"Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. -- Matthew 10: 16 (ESV)
There are days when even as a reverend you just about have had all you can take. After months on end about politics, it all came to an end yesterday when the President was reelected. But it didn't come to an end because Christians took to social media to vent the most hateful, divisive, and generally ridiculous things they could muster, wrap it up in God, and then have the impudence to lay it at the feet of the world that is still walking in darkness. Please understand that everyone is entitled to their own political opinion. As believers however we are not entitled to our own Biblical opinion. We especially are not entitled to use God to prop up our pre-formed political opinions. The Bible says we will be held to account for every careless word and there are a lot of careless words being flung around right now. Dear Lord, do we even take God seriously anymore? Are we no longer terrified by His majesty that we think that we can manipulate the Word of God to hide our own political bigotry? Do we think that when God says to work out our salvation with fear and trembling that it is only a suggestion?
The key verse comes from when Jesus first sends out the twelve Apostles to preach that the
I have seen far too many willfully ignorant Christians. Wise? Hardly. Just in the first hour after the results were in last night I saw postings from Christians insisting that this was "the beginning of the end" and that "God was now going unleash His judgment upon sinful
He said, "Praise the name of God forever and ever, for he has all wisdom and power. He controls the course of world events; he removes kings and sets up other kings. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the scholars. -- Daniel 2: 20-21 (NLT)
I know this will disappoint many of the Christian political operatives out there but it really is NOT our job to try and influence culture through political means. It is our job to save people from the decaying culture by presenting them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That He loves them and died for them so they can have eternal life. Nothing about protesting at abortion clinics. Nothing about screaming about which state adopted gay marriage. God does not expect us to set up a theocracy in this country beloved. He expects us to show the love, grace and mercy we have received to others. God does not expect us to prepare this world for His arrival either. That is known as dominionist theology. We should not seek to be relevant to the culture of this world and we should not seek to force it to change to what we believe. We are supposed to be salt and light; not pepper and glitter. These verses from Daniel assure us that even though we may have been surprised at the election results last night -- God wasn't! I actually saw one Christian brother excusing his hateful rants by confusing the decretive will of God with His permissive will. The permissive will being what God permits, and decretive being what He chooses in His sovereignty. Here is the newsflash -- they are both His will! Either way, based on these verses from Daniel it is clear that the course of world events such as presidential elections falls under the sovereign decretive will of God. What does that mean in non-Christianese? It means God voted for Barack Obama last night. Is it wise as serpents then to rail against the will of God? Because that is exactly what I see so many Christians doing. Does that mean in his heart that Obama represents everything God wants? Of course not. We don't either I might add yet He chose to use us as well.
The king's heart is like a stream of water directed by the Lord ; he guides it wherever he pleases. -- Proverbs 21: 1 (NLT)
