Crucifying the Flesh

   Now there's a happy title for you!

   This is a topic I think is probably about as misunderstood as any in this Christian life.  I'll use the following verses to illustrate what Jesus tells us to do in this regard.

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.  For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 16:24-25, ESV)

   There are other verses similar to this about laying down your life for Jesus.  The most compelling and dramatic imagery Jesus evokes in them is this act of taking up your cross.  Just as Jesus did before he died, we are called to take up our cross - to head toward our crucifixion.  Athough we do not have to endure the painful, physical suffering that Jesus endured, the death of the flesh is intended to be every bit as significant.  And the death of the flesh, of the physical body, is significant because in this death we find the life of the Spirit.  By choosing to be crucified alongside Jesus, we will find life in and with him.
   Here is a dangerous interpretation of taking up our cross: that this means a kind of "self-immoliation", or self-flagellation; that it means we are to control ourselves by our own effort.  It may seem that way.  After all, the decision to take up one's cross is an act of the will.  Surely this admonition of Christ is one of self-denial, one of individual effort.  But the problem with this interpretation is that it comes back to us: we are the ones who keep ourselves pure, who practice self-denial in an effort at purity.  While we have a hand in it, we have no power outside of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot deny ourselves by ourselves.
   This is not a small nit to pick.  Part of what we take up when we take up our cross is the realization that we need Jesus if we're going to deny the flesh.  What Jesus wants us to have crucified is not just the sinful nature of the flesh, but the controlling nature of the flesh.  He wants us to allow our will to be crucified.  He wants us to let our effort die.
   Here then is the most important thing that can be crucified in us: our best efforts.  While we thought Jesus was asking us to try really hard, we overlooked the fact that he wants us to crucify the effort of trying really hard, too.  You see, the Lord wants our hearts.  It's not enough for us to deny the urges of the flesh if we won't give over our hearts, because that belief we have about ourselves that we can overcome the flesh is also a part of our flesh.  When we deny God full access to our hearts, we superimpose our will over His.  When we believe that we can perfect ourselves by denying the flesh, we deny God the power to renew us.
   One objection I can foresee to this interpretation is the objection of the hard-triers, and it is not an unreasonable objection.  The hard-triers will note that acts of the will are important.  After all, it is an act of the will to believe in Jesus and be saved.  Faith is an act of the will.  And the process of sanctification, the growth that comes through walking with God, will surely both produce and require self-denial.  Paul essentially points out that, just because we are forgiven of sin, this doesn't mean we should continue to sin.  On the contrary, we should strive to be righteous because of our forgiveness.
   My answer to this objection is a squishy one, but it is my sincere opinion that most of what God says is squishy to us because we are not like Him.  If you have given God your whole heart, and you have the same unction to perfect your flesh, by all means continue.  Because you've already given God what He wants anyway: your heart.  And the thing is, once you've given your whole heart to God, you want His righteousness, too.  You want to please Him, to be like His son Jesus.  Does that mean that you won't screw up?  No.  You will screw up.  Let me repeat: you will continue to fall short.  And that is why the blood of the Lamb of God covers all sin.  And that is also why God wants your heart and not just your effort.
   This is the squishy answer to so much that we ask: love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.  Here is a second squishy answer: love your neighbor as yourself.  And this is how we crucify the flesh: we get into the heart of God and go after Him like nothing else; we deny our ability to try really hard and accomplish anything; and we love as deeply and thoroughly as we possibly can with the Father as our only source of power.

What The Church is

The Church is two guys having coffee, talking about Jesus.

The Church is a Thanksgiving feast, free, open to anyone, with the kids running around while their parents talk to friends, eating banana pudding or pumpkin pie.

The Church is the elderly, the married couples, the single folks, the college kids, the families with kids, the children themselves.  The Church is all of them together.

The Church is a half dozen people in someone's living room gathered around a young woman who sits in a chair weeping as they pray for her healing.

The Church is a couple of hundred people in a room singing with their hands in the air.  The Church is two young girls waving flags at the front of the room, their eyes watching the words Glory and Holy ripple with each pass.  The Church is the middle-aged man in the back and the young man on whom his hand rests as he prays in tongues.

The Church is men and women serving food to whoever wants it while the bustle of another night of activities begins around them.  The Church is the one serving the food and the one taking it.  The Church is the giving and the taking.

The Church is two grown men, fathers, husbands, embracing one another, glad just to have a friend.

