Weakness, Power, and Politics

“The weakness of God is stronger than men.”

- Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:25

Confession: As a teenager, I despised images of Christ and the Church that appeared "weak." I wanted a Savior with muscles and a Church with might. I had no use for “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,” and I had little to no concept of the Bible's take on human strength - or "the weakness of God." It's one very foolish reason I migrated toward a power-based version of the faith popular in some Pentecostal-Charismatic circles. I was desperately mistaken and in terrible error about it all - and I thank God for the correcting voices that led me back to what my friend Scotty Smith so eloquently refers to as "Gospel Sanity."

The "strong" voices praising power are still present, the decibel levels of their discourse at all-time highs in US Christian culture. While dominant in extremist charismatic groups that champion "seven mountains" Christian Dominionism, the same spirit is at work in some Evangelical, Reformed, and Catholic circles. The constant reach for power to control others through politics, media, and wealth, to negate and despise weakness, and to boast in power rather than the cross, always boosting their own social status at the expense of others, is a constant triumphalistic theme among them.

If you think I’m kidding, just do an image search for Jesus and Politics, or Jesus Reigns over America., or Candidates as Messiahs. You’ll get a lot of muscle.

“But The Faith Can’t Be Eliminated from the Public Square!”

I agree. But an older and proper version of social engagement was characterized by humbling resisting those who said Christians had no seat at the table. It’s true that many sought to remove faith from the public square, silencing all who would dare challenge the secular vision. That deserved and received resistance. Two forms emerged fairly quickly.

First, the theological liberals, desiring a seat at the Cool Kids Table, capitulated to and endorsed the secular vision but did so by borrowing religious language. This approach would allow them to have their cake and eat it too. Too late, they discovered the cake was hollow. Theological conservatives, on the other hand, refused that approach and simply reminded the secularists that Jesus built and owned the table and seats, had never relinquished his place at the head, and had no intention of doing so. Since he already had all authority, they were at liberty to engage as servants for the common good inspired by their faith, and this took place across party lines.

This conservatism has now, however, morphed into something very different from that. In far too many cases, theologically conservative Christians do not approach the corridors of power with service and the common good in view but with the hope of burning down the lunch room and building a new one with a new cool kids' table, one from which they can exclude everyone they despise. It has forgotten the "weakness of God" and the election of the despised, the power promised only to those who boast in weakness. It is millenarian and apocalyptic, with subterranean streams of violence flowing just below its surface and occasionally breaking into full view.

Though I don’t think he would include it, this is also an aspect of what Aaron Renn calls "the negative world." It is a devolution, a form of what once sought to be helpful but now only seeks to be powerful. It is baptized Nietzcheanism.

It may win electorally, politically, and socially for a time (as all such victories are always temporary). But seeking or achieving that victory leaves any hope of authentic revival and Gospel witness in the dust. Grace is given to the humble, not the proud; power to the vulnerable who boast in their weakness rather than their prowess; and the meek, not the arrogant, will inherit the earth. As a reminder, It will be increasingly difficult to bear witness to people who believe you hate them.

What Do We Really Desire and Need?

If it's heaven-sent power we actually seek rather than the Nietzchean variety- and heaven knows we need it - then we'd better be found humbling ourselves and calling for mercy rather than egocentrically boasting about our abilities. If it is a great harvest that we desire, then we'd best become more passionate about the mission of the Gospel than gaining political power, material wealth, and social status. We can learn again the art of engaging in the political sphere as servants for the good of all rather than as boastful bullies who see others as enemies to be destroyed for the sake of our power.

I wish I'd known the difference when I was fourteen. It would've saved me from making and falling into a lot of trouble found along the paths that promote the theology of glory rather than the theology of the cross.

Yes, I was a Lutheran at fourteen, but that didn't spare me from my ignorance of the Luther-informed view I just noted. It didn't mean I was informed about an Augustinian-rooted view of government's necessity and how Christian individuals can and should serve society by serving in government. I wasn’t. I wish I had been - and that’s on me.

Politics isn't to be forsaken or service in the government (in its many forms) despised. But a more robust vision of such service, informed by a much earlier understanding of what that means, together with at least a grain of the humility that boasts in weakness rather than prowess, would go a long way to the renewal of a constructive engagement that eclipses the current destructive, burn ‘em and hang ‘em narratives of the so-called evangelical politics of the alt-right and the despairing statism of the far-left.