This American Life

I wrote this article for Pop Culture and Faith Ministries, this group I am involved with at school. This article summarizes a lot of what I was wrestling with in terms of politics and faith, and what it looks like. Tell me what you think.

The Man on the Coin
The man known as Jesus had been traveling around for quite a while, teaching many things contrary to the traditions of the Pharisees. He had been seen with known tax collectors, prostitutes, the handicapped and the blind, many people of whom they would have no dealings with. For the Pharisees knew that in order to please God, they had to remove themselves from the sinners; after all, they Kingdom needed to come! How could the Messiah come and liberate them from Roman oppression if they were not morally correct? And this man Jesus, some claimed that perhaps He was the Messiah. How illogical this would be!
The Pharisees gathered together as the noise and the dust of the crowd surrounding Jesus ensnared them. They had finally figured out how to make Him stumble: they would approach Him on a political level. They decided to ask Him a question pertaining to the hated Roman tax; this tax that had no place in their lives as Jews, the children of Abraham and Issac. Finally, one of the Pharisees walked up to Jesus and began to speak to Him.
""Teacher,we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?" (Matthew 22:17-18). Jesus looked at the man who asked this question in the eyes. The man could tell that there was something different about this Man. He felt as if this Jesus were looking past His eyes and into the deep regions of his soul, into the actual motives of the question. The man shifted a bit uncomfortably as a slight smile crept across Jesus' face. The smile crept away as soon as it came, and Jesus shifted His gaze from the man to the group of Pharisees and Herodians gathered together.
""Why put me to the test, you hypocrites?Show me the coin for the tax," He said (Matthew 22:18). Nervously, the man reached into his coin satchel and pulled out a denarius. He handed it to Jesus.
"Whose likeness and inscription is this?" They said, "Caesar’s." Then he said to them, "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s." When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away." (Matthew 22:20-22).

The Role of Politics and Faith in Jesus' Time
For those of us who have spent any time in the Church, this is a familiar story. But like much of Scripture, we miss the full impact because we are unfortunately removed from the cultural, religious, and political landscape that this story occured in. As the Romans conquered the known world, they were known for their heavy taxation of their subjects for all the public services they offered. The Jews did not like this. They viewed their giving of taxes as a gift, because they considered themselves to still be under the theocracy of Israel. Their hearts were hardened to the rule of their Roman oppressors, and there was a popular hatred towards the taxation.
With this realization of the nature and history of Roman taxation, it now makes more sense how the Pharisees and Herodians wished to trap Jesus. If He said that they should pay taxes to Caesar, then they could point out His allegiance to the Roman government and not to God, and it would undergird His popularity in the eyes of the people. If He said they should not pay taxes to the Roman government, then the Pharisees and Herodians could claim that Jesus was a revolutionary attempting to overthrow the Roman government. He would be trapped between a rock and a hard place.
Or so they thought.
Jesus was the most brilliant, wise, and intelligent person who ever lived; He was the wisdom of God made incarnate. As the Scriptures indicate, He knew the treachery in their words, despite their flattery. And so when they bring the coin, He responds in a way that quieted the crowd and made some jaws drop. To give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's was the last response they ever predicted. This makes more sense in the Greek language, as the word "render" literally means "to give back, repayment". Jesus was saying to give back to Caesar what is his; namely, the currency He held. Matters of economics and elections belong in the realm of Caesar. But worship, that alone is given to God. Caesar demanded that he be worshipped; Jesus taught that only God was to be worshipped. The brilliance of Jesus' response and teaching cannot be understated in its brilliance.
The problem with the Jews' thinking was that because they worshipped God, they did not have to pay tribute to the government that currently ruled over them. Their faith was influencing their politics, but it was influencing it in an inproper way. Jesus corrected their view, teaching them that were certain areas that belonged to Caesar, and some to God. It is important to note that paying taxes and tribute to Caesar was not void of worshipping God; in fact, by doing so, the people of God were glorifying Him by showing their trust in His sovereignty. If anyone knew that no ruler was put in place without God placing them there, it was the Jewish people. So Jesus is not necessarily separating the two spheres of a God-desiring person's life; He is giving us a different way to look at how these two spheres interact.
Jesus was revolutionizing the way that politics and faith was thought of in the first century. Because of their status as the people of God, they believed that they had no obligation to those who were in political power. They were fracturing themselves from the politicial culture at large, believing that they had no place in it, and that their only obligation was to the Israeli theocracy. They chose their flag to wave, and it was a flag of antagonism and separation. Jesus pointed out that this flag was not the proper one to wave.