The Church is twenty women in someone's house sharing food and conversation.  The Church is the mothers, the grandmothers, and the childless; the single and the married; the wealthy and the poor; the beautiful and the homely; the homeowner and the visitors.  All of them.

The Church is a husband and wife, alone in their car, driving home.

The Church is at the store.  The Church is at work.  The Church is driving to the bank, and going on vacation, and sleeping in on Sunday, and taking meals to a friend who had surgery, and sharing a pint of beer with his friends, and moving furniture for a single mother, and helping a stranger tear down a fence, and giving five bucks to a panhandler, and having dinner with another family on Saturday night.  The Church is doing all of this.  The Church is you and me and all of the believers, all the time and everywhere.

The Righteousness of Christ (or Whether the Blood is Enough Part II)

   In my previous post, I made this statement:

If the blood of Jesus is not enough for all of your sins, then it's just not enough. If the blood of Jesus can't make you righteous once you've accepted it, then it can't really do anything.

   I have to confess that when I made this statement last week, I didn't know whether it was true.  Not that I didn't believe it, I just wasn't sure if it was scriptural.  But it is, and let me show you how.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.  For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21, ESV)

   This is the astounding thing: Jesus became sin so that we could become righteousness.  Paul says this rather simply here, but it's a baffling thought.  Jesus, who was without sin--the only human being to ever live a perfect and sinless life--became sin itself upon the cross.  He was the last sacrifice.  Jesus became what God abhors in order to defeat sin forever.  From the point of Jesus's death, there is no need for sacrifice as required under the Mosaic law.  Rather, the only requirement is to believe and give your heart to Jesus, whose sacrifice and blood defeated death forever.  He is our neverending sacrifice.
   This is the paramount achievement of Jesus Christ, that he defeated the power of sin.  You see, sin had power because it is contrary to God's nature.  God is righteous and without blemish.  He cannot abide sin because His nature will not allow Him to abide it.  God can't do anything contrary to His nature; He can't lie, He can't hate (except sin, He hates that), He can't renege on His promises.  And He can't tolerate sin.  So this is why Jesus became sin--Galatians says he became "a curse for us"--and suffered the rejection of God, so that sin could forever be defeated in him.
   Since sin was defeated in Jesus's death, sin is no longer an issue.  Paul says in this verse in 2 Corinthians that "anyone [who] is in Christ...is a new creation."  Those of us who are believers have received new identities.  We are not sinners saved by grace; we are simply saved by grace.  The old identity we had as members of a cursed race, that identity of hostility to God by virtue of inheriting Adam and Eve's curse, that identity is gone once we accept Jesus.  Remember this: when God looks at us, He sees Jesus every time.  God never tilts His head to look around Jesus and to see us for what we were; we are new creations, and He sees the righteousness of Jesus Christ each and every time He looks at us.
   This is the most important thing you will learn as a believer, and so I want to reiterate it.  Since we are new creations, "the old has passed away."  God sees us as Jesus, He sees us as righteous, because that is just what we are.  Our identity is completely new, and our old identity is completely gone.  We can never have that identity back; the blood of Jesus makes sure of that.  So even when we mess up, even when we sin, God still sees the righteousness of Christ.
   This was God's plan from the beginning, and the only way it could be achieved was for Jesus, perfect Jesus, to become sin and bear the wrath of God.  Once God poured out His wrath on Jesus, who had become sin, He had no more wrath to expend.  Don't hear what I'm not saying: there will be judgement, just as the scripture describes.  But for those who have received Jesus and are covered in his blood, God's wrath is abated because Jesus took it all.
   There are people out there, many of them believers, who can not accept this.  There are Christians who believe that, if you don't live the life described in the scriptures, you'll pay for it on Judgment Day.  These Christians are well intentioned and love the Lord.  I think they are motivated by both a desire to please God and a crippling insecurity.  The first motivation is sensible, but misplaced.  The second motivation is senseless, but ubiquitous.  Every Christian I know either has been or is seriously insecure.  It's not because they're Christians; it's because they're humans.  But this insecurity in our flesh is contrary to the security in our spirits.  That is what Jesus makes perfect in us: our spirits.  This flesh will always be corrupt, no matter how much I try.  That doesn't mean that our lives as believers shouldn't be lived for the Lord, or that we shouldn't make efforts to live out the spiritual reality that we have been made perfect.  What it does mean though is that failures in the flesh do not equal failure in the spirit.  As a believer, my flesh cannot damn my spirit, just like my flesh cannot save it.
    I truly believe that many well meaning Christians just plain miss what Paul is spelling out in this passage from 2 Corinthians.  They don't think that they are new creations because they don't feel like new creations.  They continue to live with shortcomings; their flesh continually fails them.  When Jesus defeated sin, he did not eradicate it from Earth.  What Jesus did was he defeated the power of sin.  "Death, where is your sting?"  Jesus defeated the death of the spirit: separation from God.  He defeated the power of sin to curse us and separate us from the Father.  Jesus's sacrifice, and our acceptance of it, does not make life perfect, it makes us perfect in our spirits.
   So this is why I can say with confidence that, if the blood of Jesus is not enough for all of our sins, it's not enough for any of our sins.  If his blood can't cover sins past, present, and future, than it isn't any use.  Jesus did not become some sin; he became sin, period, and to imply that his single sacrifice was not enough for all of my sins is to mock his sacrifice.  Paul says that Jesus became sin "so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."  In Jesus we become the very righteousness of God!  We become his most distinctive identifying characteristic!  And this is not our doing--it's in Jesus.  We become, in God's eyes, His only son, His righteous and perfect one.  And this is what we are, always.

