Category: Politics

A Wake Up Call to Evangelicals as We Watch the Undoing of Our Past Success

One can agree with the goal to identify waste and corruption and weed it out, but at what cost?

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The absurdity of what is happening now is hard to reconcile with the reality of it. The history of how we got here seems to have been lost. Some Evangelical Christians are now cheering the process of undoing what Evangelical Christians fought hard to get not very long ago.

My thoughts today come from a man I have met, and I have heard speak at the Administer Justice Restore Conference in Elgin, IL in 2018. Soong-Chan Rah was professor of Church Growth and Evangelism at North Park Theological University just outside of Chicago at that time. Now he is professor of Evangelism and Church Renewal at Fuller Theological Seminary in California. He planted New Covenant Fellowship Church in Baltimore, MD, where he grew up, and he founded the Cambridge Community Fellowship Church in Massachusetts when he was at Harvard. He has multiple theology degrees. He has worked for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and he served on the boards of the Christian Community Development Association and World Vision, among other things.

Dr. Rah is not just a lifelong evangelical; he has undergraduate degrees in history and sociology. The combination of his personal history (born in Korea, grew up in the US from the age of about 5, raised by a single mother in the inner city), education, and experience give him an unique position from which to comment about the whirlwind of executive action Donald Trump has taken since the inauguration less than two months ago.

Dr. Rah sounded this alarm for the US Evangelical Church:

Wake up Evangelical Christians. The dismantling of USAID is not the confrontation of corruption and liberalism, it is a MIDDLE FINGER to Evangelical Christians who still adhere to the tenets of Scripture.

A short history lesson. Under the Bush administration, there was a move by evangelical Christians to access government funds to support the work of compassion and mercy. Government funding should not discriminate between a religious organization and a non-religious organization if the work is being done for the common good. This move was supported widely across the political spectrum as an action that prevented discrimination against Christian ministries. One of the key expressions of this policy change was access to USAID funds by Christian relief and development organizations. Christian organizations could now access USAID resources (e.g. – surplus US grain purchased by USAID in support of US farmers, in turn that grain became GIK donations to be distributed by US Christian organizations that often served international communities). In other words, one of the efforts by the US government to actually reflect the value of a Christian nation through the work of Christian organizations was completely wiped out while Evangelicals cheered two of the most non-Christian people in the world.

Wake up US Evangelicals. You are not just being played and used, the very people you cowtow to are actually mocking all the values you claim to espouse.

February 12, 2025

While I have no doubt that “corruption and liberalism” exists at USAID, many Christian organizations do their ministry with USAID support. Evangelicals fought for and earned a right at the table not that many years ago to receive federal funding to run the humanitarian programs supported by USAID. Organizations like Samaritan’s Purse, World Relief, and World Vision depend heavily on USAID and could not begin to do what they do without USAID support.

We need to be mindful that God calls His people throughout Scripture to do justice for widows, orphans, and strangers. Justice in the Bible includes caring for the weak and vulnerable in our society. Do you think that God does not bless a nation that taxes its citizens who have means to do justice for the poor and vulnerable who have no means?

USAID does just that domestically and around the world, and many Christian organizations like the ones I have mentioned do biblical justice with USAID funding. These organizations cannot do what they do on the scale they do it without this funding.

Many organizations would not fall into the category of doing biblical justice, of course. It should be no surprise to anyone that changes in the political powers every election cycle results in changes in how federal funding is used. That is the reality of a democracy. Do you really think that the current changes will not be changed again in four years?

The difference is that the infrastructure for this funding is now being completely dismantled. In just a few short weeks. Years of diligent and faithful effort by Evangelicals to fund ministries of justice are being undone in a virtual moment. The proverbial baby is being thrown out with the bathwater. Some might say that a wrecking ball is being taken to the hospital with the patients and hospital workers still inside!

The funding freeze, firings, and mandates to stop work have come with no attempt to sort the good from the bad. The axe has been laid to the trunk with no attempt to prune and preserve the tree.

As I have thought about these things, warnings of God’s judgment hang in the air. The warnings of God’s prophets are nearly always directed at God’s people because God expects His people to listen to and respond to what He says. Is not the Bible clear on what God desires from His people?

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

Micah 6:8
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Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

How do we faithfully follow Jesus in a divided world?

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My daily Bible reading plan this morning began with this simple question:

How do you faithfully follow Jesus in a divided world?

