“Don’t talk politics and religion,” goes the old saying.  For some, especially in professional workplaces, this has become a guiding principle.

Yet, the two most important things that define our life are our faith and politics.  We should wonder why the two most important areas of life are considered unopen to discussion.

The Purpose of Government

Throughout recorded history, the purpose of government has been to protect and provide for the general welfare of the people living within a specific area.

Government was not there to guide individuals on how to live their lives.  That was the role of religion.  Government was not there to give meaning to people’s lives, but it was there to allow people the opportunity to live meaningful lives.  There is a difference between giving and allowing.

Yet, today both liberalism and conservatism in the United States are guilty of trying to guide individuals on how to live their lives. The two parties have taken the place of religions.  This is in turn goes back to the principle of the worship of the will (which I wrote about recently).

The Origins of Modern Western Democracy 

All democracies in the West are Republican Democracies meaning that the citizens of a state vote for representatives whom they believe will represent their values and ideals and who will vote similarly to how they would if they were in that position.

This type of government arose gradually in the West when the nobles from different countries in Europe (who owned most of the land along with the King) began demanding the right to have a say in how their country was governed.  Their argument was: they had their land and their wealth at stake, so they should have a role in governing to protect their land and wealth.

Eventually, this transformed to include the new phenomenon of the middle class which while not being nobility, had considerable possessions including wealth and some land.  So, the argument the nobles used could extend to them as well because they had possessions at stake.

Democratic governing also took one more turn after the period called the Enlightenment.  Democracies in the West were built on the vision to actualize one’s own will, which in turn comes from the presupposition of the worship of the will. It is not surprising that working with that presupposition in conjunction with the collapse of values in the West leads to the chaos we see today.

The Necessary Conditions for Democracy

Democracy is not a self-evident form of government. In fact, the type of democracy we now have is a very late arrival in the history of governments because in order for democracies to exist, the people under its form of government should largely share the same faith, values, ideas, have a secure food supply, and actively support the way they live by their own money and means.

The earliest form of any recognizable democracy first arose in city-states like Athens which had a population of about 250,000 to 300,000 people in the late 5^thcentury B.C.  Half of that population was citizens with about 30,000 eligible people to vote.  The reason it was able to become democratic is because it was on a small scale (one city) and thus people had the same background when it came to values and ideas, they had a secure food supply due to trade, and the people worked to support their way of life.  Even then, it was highly unstable.  In the course of about 100 years, the government changed from democracy to a tyrannous oligarchy very quickly before going to back to democracy then being conquered by Alexander the Great in the late 4^thcentury B.C.

Because faith, values, ideas, a secure food supply, and active working to support one’s way of life are essential to democracies this is why in countries which have too many belief systems, ideas, and an insecure food supply are not able to sustain democracies but become dictatorships such as many countries in the Middle East and Africa.

The Fall of Democracy

No group of people can elect leaders who are better than them.  This is due to the fact that they are elected by voters.  The leaders will necessarily reflect the image of the voters.  Some may point out that in the past we had good leaders, but if past leaders appeared to be good, that was because they were a reflection of the values and ideals of the people who chose them at the time.

Further, if people have no stake in society, which is becoming more and more common, why are they worried about the vote?  It is actually because the government has become the guide of life that provides people with meaning.  They seek the government for this, but this cannot be given by the government.

In addition, the process of politics (even in the discussions of lay people) has been reduced to nothing more than name-calling and the portrayal of “the other side” as dangerous (either due to evil or to stupidity).  No democracy, no nation can be sustained in this way.  If these are the continual conditions of the political process in a country, then it is only a matter of time before the system of government collapses. And why?  Because it is a reflection of the people who are proceeding this way, and they are deeply divided. If a “house divided against itself will not stand,”so what about if the country is deeply divided against itself?

The process of politics ends up becoming fan clubs and hero-worship.  This is usually done by talking about how stupid or evil the other side is.  No doubt, some politicians are evil, and some are unwise, but not all, and this way of speaking is not a solution to any problem in society nor is it Christian.  It only leads to more division.