(Update: make the time to listen to this message (first one on the page title "He Loves Me") for a fine word)

Whether the Blood is Enough

   I think we have to ask ourselves this question: is the blood of Jesus enough?  If we believe in Jesus and what he's done, and are washed in the blood, is the blood enough to wipe away our sins?
   There is a supposition among some Christians that the blood is enough, but only if you come back to it time and again after you've sinned, and only if you try really hard between visits.  If you believe this then the truth is that this isn't very powerful blood.  If the blood of Jesus is not enough for all of your sins, then it's just not enough.  If the blood of Jesus can't make you righteous once you've accepted it, then it can't really do anything.
   Let me tell you something about salvation: salvation is a relationship, not a lifestyle.  Salvation does not come with a manual, just like marriage doesn't come with a manual.  People may talk about the Bible like it's an instruction manual for life, but if that is the case, it's a strangely difficult instruction manual.  Looking strictly to the Bible as a manual for how to live your life is like trying to put together your new lawnmower by reading the Chinese portion of the instructions.  You could do it if you had a Chinese interpreter.  Same goes for the Bible, but you need an interpreter: the Holy Spirit.
   To look at the Christian life as something to be lived by the formula God has given us in the Bible is to totally demean the Christian life.  The Israelites had an instruction manual; they had a formula for righteous living.  The Israelites had instructions for what to do when they fell short, for what to do to get right with God again.  But Jesus said, in an instructively difficult way, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.' For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners."  Jesus fulfills this desire of God: mercy over sacrifice.  There is no formula for a life lived under mercy.  Nothing is required by the blood but acceptance of the blood.  Mercy is by definition free and undeserved, and so it can never be earned or due.
   That is an important point: mercy is not your due.  Salvation, forgiveness, grace...these are not your due.  Paul, in talking about Abraham and how Abraham did not earn his righteousness, says, "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due."  If we have to do something to earn forgiveness, it's no longer a gift.  If mercy isn't a gift, it isn't mercy, it's leniency.  If grace isn't free, it isn't grace, it's leeway.  If the blood of Jesus can't deliver us from all of our sins--past and future--then how can it deliver us from any of our sins?  If we can't earn it for our past sins, why would we need to earn it for our future sins?
   This is the very heart of the Gospel, this truth that forgiveness is free if we will receive it, and that we only have to receive it once and for all.  To believe that we will not continue to walk in the righteousness (and therefore forgiveness) of Jesus Christ if we don't somehow live the right kind of life is to believe that we are half-children of God.  It is to believe that we have our own distinct kind of sonship or daughtership.  Listen to me: we do not have our own relationships with God, we each have Jesus's relationship with God.  God does not see me as Colin, a son; He sees me as Jesus, the son.
   This is the Good News of the Gospel.  This is the power of the blood.  This is salvation: knowing God.  Salvation is relationship and nothing else.  God did not fathom and execute the complicated and inexplicably difficult plan of salvation in Jesus so that we could prove to him that we're worthy.  We are not worthy.  He doesn't want, or need, or care about the work of our hands, because He cares about our hearts.  He wants to know us first and foremost, and for us to know Him.  He wants relationship, and until we have it we will walk around completely clueless about what God is about.  Without a relationship with God we are resounding gongs: loud but lifeless.

