“What Are your Politics?” by Jason G. Lutz

Ernest Hemingway wrote several brilliant short stories concerning the Spanish Civil War. I forget which exactly contains the story of an old man left behind in a retreat from Franco’s army, the old man cannot keep up and stops. After a brief interaction a young officer asks him, “what are your politics?”, to which the old man replies, “I have none, I’m an old man”. The not so subtle inference here is that the wrong politics would get him killed. The man was of the same nation, ethnicity, religion, race, and possibly the same town as the forces coming toward him. We must admit just how divisive political views can be.

I don’t think we as a country are on the verge of civil war. We need not here lament the rareness of civility in the social media era. And we absolutely should stand for things we believe in. In doing so may we remember a few things.

1. Our political views are secondary in importance to our relationship with Christ and our public demonstration of that relationship (i.e. our witness). Understand that building the Kingdom of God is simply more important than seeing our preferred policies put in place. When these views come in conflict, the follower of Christ needs to step back and consider thoughts and actions. Anger, frustration, insecurity, broad generalizations, bad moods over the news are not a replacement for ground level action from the Children of God.
2. God has much to say throughout the Bible about how He would like His people to govern themselves. All of us pick and choose which of these we accept and we reject, knowingly and unknowingly. Democracy is a Gift, I believe, so we should not beat ourselves up. But we should understand that when it comes to political views we can be wrong. The redemptive love of Christ is never wrong.
3. Assume nothing about someone by their political views. There are Christian Socialists who want to change the world into Christ’s image. There are Christian Fascists who want to do that same. And everyone in between. We put ourselves in danger of foolishness when we say; because that person holds political view X, that person is obviously a (insert any broad and negative generalization of your choice). This is to lack understanding.

Maybe it is this simple, we have heard for years “people before profits”, perhaps we are entering an era of “people before politics”. The Sons and Daughters of God can lead in this.