(See the YouVersion plan called Fighting for Unity in a Divided World)

Judging by my social media feed, this question is poignantly apropos. It’s not just “people in the world” I see at odds with each other. I see many people posting memes under the banner of Christ, getting their lobbing verbal grenade’s at “the people in the world” and fellow Christians, alike.

I confess I have difficulty not being blunt, and for that I ask for your grace when I say that the spectacle saddens me. Humans have always lived in a world dominated by rising and falling empires, but Jesus came preaching a kingdom not of this world. Almost 2000 years after Jesus died and rose again to emphasize the Good News he proclaimed, we still fly our empire banners alongside Christ.

It wasn’t always like that, though. For almost three centuries after Jesus died on the cross at the hands of the Roman Empire, his followers proclaimed the Gospel without any influence or power in the world. His followers were mocked, derided, and marginalized, and they suffered cycles of persecution culminating in the Great Persecution.

Beginning in 303, Emperor Diocletian, who established a tetrarchy with Maximian, Galerius, and Constantius (the father of Constantine), issued a series of edicts demanding that Christians comply with traditional (pagan) religious practices. (See Wikipedia) Diocletian presaged the Great Persecution when he took power in 284, purging the army of Christians and surrounding himself with public opponents to Christianity. He led an “activist government” and promoted himself as “restorer of past Roman glory”. (Ibid.) (Making Rome great again?)

Diocletian finally ordered “a general persecution” on February 23, 303. The reign of persecution was short-lived (unless you endured it, I suppose). Constantius, the father of Constantine, restored legal equality for Christians in Gaul in 306, and Maxentius usurped Maximian’s control in Italy and North Africa in the same year with a promise of religious toleration. When Licinius ousted Maximinius in 313, the persecution was formally ended.

The political ebbs and tides of the time (with implications for the church) are reminiscent of our political shifts from right to left to right in recent years. Perhaps, little has changed in that way, yet the change that followed in 313 was unprecedented, and this change set the course of the Church on a path it had never before traversed.

Eusebius, the Christian historian, wrote as a contemporary of Constantine with glowing approval of the events that changed the course of Christianity forever. Eusebius is the person who preserved the details of Constantine’s personal story of conversion to Christianity.

As the story was told by Constantine, he had a vision in 312 shortly before an imminent battle with a challenger to the throne of the Roman Empire, Maxentius, whose army outnumbered Constantine’s. Constantine saw in the sky a giant cross with the inscription, “In this sign conquer!” The vision was followed by a dream that evening in which Jesus purportedly came to him and told him to conquer in his name. Thereafter, Constantine established the cross as the standard for his army and the banner under which the Roman armies marched to battle and conquered in the name of Christ, the lamb of God who died that we might live.

The words of John Dickson have been echoing in my mind since I listened to Episode No. 21 of his Undeceptions podcast.

In the podcast (titled Post Christian) featuring the Australian journalist, Greg Sheridan. John Dickson commented on the approval by Eusebius of Constantine’s use of the cross as a symbol of conquering on behalf of the Roman Empire this way:

“A people used to mockery and social exclusion – and worse – were now invited into the very center of power. And perhaps most bizarrely, the Christian sign of humble self-sacrifice – a cross – was now the formal path – the very symbol – of the Roman war machine. It is so hard to get my head around when I consider what Jesus said about the cross – his cross – and its social implications.”

Juxtaposed to the image of Roman armies conquering under the sign of the cross in the name of Jesus, Dickson recalled the story of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who asked Jesus asking to seat them on the right and the left of Jesus when Jesus rose to power. These brothers, like many First Century Jews, expected a conquering Messiah. They interpreted the prophets to predict a Jewish Messiah “who would lift Israel above Rome and crush the enemies of God.”

Jesus gave them a response they didn’t expect and likely didn’t understand at the time:

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

Mark 10:38

The other disciples became indignant with James and John thinking, perhaps, they they deserved glory and recognition also. They, like many before and after them, may have viewed religion as a path to power and influence, and they may have been annoyed at the audacity of James and John out of jealousy. At this, Jesus brought them together and set them straight.

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:41-45
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What Does the Word of God Say about How Rulers Should Rule?

God’s approved rulers do what is right and just.

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Let’s lay politics aside for a moment, and just consider the Word of God. Politics, of course, is the backdrop to this article. A person cannot be completely apolitical, no matter how hard one tries, but political positions shift, evolve and change, while the Word of God is eternal. Therefore, we should put the Word of God first over our political inclinations.