I myself have seen both liberals and conservatives get so angry if they perceive someone saying something about their candidate. With some, they begin having labored breathing; with others they sweat.  It usually turns into rudeness and name-calling.  Some even stop talking to others including friends or family members if they perceive they are of a different political tendency.  If one is willing to sacrifice his or her real relationships for their candidate, then this is worship.

On the other hand, it is the genius, rather, the evidence of the otherworldliness of Christianity that it makes the love of your fellow human being a main sign of whether you love God; this is the point of our Lord Jesus’s response when asked what was the greatest commandment that He responded with two: 1. To love God and 2. To love your neighbor.  The idea is that if you love God, you will keep His commandments, and since one of His commandments is to love your neighbor, then until this is done, the love of God is not yet perfected in you.  This is the theme in The Gospel of John 14-15 and a theme in the First Epistle of John among other places throughout the New Testament. In politics, it is a sign of your love for your government or political party that you hate those who belong to the other side.  Christianity transcends politics.

The proper way to talk politics is talking about the issues and the policies that are proposed or implemented to solve them.  I have a public speaking and debate group that meets after school once a week, and I am proud to say that one day they debated whether or not our current president has done good things for the country. I split them in half and assigned each group a side on the issue whether that was their personal opinion or not. Both sides produced the best arguments they could, but what got to me was not the arguments, but how no one got angry at the other side, no one made comments about others’ intentions in debating or accused them of stupidity or ignorance, and nobody felt hurt walking out. They looked at the issues and understood the underlying reasons. Those teenagers discussed politics better than most adults I know, and they left understanding a lot more about the complexity of politics, presidents, and the people who vote.  This led to a development in their personal characters and will serve them in the future when they vote if they continue with the same method.  If all were like them, we would have a much more peaceful country.

We also need to understand the limits of the law. Laws were designed to uphold morality, not to create morality.

The reality is (and this may be to the shock of many you who are reading this) if history has shown any patterns, then we can bet that no current governmental system we have will last forever.  But we can bet that the Christian faith will remain because the Christian faith transcends all nations and even languages. Governments do not transcend anything.

What Do You Value?

So, it’s time for you all to consider what you really value?  Where is our Lord Jesus and His Church in the hierarchy of your values?  Is He on the top of the list?  Is He in the middle of the list?  Is He at the end of the list?  What does He mean to you?  Who is He to you?  How seriously do you take His words?

Where is our Lord Jesus and His Church in the hierarchy of your values?  If He is not worth living and dying for, then you are not a follower of His at all.  It has been the pattern of Christianity throughout history to live and die for Christ even when the governments they were under threatened to make their lives miserable or to take their lives from them. This is the sole motivation for martyrdom: the value of Christ is above everything.

What does our Lord Jesus mean to you?  If He is nothing more than a name to hear on the weekends, then you are not following Him at all.

Who is He to you?  If He is not your Lord and Master, then you are not following Him at all.

How seriously do you take His words?  If you do not take His words as the standard by which you live your life, then you have not understood Him at all.  And if not, then you are not following Him at all.

If His words do not bear on your thinking at all when you go to vote, then you are not following Him at all.  Let me explain further what this last point means.

The Religionization of Politics 

At last we arrive to the heart of the issue before us. The reason politics has become so heated is because political parties have become religions.  This is due to the fact that countries are becoming increasingly secular, that is more atheistic.  Yet, humans are meaning-seeking creatures, so they have given the role of religion to government.  It has now become the guide on how individuals must live their lives.  This is true whether one is liberal or whether one is conservative.  Some conservatives may wonder how conservatism into this category, but that will become apparent below.

What we have now is a society dominated by two warring religious factions, and it has been designed to be this way because of party systems.  The fact that most Democrats have the same position on various issues and most Republicans have the same position on various issues has turned political positions into dogmatic ones.  The Democratic Party has dogmas that must be abided by; the Republican Party does too.

