I once heard a perennial local candidate say she was running for office for the umpteenth time because “I love politics,” as though her lust for authority were a qualification for it. In fact, it provided a compelling reason not to vote for her, just as one would not hire a marriage counselor who’s been to the altar several times. (I also heard the late Mickey Rooney say in all seriousness that his eight marriages demonstrated his commitment to the institution.)
Not voting for a bad candidate, however, should never lead to not voting at all, as was the temptation for many conservative Christians during the 2016 Presidential elections. To the contrary, we should participate in the process, not because we love politics, but because we love the God who ordained politics. Romans 13:4 calls the office holder “God’s servant for your good,” so that truth alone makes us responsible both to pray and vote, if not to run for office.
President Ronald Reagan’s awareness of his own accountability to God seemed to settle on him after he took office, and my affection for him grew along the way. Such conviction could never have come from loving politics, but only from a love for Truth. Not your truth vs. mine. Not new truth, but the Truth.
Today’s leaders, on the other hand, claim to love Truth but act as though it doesn’t exist. The Left espouses “preferences,” while the Right preaches “values,” both of them malleable substitutes for the inconvenient rigidity of absolutes. Reagan, by contrast, embraced those absolutes. He knew that God in heaven is not “whatever you conceive Him to be,” but that He is the Almighty Creator, Ruler of this world and all others. He understood that all authority belongs to God, and that the bits of it that He apportions to men are just that: bits, limited jurisdictions to be overseen in the clear light of accountability to Him.
We all were created to be lovers of the Truth, but failing that, we will love something else and call it truth. We will find another foundation upon which to stand, another throne at which to worship. For those on the Left, that foundation is politics, and its throne is civil government. They insist that we keep religion out of politics, yet politics is their religion. They believe in salvation by federal legislation. The state is their god, and the public school is their church. Thus, they harp at us to keep the God of the Bible out of both public office and the public classroom, because they have already enthroned their god there and fear the competition.
The god—goddess, actually—of the Left has a name, and Reagan identified it in speech after speech, even before he entered politics. It is Socialism, the spirit of Big Mother. Margaret Thatcher called it the nanny state. The junior gods of the Left, always ready to pass new laws in order to see what’s in them, see their Mother as an organ of nurture, a giant teat for suckling the unfortunate masses who can neither feed nor clothe themselves, but somehow excel at self-esteem and rights-marching. Hence the constant Progressive effort to offer new teats and new ways to latch on. Never mind that they’re dry; more teats are good.
Meanwhile, the intimidated denizens of the Right, trying to please both a brash new President and the same old goddess, offer up diet sacrifices to her, in the hopes that she’ll at least lose weight. She will not. Instead she’ll just scream “feed me” like some Audrey II in “Beltway Shop of Horrors,” until eventually they butcher a fresh pound of flesh from the national body.
Such collectivist arrogance gives no place to authority greater than its own, especially absolute authority. In fact, today’s American collectivists—nearly all D.C. Democrats and not a few Republicans—are paradoxically sure that truth is relative. They celebrate its many manifestations with words like diversity, tolerance, and even gender fluidity. You live by your truth and I’ll live by mine. Whatever you believe is okay as long as you’re sincere. Same sex marriage? No problem, as long as it’s “true” love. Abortion on demand? Well, I personally oppose it, but I can’t make that decision for someone else. [Cue gag reflex]
The alternative to this hideous mix of debauchery and demagoguery is not soft indulgence. The answer to a lie is not to repeat it in nicer tones. Yet that has long been the response of Congress’ counterfeit conservatives since at least 1994 and early signs are that it lives on in 2017. The problem is that values—the GOP’s go-to euphemism—are every bit as elastic as the Democrats’ sacrosanct preference. Values sounds duly religious, but it’s really just the old Progressive idol sporting a Republican halo.
At some point, Americans must acknowledge that both parties have become the people St. Paul warned his protégé Timothy to avoid: “lovers of themselves…having a form of godliness but denying its power.” Repentance and a return to the Founders’ first principles would be a good start. Yes, there were slave-owning hypocrites numbered among them, just as there are abortion-tolerant Roman Catholics and Protestants in office today. But even those counterfeits were fluent in the Scriptures, and knew our fledgling nation would live or die based on the foundation it supplied.
Getting back to real, non-poll-tested faith is not about winning the culture war, but winning the culture. And if we will take our stand upon the sure footing that all truth is God’s Truth, then we can lead the way to repentance for a nation that will gladly follow, not because we took over or imposed our doctrines, but because we served society so well that our accusers had nothing left to say.
“Let your light so shine before men,” Jesus said, “that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.”