To Live is Christ

   As a kid, a youth, a teenager, a young adult, I was nervous about the idea of heaven.  Not because heaven is a bad place, but because I wasn't keen for the life I knew to end.  You get used to this thing called living, even if you haven't done it that long, and the idea of just one day not doing it anymore made me nervous.  I liked life.  I enjoyed playing, learning, reading, liesure; the sunshine, sports, driving cars, going out with girls.  One of my favorite things to do is sit outside on a beautiful day and smoke a cigar and read.  They don't do that in heaven.
   It's understandable that we might be nervous about life after this life, but it needn't be.  As Paul said of himself, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." (Philippians 1:21).  This is a fine Sunday School statement, but don't you kind of hate Paul for saying it?  I mean, come on, weren't there things he wanted to keep doing on earth?  As a matter of fact there were.  He goes on to say, "If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell."  This is the conundrum - or rather the blessing - of Paul's life.  If he lives, good.  If he dies, good.  Either way it's all about Jesus.
   Here of course is the key: you have to know what it means, "to live is Christ."  I believe that means you have to be absolutely in love with him.  You have to come to that place where you meet Jesus and decide that this is everything.  This life in God is everything.

Making Much of the Blood and the Body

   There is a curious dynamic in our lives when we worry, worry as Jesus told us not to.  When we worry, we elevate what we're worried about, and in turn demote everything else, especially the power of God.  When we worry we essentially admit that God is not up to the challenge of our problems.  We make much of our problems or concerns when we worry, and that means that we make little of God and his power to make right the things that are wrong.
   Now, since this is true, the opposite is also true.  When we make much of God and His power in light of our problems, we make little of the problems themselves.  We reduce in importance everything but God, who is of paramount importance.  It is never wrong to make much of God and little of everything else.
   Sometimes we have to make little of something good in order to make much of God.  At times we have to make little of our ministries; or make little of our families.  Once, when Jesus was teaching, someone told him his mother and brothers were waiting outside for him.

But he replied to the man who told him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!  For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. (Matthew 12:48-50, ESV)

   Jesus made little of his family and made much of God.  This doesn't by any means imply that he abandoned them, or disrespected them.  As long as they did the will of the Father, they were his family.  Jesus, by making much of God, also makes much of God's family.   This is God's family: those who have been washed in the Blood of Jesus.  "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13, ESV)  Those of us who are believers are family, brothers and sisters in Christ.  A part of becoming a new creation is becoming a part of a new family.  A spiritual family, not a biological one, not born "of the flesh nor of the will of man," as John says.  Born of and into something much more significant and permanent than the families we knew before.
   Think about the dangerous thing Jesus is doing here.  In a culture dominated by the family, where family is the most significant thing in your life, Jesus says, "what family?"  Remember that family is so important to the Jews because their very identity as a "chosen nation" is tied to their ancestry.  And yet this is one of the first things Jesus breaks down in his ministry, this idea that one people is chosen at the exclusion of another because of who their parents are.  In making much of God over his family, Jesus sets the precedent for his Body, the Bride of Christ, which will rise up after his resurrection.  Jesus makes much of God because he can do nothing else, and because there is nothing else that he should do.
   I imagine that, assuming his mother and brothers heard what he said, they were offended at Jesus.  Maybe they weren't, but I think that they probably were.  This is quintessential Jesus: he offends everyone.  And what else could he do?  Think about it: Jesus was perfect, and always did the will of his Father.  And in bringing the message of the Kingdom to humanity, in preaching the ultimate message of truth, he offended every widely held belief, opinion, principle, and dogma of the day (and of our day, too).  He even offended John the Baptist, who knew perhaps more than anyone just who Jesus was.  Remember this scene?

Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples  and said to him, "Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?"