When someone aligns with a party, this is the problem.  An individual should be free to hold different opinions about different issues. Parties should be the way we lean, but not completely describe an individual.  If a person’s positions can be fully (or near fully) defined by a party, then the party has now taken the place of a religious group.

The irony is that these days people of faith often do not always agree with everything their religions teach, but they do often agree with everything their political party says.  Do you see the problem?  The roles of government and religion have been inverted.

If one steers away from the dogmas of a party or the positions of its most recognizable people, then that person is a heretic.  For example, many Democrats cannot understand Senator Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia who voted for Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, as seen in the opening lines of this article, “In bastions of blue in New York and California, I hear variations on this question: ‘Why did Joe Manchin, a Democrat, vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court?’ The question comes through pulsating necks and locked jaws, asked in tones of incredulity and shock.”  The people cannot process how he can do so and still be a Democrat because they assume (whether they know it or not) that a person who has taken the label agrees with all the positions of the party on various issues.

No wonder there is so much strife; it is two very imperfect religions reflecting the images of its voters and constituents warring against each other.  Both liberals and conservatives are entrenched in the religionization of politics.

Liberals always present themselves as being progressives, but the question that they must ask themselves is “What are we progressing toward?”  One cannot progress toward anything without first having a goal in mind.  If the answer to that question is “Progress is the government should give me the ability to get what I want.”  Then two further questions must be asked and those are “Is what I want good?” and “Why is it good?”

Conservatives always present themselves as conserving something, but the question they must ask themselves is “What are we conserving?” Two further questions should be, “Is what we are conserving good?” and “Should it be conserved?”

The reality is that both sides have not discerned anything deeper than the system that they are either trying to move away from or to conserve.  The discussion should be about values and whether those values are coherent.

Liberals often hold to politics as their religion. Because the godless, the young, and those who want to be jobless often are liberals, they usually believe there is nothing more ultimate to life than to actualizing their will.  This is also due to the fact that they do not quite have a grasp on many values such as hard work, the dignity and value of the individual (as opposed to the identity of the group they perceive he or she belongs to), and participation in the community by contributing something of value to it especially within the context of work.

At this point, I may seem to be unfair by presenting stereotypes, but I am not presenting stereotypes and let me explain. When I say the young, it is because they have not yet clearly formulated their values because up until that time they have only been students.  Most of their experiences have been nothing but school whether elementary through high school or some college. They have not experienced being and contributing in the community to its fullest.  They do not know the essential difference in quality between being educated and participating and contributing to the community.  It is not to be defined in terms of whether work is easier or harder than school.  School and work are not comparable.  The nature of the experiences is totally different.  This is why it is so hard to seriously talk to young people because they have such false comparisons ingrained.  To be able to really talk to them about these issues requires open-mindedness from them, but they also need to form a basis from experience for their values.

Those who want to be jobless do not value most things in society.  If they did, they would not want to be jobless.

On the other hand, conservatives usually don’t hold to politics as their religion, although I have met many for whom it is their religion and the state their god even if they don’t know it. Conservatives often operate on the basis of fear, the fear of the legalization of many things such as drugs and prostitution.  Yet, even if everything becomes legal, it should not be an immediate spiritual concern for us because Christianity was never meant to be reinforced by the government. Rather, Christianity always focused on building the internal character of Christians.  This was the goal of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles, and this is what happened in the early church.  The Kingdom of God is to be found inside of us not on the outside. Otherwise, it would contradict the words of our Lord Jesus when he said “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here”(John 18:36, NRSV), and “The kingdom of God does not come with observation; nor will they say, ‘See here!’ or ‘See there!’ For indeed, the kingdom of God is within you”(Luke 17:20-21 NKJV), and the words of the Fathers when they describe the church as a State with sojourners found in every nation of the world such as in The Epistle to Diognetus, a mid-2^ndcentury Christian text: “In a word, what the soul is to the body, Christians are to the world.  The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians throughout the cities of the world.  The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; likewise Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world” (The Epistle to Diognetus, Chapter 6.1-3).  This is because the nature of Christians’ way of thinking and living has changed something beyond from the immediate concerns of the world.  It has transcended the world like the soul transcends the body because it is of a different nature than the body.

