A few days after election day my thoughts are still swirling. Actually not swirling, really, but focusing on things that Jesus said. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his audience to “be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect.” The context in which Jesus said this is loving our enemies:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.'”
Matthew 5:43-48
The illustration Jesus used is the fact that God causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and his rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. God demonstrates his love for the world that is filled with people in opposition to Him by providing common grace.
Many fellow Christians in this country have been fighting a culture war for decades and trying to take over the U.S. government for Jesus. What they don’t realize is what they will accomplished if they succeed. If they succeed in making the US a Christian nation today, they will change the character of a country.
It will no longer be a country in which there is liberty and justice for all. It will no longer be a country in which all people are protected in the freedom of their conscience, to worship as they choose, and to speak according to their conscience. To make our country a Christian nation means to favor Christianity.
That may seem like a good idea as long as Christians are in power. As long as Christians fight to maintain their power and to prevent a takeover by another group, everything will be fine for us.
In the meantime we establish precedent for might makes right. If it was good for the Christian cause, it will be good for the atheist cause, or the Muslim cause, or the cause of whatever group rises to power and dethrones the Christians.
This dynamic continues to tear apart countries around the world, and it always has. The United States was comparatively a shining city on the hill from the date the wet ink on the Constitution dried. To make this country a Christian country is to ignore the First Amendment of the Constitution that protects all people from the establishment of a state religion and protects the conscience of all people to worship as they individually determine.
To ignore the Constitution is to negate the power of it and to open our country up to the same tribal conflicts that occur in many other nations around the world. Christians who are fighting to make the United States a Christian nation are short-sighted in pursuing that goal and are laying the foundation for our country to be controlled by whatever thought group rises to power.
I believe that the effort also is not biblical. God does not force people to love Him, to honor Him, or even to acknowledge Him in this world. He causes the sun to shine on the evil and the good and sends the rain to fall on the righteous and the unrighteous.
God desires that all people “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.'” (Acts 17:27-28) If He did not want us to have any choice in the matter, He would have programmed us like obedient robots. Of course, then we would not truly love Him.
Instead, He gave us a world in which we are not required to love Him, and that means we can truly love Him for who He is. He became incarnate and sacrificed Himself to show His love for us. Stands at the door and knocks, and all who will open the door He comes into them. The people who reject Him or ignore Him will not be required to spend an eternity with Him – to their sad loss.
If we want a country that demonstrates God’s love to the world, it should be established to protect and promote common grace – liberty to all – the way our Constitution now reads, and we should do nothing to undermine it. We should protect the liberty of every individual to seek God and perhaps find Him, to discover that in Him we live and move and have our being, to love Him for who He is and not because of any law that was passed by a Christian legislature.
It may sound very Christian to take over the U.S. government for Jesus, but it actually isn’t. The Gospel spread steadily over the first three centuries in a hostile Roman government that crucified our Savior. God does not need the U.S. government to protect His sovereignty or His plan of salvation that extends to all the nations. He only needs His children to be faithful for the harvest is great and the workers are few.