And Jesus answered them, "Go and tell John what you hear and see:  the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.  And blessed is the one who is not offended by me."  (Matthew 11:2-6, ESV)

   Why would Jesus have added that last line, which is out of place in his reply, if it wasn't strictly necessary?  He was responding in that last line to John's unasked question(s), which may have been, "Why am I in jail?  Can't you get me out?"  This to me is one of the more offensive things Jesus says in the course of his ministry.  He is essentially taking John to task; the man who has paved the way, as prophesied, for the Messiah, and who at this moment sits in prison awaiting his unexpected death.  But you know what?  Jesus isn't wrong.  John knew Jesus was the "one to come," he was just discouraged, and apparenlty offended.
   There are many more examples in the New Testament of Jesus' offending people, people of all stripes, but particularly the religious.  Jesus always offends the religious.  As a perfect testifier of the truth of God, Jesus never cared to parse his words.  He wasn't interested in tact, he was interested in truth.  And because he refused to hold his tongue, he offended a lot of people, so much that they killed him for it.  Consider that for a moment: they killed him because they were offended.
   So what's my point, and how is this tied to the Blood and the Body?  Here's my point: blessed is the one who is not offended by Jesus.  Blessed is the one who gets in line with what God is doing, even if it mocks what they have come to value.  Blessed is the one who makes much of their brothers and sisters at the expense of their own interests.  Blessed is the one who makes much of the Blood of Jesus, the Body of Christ, and the Truth of God, even when it sucks to do so.
   Don't be offended by Jesus, because when you are offended by him, you are implying that he is wrong.  And guess what: he isn't.  Don't be offended by the Blood, even though the thief on the cross will receive the same glory in heaven as you.  And don't be offended by the Body, because you are a part of it and it is a part of you, and we can't be a Body without you.
   Make much of the Blood, make much of the Body, and make much of Jesus.  Make much of the Father in your life and see how small everything else becomes.  And you'll also see just how wonderful is the Blood, how necessary is the Body, how big is this God we call Daddy.

Politics and the Believer (Part II)

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.  "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"

And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets."

Matthew 22:35-40 (English Standard Version)

   A friend and I were discussing the culture of American Christian politics, and he provided a thoughtful observation:

"Been thinking about [the notion] "don't we have a Christian responsibility and duty to vote for our values?" From what Jesus said, it seems to me our "duty" is simple: Love God and Love people. And the only way to do that is to understand His love for us through Jesus and that his blood is enough for us when we fall short on that stuff.

So I think maybe my only real duty is to abide in His love. If I do that, that love flows out of me to Him and others. And at that point, when it comes to politics, results of elections won't matter - I will be too consumed with loving and praying for my enemies to really care where they stand on taxes.

All that's easier said than done, but imagine a world where that's how we lived..."

   My friend paraphrases Jesus in saying, "Love God and Love people."  I don't know why he capitalized Love. Maybe he didn't realize what he was doing.  But I think, whether intentionally or not, he nailed it.  In my mind, Loving is distinct from loving, just like God is distinct from god.  We are told that the greatest commandment is to Love God, I think, not to love God.  And the distinction is one of both passion and sincerity.  Much like the notion that "it takes God to love God"--meaning we have to have the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God to even come to know and love God--we have to Love God with a passion and sincerity only He can provide, and this comes from walking with Him and really knowing Him.  The more we know God as a friend and lover, the more we love Him, and then we Love Him.

   This idea is expressed when Jesus tells the Jews in the temple in John 8 that their father is not God, but the devil.  They are shocked; surely if anyone loves God, it is them, because they work so hard to keep His law.  And I'm sure that they sincerely believe they love God.  But Jesus tells them why they don't love God: because they don't know God.  "You know neither me nor my Father," Jesus says in John 8:19.  "If you knew me, you would know my Father."  The problem for them is not that they don't love God, but that they don't know Him.  If they knew Him they would love Him, because this is how we Love God.

   Let me state that again so that we can understand our duty as Christians.  We Love God by knowing Him.  In order to really know Him, we have to have a relationship with Him.  We have to put our faith in Him.  We have to walk some of the uncomfortable roads down which a life with Him takes us.  We have to lean on Him when things are good and when things are bad.  We have to hear His voice and do what He says.  We have to be His friend.  We have to know Him like a wife knows a husband: intimately, deeply, without the prospect of separation.  When we know God like this, we Love him, and we can fulfill the greatest commandment: to Love God with all of our heart, mind, and soul.

   When Jesus is asked in Matthew what the greatest commandment is, he answers, but the funny thing is that he slips a second commandment in there.  This addition is uninvited--after all, the lawyer asks only about the greatest commandment, not the top two--and also, I think, unexpected.  The first commandment Jesus describes is sensible, and I'm sure the lawyer and the other religious leaders were appreciative of his response.  After all, this commandment is in Deuteronomy, so they would have been familiar with it and approving of it.  But Jesus quickly adds a second commandment, one that is, in his words, "like it."  The second is of course, "love your neighbor as yourself."

