as their job to lead people to

conversion, which is, again, like Keith said, in the case of the modern progressive movement, which is becoming woke. It wasn't becoming woke for them, but it was turning to the one true God. the Pharisees were the equivalent of modern-day progressives. And if you didn't agree with them, what did they do to you? They shamed you. They kicked you out of the community. They drew lines. They said, if you're in, you have to agree with us on all these things.

And if you don't, then you are out. When you start realizing all the parallels, you realize that just like the Pharisees wanted to bring the kingdom of God, but have nothing to do with Jesus, that's what's happening on the left. We want the kingdom, but we don't want the king. All this is making me think I might vote for you for President Patrick. can I write you in private school Patrick? There's nothing I would rather not do in the world more than be the president of the United States.

But thanks for the vote of confidence there. I bet you could do a better job in the debate than either of the last two. I don't know, man. I would have walked out. I just would have had to leave. I was how I got to go to the bathroom. They're like, where are you going? It's a while.

All right. So where are we trying to get us today? well, I think what we're trying to get us to do is maybe we're trying to do a couple things. One is to shake ourselves out of too much partisan loyalties, to help us see things a little bit more Christ-centeredly than partisanly. I think I'm making up words. I'm not even sure all those are true words. But then also what we're trying to say is that we need to bring our faith into the public sphere. But we can only do that when we hold our loyalty to Jesus firmer than we hold our loyalty to our country or to our party. Russell Moore said that we can be Americans best when

we're not Americans first. In other words, when our loyalty to King Jesus is greater than our loyalty to our country, it turns out we'll actually be better citizens of America. What, you can say the same thing about our parties. We'll be better Republicans or better Democrats when we're not Republicans or Democrats first, because we will bring truth and light and love into the conversation. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily.

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