The Role of Politics and Faith in Our Current Times.
When George W. Bush was re-elected as President in 2004, many political experts and the culture at large was surprised to find out that one of the largest factors leading to his re-election was President Bush's openness to discuss his personal Christian faith. His talk of Christ as his personal Lord and Savior appealed to the large Evangelical demographic, who were already Republicans to begin with. And so, President Bush was re-elected, and political strategists now had a new paradigm to work for: the spiritual politician. Although 2007 is soon coming to a close, we have been bombarded for months with all the Republican and Democratic nominee-hopefuls talks of religion. Men and women on both sides of the spectrum speak of their faith, hoping to garner the votes of the Evangelical faithful.
Mitt Romney's Mormon background has played a huge role in the past few months as he has attempted to appeal to the Evangelical Right, who doesn't consider Mormonism a true Christian offshoot. Men like Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul speak openly of their faith in Christ; Huckabee used to even be a Baptist Minister. On the Democractic side of the spectrum, Barack Obama has openly spoken of his conversion to Christ, even speaking at the United Church of Christ Convention back in June of this year. Hillary Clinton was quoted back in 1994 as believing in the atoning work of Christ on the Cross. She is a Methodist, and is open to discussion of issues important to the Evangelical voters.
So what does all this have to do with Jesus' revolutionary teaching on the role of faith and politics? It is because we of the Church, the people of the Lord, the Bride of Christ, have gotten our spheres of politics and faith mixed up, too. Except ours isn't a sin of separatism; it is a sin of syncretism. We have gotten accustomed to being a political interest group, and this has caused us to worship a Jesus with an American flag draped across His shoulders. It is this Jesus that the Church has grown to love, not the Jesus portrayed in Scripture. This false Christ has caused us to become an anemic Church, one whose relevance is slowly slipping away, like a senile person's memories. We feel that we must be treated with the same rights as everyone else, that our viewpoints and ideas must be accepted by the public at large, and that it is unAmerican if they are not. We have become drunk with the promises of the Constitution, instead of on the Spirit.