Liberals are utilitarian meaning they care about the usefulness of policies.  This is why they resort to identity politics focusing on what they perceive to be a group’s wants or needs.  They have devalued the individual.

Conservatives are consequentialists meaning they think about what certain policies will lead to such as conserving values including preserving economic and corporate structures.  Values indeed hold society together, but by being consequentialist, conservatives have also lost the value of the individual.

Both sides devalue the individuals in pursuit of “something larger” which is really nothing at all when examined closely. This something larger that liberals and conservatives pursue is a delusion because without focusing on the individual and his or her internal development, there is no society.  It is like a house without a foundation. Individuals are the foundation; government is the house.

Liberals often have the belief that through the acting out of their will by the vote and electing representatives who will effect a “progressive” transformation of society that the future will be better than the present and the past.  This is blind faith because a view on how the end of things will be is inherently religious. To guess at the future requires one to go to a state of faith because there is no way to tell what the future is going to be like.  Your faith must be grounded in something solid (which a government cannot be due to the changes in every generation) in order for your faith to be reasonable. This defers an individual’s immediate responsibility to the government.  It is a faith in the government that the government is the right institution to effect the greatest future for individuals.  Without individuals actively doing something, there will be no great future.

Both liberals and conservatives see the power of law as something more than it actually is.  The principles of law throughout most of history is to maintain order and to have standards by which one can operate in society.

It is the general mode of operation of liberals to try to transform society by sending cases to the courts (especially the Supreme Court).  The scientific arguments for abortion failed in the 1960s especially following the molecular biological revolution in which it was shown that an organism has its own unique DNA which it carries through its entire life from the moment of conception. When advocates for abortion no longer had any arguments based in objective standards, they took the issue to the courts and argued for the ability to actualize one’s will, namely the choice of the mother.

Conservatives often also try to force morality through the law for fear that society will change if laws are relaxed.  This is also what gets many Christian conservatives worried. Yet while the law should uphold order and basic standards of morality, the hopeful thing for us is that Christianity arose at a time when abortions, infanticide, exposure of babies, legalized prostitution, legalized drug usage, gladiatorial games, entertainments of the utmost inhumanity and horror, and many other things were widespread and accepted, yet Christians lived their lives in accordance with the moral teachings of Christ and His Apostles because morality can only be formulated from within; it cannot be forced from outside.  The reason relaxed laws can take hold in society especially those societies that you may think were “Christian” is because there was no strong internal foundation in the individuals in that society to begin with.  They only depended on the law and government for morality.  If the law has any bearing on morality, then all it does is condition a person into behaving; it does not actually create the conviction that true Christians have when living their lives in accordance with the teachings of Christ.  This is why there are always criminals in society and any society must have a way of dealing with crimes presupposed.  Without internal conviction which has to come from something other than government, morality cannot translate into values.

Faith and Politics

The greatest transformation in law and politics did not come from any governmental process, but it came from the personal character of Christians.  Christianity impacted Roman paganism.  Pagans did not practice social welfare, but Christians did.  The pagans themselves began to practice social welfare under the Emperor Julian who was a convert to paganism, originally Christian after he complained that Christians not only took care of their own poor and unfortunate but also took care of the pagans who were poor and unfortunate.  This angered him, and he didn’t realize that he had to borrow from the Christians in order to compete with them.

Christianity impacted ancient philosophy, which forms the foundation of Western society.  It did this by providing philosophical challenges to these ancient philosophical systems.  There were ancient systems that did not acknowledge the freewill of human beings. For example, Neoplatonism assigned evil to be solely a function of the flesh, but the soul was totally good, so any evil was to be attributed to the body and not the soul.  The soul was totally unaffected.  Christianity rejected this idea and provided reasons why. When people make decisions, this is a function of the soul (which includes rationality).  This means a person has to reason in some way (or make the choice to not reason) before doing something bad.  Evil was seen as when one chooses something less than the best in place of the best.  They further argued that what one did with their bodies did indeed affect their internal character.  This Christian philosophy challenged and defeated Neoplatonism, and in turn it won the hearts of the masses.

