as long as the lobbyists are paying their bills, we'll never have a savior on capitol hill

So this has kinda been a heated election, huh? Both sides have traded accusations, barbs, half-truths, outright lies, and smears. At the heart of most of the really inappropriate attacks has been fear-- fear that a certain candidate will endanger you, make you poor, or take away your rights. Right along with this has been the name-calling and character defamation that's pretty inappropriate when you consider the two major candidates against the last two presidents. And Christians have been backing up this spirit of fear and slander on both sides.

Sadly, I probably don't have to give you examples of this. You've probably heard your own. But I'll point you to this one anyway, because it truly disgusts me. This is fearmongering at its very worst; a couple of Bible verses tacked on to the end doesn't demonstrate real trust in our sovereign Lord when you've been trying to give someone the heebie-jeebies for the last six pages. I can't find an example from the other side that's nearly as dramatic, but here is a sweet article where a pastor's position is summed by saying how afraid he is.

The other end of the axis of fear is power. For conservative Christians especially, the threat of losing power in this election seems especially terrifying. For liberal Christians, the promise of gaining power is making people downright gleeful. The Gospel third way recognizes that power, while useful, is just like sex, money, family, technology, or community. These are all things that are meant to be part of our lives, but they are not meant to be the ultimate thing that we build our lives around.

Yet clearly the Church in America has idolized political power. The sheer terror and angry defensiveness that come up whenever our power is threatened make this clear. Yet when we make power (especially political power) our goal and our god, we stray from the Bible and "put our trust in princes." This is the "curse of Constantine"-- for since the reign of Constantine, it seems, the Church has always struggled to not be corrupted by power.

Now, political power can be used for good things. It is meant to punish evil, and it is a great tool for the righteous in protecting the weak and oppressed. And Biblically, I'm not sure it should go beyond that-- conservatives want to use political power to enforce a personal moral agenda regarding things like gay marriage, and liberals want to use political power to enforce a social moral agenda about things like poverty. The teaching of the New Testament leads us to think that both of those are much more jobs for the Church than for Congress, and the more that we rely on political power to accomplish the Kingdom agenda, the more that we risk corrupting our souls with the political games that the world likes to play. It is a lie of Satan that tells us that abortion will end in America when we've got the right lineup on the Supreme Court, just as it is a lie that we will be free from hunger and healthcare injustice when we've got a sympathetic ear in the White House.

Instead, let us embrace that views political power as just another part of this world and a means to accomplish good things that falls far short of the power of Jesus and the transformation he can impart to us, our families, our communities, our nation, and our world.