Our First Allegiance
I realize my language is overdramatic and perhaps controversial, but I believe it is something that we must face, repent of, and turn back to the Lord for. And I do not say these things as one outside of the mold; I confess and repent of these attitudes and thoughts. I speak not as one from the outside pointing in, but as one from the inside trying to lovingly and truthfully show these issues.
I believe that perhaps the largest obstacle to us realizing our sin of faith and politics syncretism is that we have forgotten where our true allegiance lies. I believe that as a whole, our allegiance has now been pledged to the United States of America, in all its various form and fashions. I believe that the American dream has become our end-all, be-all goal, instead of the pursuit of Christ and the propagation of the Kingdom. Our faith no longer influences our politics; our politics have come to influence our faith. We are more interested in the free market economy than helping the poor; we are obsessed with moving up the ladder of wealth that we could pay all our bills and still have some money left over for fun. I do not believe these things to be sinful in and of themselves, but when they become our hearts' desire, we have much to repent of.
As an example of this, I am going to generalize a common-held belief by most Evangelical Christians today. I realize there are always exceptions to the rule, but I believe this is important to note. Most Evangelical Christians today are Conservative, and tend to vote Republican. Republican policy is known for its commitment to laissez-faire style economics, where the government plays a minor role in the regulation of economic trends and issues. With this ideal comes the American idea of the pioneering spirit, of fair competition, where the best business wins. It's essentially Darwinian economic thought in the vein of 'survival of the fittest.' Cutthroat ethics are the norm; jobs and therefore people are see as dispensable as long as it benefits the company and therefor the people at top.The only problem with this is that Christ calls us to love others above ourselves. In John 15:12-13, Christ says to His disciples "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." Christ's love for His disciples then (and now) was sacrificial in all aspects; we are to model this love to the world. To support these type of business policies and ethics shows the world our interests are like theirs: self-worth, gain, and wealth. Christ calls us to something different, something radical: thinking of others above ourselves.
With some Evangelical Christians being liberal and voting Democratic, many times our sin becomes the desire to simply help people on a physical level, but to forego the deeper, spiritual need that all human beings have. This is best seen during the rise of the Social Gospel in the early part of the 20th century. Churches began to take serious their call to be an engine of social justice in their communities; churches began to launch themselves headfirst into the battle of poverty. As time went on, however, the focus became less on the Cross and more on doing good. This spirit still continues on today in many denominations. We lost focus of our True Love, and have replaced it with Social Justice. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:31 "So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." We are to do ALL for the glory of God. Helping the poor and oppressed is not an end in itself; the glorification of God is the goal. The loving of someone unlovable and pointing your love to the power of Christ's love is the goal; not to show that we are somehow by ourselves able to love apart from the Spirit of God.
Please note that I am not opposed to free-market trade or to social justice; these are just some of the idols that Christians have fallen prey to. When our first allegiance shifts to America instead of the Kingdom, our hearts are no longer in the right place and we become useless. Our call is to be a radical people in the midst of a fallen culture; to manifest the Gospel in our lives and in the way we do all things. It is impossible to do this when our primary concerns become comfort and safety. When we are willing to support a war that will inevitably end with the death of numerous innocents, and blanket it with the statement "Better there than here", we are not falling before the throne of God. I am not promoting pacificism, but promoting the idea that maybe our hearts are in the wrong place when we can discount the value of other peoples' lives simply because they are not Americans. How often do we pray for enemies? How often do we pray that God would grow a love in our hearts for Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein? Why do we not? We are called by Christ Himself to pray for those who wish to hurt and persecute us. Instead, we cheer at the announcement of their deaths instead of mourning the fact that they did not know Jesus in this life. We become another face in the sea of those whose devotion is to the state.
We are called to be radicals.

May We Be Renewed...
So, Jesus taught the Jews in the first century that their devotion to God did not mean they were to be separate from the world of politics, and He is teaching us that our devotion to politics is to not be separate from His teachings. Jesus taught the Jews that they did not honor God by their choice to be separate from the political realms, and He is teaching us that we do not honor God by our willingness to place the flag before the Cross. Jesus was teaching something that was completely radical and revolutionary to the Jews, and He is still teaching us that same lesson today. Many are willing to suit up and fight and die and kill physical enemies for the cause of American democracy; why are we not willing to suit up and fight and die and kill the spiritual enemies who oppose the Kingdom of God? Why have we found our comfort and rock to be the Constitution instead of the Rock Himself?
I hope that as you have read this, that you have not thought that I am anti-American. I love this country. I am so thankful that I live in a place where I can write an article like this and never fear retribution; in fact, I can write an article like this and be defended if anyone did try to retaliate. Our country is truly blessed, and established by the Sovereign Lord and I have no doubt about that in my mind. But I pray that we could come to see that perhaps our sin is the reverse of the Jews. Our sin is that we are committed to the American Dream as an end in and of itself. Instead of using the blessings that God has given us here to be a blessing for others, we horde and keep them for ourselves. May safety and comfort never be our goal. May we never fall prey to the idea that sacrificing people for our gain is OK because it is American; and may we never fall prey to helping the poor and oppressed without the love of Christ fueling our endeavors. May we never justify war with the idea that the loss of human life in another country is acceptable. May we look to Christ, our Rock, our Deliverer, our Portion, and our Peace. May He renew us. May He be the fuel that jettisons our radical lives in the midst of our American context.