This moral example and philosophical impact in turn impacted the writing of law which transformed to be based on the dignity of the individual than to simply ensure the state’s survival.  These positive changes did not come by the government, but it came by Christians being in the community.

The reality is that if a Christian does not live by the Christian ethics that are outlined by our Lord Jesus and the writers of the New Testament, that person is not a Christian.  Jesus did not say “I am a way, a truth, and a life.”  He said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6 NKJV).  We have to submit to Him, and not Him to us.  If we want to be called by His name, then there is no other way other than Him.

One can lean toward whichever political party he or she wants, but there are simply some issues that one cannot get around. Unrestricted abortion for any or no reason at all, for example, is unjustifiable even by the separation of Church and State. It is our duty to protect life as Christians, and while I am a firm believer that trying to impose Christianity through the State is fundamentally a non-Christian idea because the State is temporal and passing while the Church is not, an issue like giving people unrestricted ability to abort children demands that the Christian makes his or her voice heard.

In the ancient world, it was common practice to abandon babies in the forests if the parents (or some cases the civic leaders) found some defect in them or did not want them, but Christians rescued these children and raised them as their own.  Yet, if Christians rescued exposed children in the forests, then why not rescue those in the womb?

The Church is not a kingdom that locates its place in the world, yet it has colonies in every nation.  Colonies make themselves felt because they slowly transform the culture and ways of the societies in which they are.  If Christians believe that what they should do in government is to give the godless what they want, this is certainly not what they should do. But if on the other hand, they believe that their goal is to turn their current governments into theocracies, this is also certainly what they should not do because then they use the ways of the world as engines for Christianity and that is not acceptable because then Christianity no longer depends on the power of God and the work He does in His believers, but it depends on elected individuals, many of whom could not care less about Christianity’s inherent value but only its value in securing the vote (utilitarianism and consequentialism).

Conclusion: How Should We Live?

We have lost a common value system for America. If there is no common value system, then we no longer have a country, but it has become several invisible countries, two of which are predominant that happen to exist in the same land, same cities, and same neighborhoods.

If we make the state and the political process our first principle, our highest truth, our highest value in life, then it will undoubtedly lead to destruction.  This has been the case where governments took their roles beyond simply protecting and providing for the welfare of the people.  This has been true wherever governments took on a religious dimension whether in ancient Rome or communist Russia or Nazi Germany.  Atheists tend to fall into this latter category of making government the highest expression in life, and it’s not a surprise because if you do not believe there exists something higher than government, then your will to effect what we want through the political system becomes your highest expression of life.

Yet, goodness is not to be found in the unrestrained activity of the will.  Rather, we can see goodness every day on the level of individuals in the community. When we lend a helping hand, when we sincerely ask someone how they are today, when we help lift our immediate neighbors up.  All these actions require sacrificing the unrestrained activity of the will in order to achieve a goal in mind.  And it is these actions that are ultimately greater than any state, any political process, any policy can do because the state would not exist without the people participating in and contributing to the community.

If you want to make a true, lasting, and inspirational difference that will authentically move individuals even for decades after you are gone, then don’t bet on political organizations, rather, go read to children in the library, go serve in your churches, go volunteer at your children’s schools, go coach a team, and go spend time with your families.

The Image of God is to be found in individuals, not in the government.

Special thanks to Rafaat Hana and Michael Ragheb for their discussion, input, and constructive criticism in helping me write this article.

If you found benefit from this blog entry, click here to like my Facebook page here OR sign up to my email list to receive my latest blog entries every week in your inboxes, and you will also receive my free eBook The Way of Christ.  Click here to sign up.