The Word of God existed before God made the universe, and all of creation was made by the Word. (John 1:1-3) God spoke the entire universe into existence (Genesis 1) and made all things by that are seen from what cannot be seen His command. (Hebrews 11:3)

Of course if you are a Christian, you believe that the Word of God became flesh (John 1:14) in Jesus: God with us; God incarnate; God who became man. He proved himself by what he said, by the miracles he did, and by rising from the dead after he was tortured, crucified, and buried.

The Word of God (at least some of it) is preserved in writing for us as it was spoken to and through people who heard God’s voice and responded in faith by preserving it. Jesus, Himself, quoted extensively from the books of what we call the Old Testament as authority for what he said and did. (Interestingly, he never quoted from apocryphal texts.) Jesus, who we believe was God who became man and who rose from the dead, treated those Old Testament writings with great deference – as the word of God.

Jesus quoted Scripture often from Genesis to the Prophets. When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, he quoted scripture, including Deuteronomy 8:3: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” When Jesus began his ministry, his first public statement and the description of his ministry came from the prophet, Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has 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.”

Luke 4:18-19 (which Jesus told the listeners was fulfilled by him that day in their hearing)

After Jesus rose from the dead, he explained how the Scriptures from Genesis through the Prophets were about him. (Luke 24:27) Jesus was both the Word of God through whom God made the universe, and he honored the word of God preserved in the Bible – calling it his daily bread. It defined his purpose; and it informed who he was.

With that set up, my theme today is the Prophets and what they said about how God’s people should act in the world, especially rulers who wield governmental influence and power. Our political views, how we conduct ourselves in politics, and who we champion as our rulers should be informed and driven by God’s Word.

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Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth Donald Trump?

“‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord.'”

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I try not to be too political, and I try pretty hard to stay out of the public political fray. I am convinced that Christians should be very circumspect about politics. We are citizens of the kingdom of God, first and foremost, and we owe our ultimate personal allegiance only to the King of all Kings.

I am also mindful of the tradition of the prophets. They stood as God’s mouthpieces to God’s people and to the priests and kings who lead them. While they didn’t hold back in pronouncing God’s judgments and warnings on surrounding nations, they directed most of their attention to God’s people, the nations of Israel and Judah.

I also have to note that the nations of Israel and Judah are unique in the history of God and man. The United States of America is not a nation of God’s chosen people like the nations of Israel and Judah were.

(The current state of Israel isn’t either! See the responses of Hank Hanegraaff, the Bible Answer Man, to a pointed questions put to him about the status of nation of Israel today in the postscript to this blog article.)

There is much I could say about these things, but I want to get to my topic today. God’s prophetic voice is most prominently focused on His own people, wherever they are situated. Thus, Jesus often confronted the religious leaders of his day – the Pharisees and Sadducees – though he hardly said a word about the Romans who were the governing authorities in Judea.

Similarly, I believe God’s attention is on the church in America, and I am focused on Donald Trump only because many American Christians have claimed him as their champion. Biden, and Clinton, and Obama didn’t claim to be aligned with the church, but Trump does.

Therefore, when I read the following headline in the New York Times recently, For Those Deemed Trump’s Enemies, a Time of Anxiety and Fear, I took notice. The statement that Donald Trump has vowed to exact vengeance caught my attention.

Trump’s public warnings to those who opposed him, searched his home, prosecuted him, etc. are have weight behind them because they are characteristic of the man. People have taken them deadly seriously, including Joe Biden who pardoned a record number of people in his last days of office, including preemptive pardons of his own family members and people on Trump’s hit list.

I could say a lot about these pardons, also, but I won’t do that right now. I will only say that the threats Trump has made are not empty, and conducting himself in that way has repercussions for both parties and the health and future of politics in America. “What goes around comes around,” as the saying goes.

My focus, though, is on what this means for the church and how we live out being salt and light, making disciples to the ends of the world, and living consistent with the kingdom of heaven on earth. Do we not have some responsibility to God, the Father, the Maker of heaven and earth, to speak prophetically about the state of the church and of its complicity in the rise to power of Donald Trump?

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Can Christians Be Patriotic?

Christians should view themselves fundamentally as citizens of a kingdom that is not of this earth

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Concerns about “Christian nationalism” have been raised in recent years from the political left. Some people in Christian circles, and specifically conservative Christian circles, have pushed back on those concerns and criticisms. At the same time, however, concerns about Christian nationalism have been voiced from within Christian circles, even from within conservative Christian circles.

The conversation has arisen, perhaps, because of the way that Donald Trump has courted Christians in his campaign to “Make America Great Again”. Many Christian voters have embraced Trump and his campaign slogan.