   How exactly is this second commandment "like" the first?  Well, in the most obvious way it is similar to the first because it is a commandment to love.  I would also submit that it is a commandment to know.  It's hard to love someone you don't know, and that includes, apparently, ourselves.  It's hard to love myself if I don't know myself.  It's also impossible to love my neighbor if I don't love myself.

   This is where politics and life as a believer separate, in this commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Politics demands a certain tunnel vision.  It requires a certain selfishness, too, because my political interests are about my own interests: economic, social, cultural.  Political life is self-centered and exclusive.  It is tribal.  Politics demands that we band together with those who are like us in order to pursue the civil accomplishments we deem most desirable.  Politics is not about compassion or love; it is above all about expediency.

   The other thing about politics is that it bills itself as the answer to our needs.  This is exactly why we get involved in politics, and is exactly what is attractive about the political life.  I think the reason we get so excited about politics is because it is something we can put our hands on.  Our flesh loves politics because we find ourselves in control.  We're calling the shots; we're determining the outcomes.  This is why man can be described as a "political animal," because it's in our nature to band together to create the outcomes we think best.  Politics is inherently attractive to our flesh, and this fact alone should give believers pause in their political pursuits.

   Faith is the opposite of politics, because faith is not a means to produce a world we desire.  Faith is about handing over our power, not consolidating it.  Faith is about submitting our control, not exerting it.  Faith and politics have inherent contradictions, and are in conflict.  The irony is that both pursuits are choices that we make of our own free will.  I think that the distinction is what is desired as an outcome.  In politics, we want power in our flesh.  With faith, we want power in the Spirit.

   This contradiction between politics and faith puts the believer in an awkward position when it comes to his political life.  I don't believe that the Bible prohibits political involvement.  I think any suggestion that God prohibits our involvement in politics is ludicrous and dangerous.  In all honesty I don't think God really cares.  What I know that God does care about is us, and knowing us.  He wants to be our closest friend.  He wants to walk with us everywhere we go, and He wants us to know him as deeply as we can.  That knowledge changes over time, and things in our lives will fall away as we pursue the Lord.  A lot of us may jettison politics as we grow closer to Him; some of us won't.  This will be between you and the Lord, but your politics aren't going to keep Him from loving you, know matter your ideological proclivity.  Whether or not your politics keep you from knowing Him more is, as I said, between you and the Lord.

   My opinion is that, at some point in your walk with the Lord, you're going to have to decide between going deeper with Him and hanging on to your political expectations.  And I think that this is the case because the choice is about control.  And also the choice is about faith; about what you are going to put your faith in.  It's hard to give a damn about politics when you don't have your faith in it, and it's impossible to go deeper with the Lord if you won't put all of your faith in Him.  It's also impossible to love the Lord with all of your heart, mind, and soul if you love your political expectations with some of your heart, mind, and/or soul.  God doesn't want some of our devotion, He wants all of it, but He isn't going to make us give it to Him.

   I expect some objection because what I appear to be saying is that it's an either/or situation with your devotion.  And, well, it is an either/or situation with your devotion.  With your time, or with your interest, or with your effort it is not necessarily an either/or situation.  You can be politically active and walk closely with the Lord.  You can do that, but you are an exceptional person if you can do that.  Being politically active, giving of yourself to your political life, will probably always require some piece of you that should in fact be given to God.  I just think that this is simply the fact of the matter, whether or not we want it to be.  I don't believe that there is, as one friend put it, a "holy balance" we can achieve between politics and God, except for this "holy balance": love the Lord with all of your heart, mind and soul.  To some it might seem lopsided, but let me tell you, that is a good balance.

   When it comes down to it, the only thing God requires of us is this: Love.  Love Him and Love others.  He doesn't have any other requirements.  God is not demanding that we change the world, or change this country.  He is not after the things that we're after.  He doesn't care if there is prayer in schools, or if the federal government funds abortions.  Those things are resounding gongs: hollow and loud.  What He is interested in is Love, because He is Love.  This is why the greatest commandment is not one of the rules of the law, as the lawyer probably expected.  What God really wants is our Love, not our duty.  Now that is an ideology I can rally around.