I am thinking about this in the context of a question raised about Christians being patriotic to John Dickson on a recent episode of the Undeceptions Podcast. (See Question Answer XIII at abut the 42 minute mark.) The person who raised the subject referenced the Bonhoeffer movie, observing that the issues for the church seemed to come when the church stopped thinking what it means to be a Christian and started thinking about what it means to be a German Christian.  

The question is, “Should Christians be patriotic?”

Putting the question in terms of patriotism, rather than nationalism, presents a slightly different twist on this conversation. “Christian nationalism” has become a pejorative term, but patriotism is seemingly more neutral and non-pejorative. At the same time, many people accused of Christian nationalism would likely say they are only being patriotic.

So, is patriotism ok for a Christian?

I like the fact that this question was put to John Dickson, an Australian who has no dog in the American political fight. Though he currently teaches at Wheaton College in Illinois, he approaches the issue from outside the roiling turmoil of American politics.

The question was also posed by a non-American listener to the podcast who was concerned about the way patriotism “potentially dehumanizes others and makes them seem lesser because they are not of our race”. He expressed concern about the mistreatment of refugees and others of different background to our own.

The “glaringly obvious” theological view proclaimed by Jesus and the New Testament writers, responds Dickson, is that Christians should view themselves fundamentally as citizens of a kingdom that is not of this earth. (Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” (Jn. 18:36); Paul said, “[O]ur citizenship is in heaven.” (Ph. 3:20); and Peter called Christians “sojourners and exiles” in this world. (1 Pet. 2:11) In my view, that means that none of us have a dog in the earthly political fight – ultimately.

Thus, we should “be shaped by the values of God and not the values of any particular nation”, according to Dickson. He observes that this admonition is everywhere in the teaching of Jesus, beginning with the first public words spoken by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew, which we call the Sermon on the Mount. He summarizes,

“Everything in the Beatitudes [in the Sermon on the Mount] seems to stand against the nationalistic mindset of dominating others…. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful; blessed are the peacemakers; blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven [paraphrasing the Beatitudes]. The contrast with the nationalistic spirit of the day couldn’t be more striking.”

JOhn Dickson in Episode 146 of the Undeceptions podcast

Dickson urges us to consider the Beatitudes in light of the Roman domination of the world at the time and the Jewish expectations at that time. These are some song lyrics written in the 2nd Century BC by a Jewish author:

“See, O Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David,
At the time known only to you, O God, that he may reign over Israel your servant.
Gird him with strength, to shatter unrighteous rulers;
To purge Jerusalem of the nations that trample her down in destruction;
To expel, in wisdom and righteousness, sinners from the inheritance;
To smash the sinner’s pride like a potter’s vessel….”

Psalms of Solomon 17:21-23

This Jewish author’s sentiment is full of what we might call nationalistic pride. Contrast that sentiment with the words of Jesus. The meek inheriting the earth seems like a far cry from shattering unrighteous rulers. As John Dickson explains,

“Jesus is demanding that his followers live by the values of the future kingdom over the values of any particular present nation.”

JOhn Dickson in Episode 146 of the Undeceptions podcast

Everywhere Jesus went, he proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God. (Luke 8:12) The kingdom of God (and being ready for it) is the subject of most of the parables Jesus told. He also announced that the kingdom of God is here now (in our midst), but he sad it is like a mustard seed, the yeast in bread, or a treasure buried in a field.

The kingdom of God now is not (yet) the ruling authority. It is here, but it has not taken over. It is emerging, but it is not yet what it will be. When that time comes, however, everyone will know it; and people need to be ready for it, or they will miss it and be left out.

The message of the kingdom of God – that it has come, but is yet to come fully – is consistent with the instruction of Jesus that the meek will inherit the earth. We do not rule in the kingdom of God presently with might and power; we “rule” by denying ourselves, but taking up our crosses, and by allowing God to rule and work in our hearts to conform us to Himself.

The Jews who expected their Messiah to come at the time of Jesus did not recognize Jesus because they thought he would be their champion, empowering them to shatter the nations that oppressed them and smash the pride of (more) sinful nations. They failed to recognize their own sinfulness and the promise to Abraham, which was to bless all the nations through Abraham’s descendants. (Genesis 12:3, 18:18, 22:18)

They were too full of nationalistic pride to see what God was doing, consistent with the very promise God made to the them – to bless all nations. As we will see, this is a key issue, and it is something we need to contend with, lest we enter into the error of the First Century Jews

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