Pledge of Allegiance

Perusing some friends Facebook profiles, I am happy to say that I have friends on both extremes of the political spectrum. The truth is, there is room for gray areas more than the most outspoken critics liberals and conservatives are willing to declare. Disregardless of one’s political opinions, there are significant problems with the viewpoint most Christians employ when describing their allegiances. Derek Webb’s “King and a Kingdom” assists with this issue:

The truth is, I am both an American and a member of God’s Kingdom. I am not an American Christian, I am an American and and a Christian. The difference in one conjunction is massive, as my first allegiance is not to patriotism, stars and stripes, a Constitution, or elected officials. This system of government, however dazzling its foundation may or not be, is secondary.

By opting to be a Christian first, my ethics, political opinions, and viewpoints of current events should be subjected to the ethics, opinions, and viewpoints presented by the Church and Scripture. I am not a Republican, a Democrat, a Whig, a Reformer, a Libertarian, or any other flavor of platform. These each have platforms that, while each including some measure of truth, are not the expressed opinion of Christendom. Liberalism and conservativism are not necessary (though are not sin) for the Christian. These are both worldviews just as much as Christianity is a worldview, and therefore, are not necessarily a requirement to be a Christian. It is acceptable to study Scripture thoroughly and have views that are the same as another worldview, but any resemblance to a particular party or worldview are a coincidence.

Many Christians find their worldviews by following various entities, but border on making these their Gospel. Radio personalities like Hannity, Limbaugh, and Maddow should not be our only source of truth. Television entertainers such as O’Reilly, Cooper, and Olbermann can be consulted for opinions, but are not to be viewed as truth. Bloggers such as Huffington, American Thinker, or Savage are entities that, if they are not primarily pushing God’s Kingdom instead of a particular worldview, are not our only source of truth. Politicians such as Obama, McCain, Pelosi, Palin, and Gingrich will never be the saviors, gatekeepers, or builders of God’s Kingdom regardless of their rhetoric. Most of them are running for re-election more than their beliefs, anyways.

The ethics of the Kingdom are often in direct opposition to what we initially want them to be. We are conditioned from birth to have a certain worldview about economics, war, and other areas by our environment. This conditioning makes it difficult to truly allow God’s ethics to penetrate what we believe to be truth. Issues like torture, privacy, pregancy, are all subject to the Kingdom of God (though with room for gray in a lot of situations).

America is not the Kingdom of God. In fact, 96% of God’s good Earth is comprised of non-Americans. God is building a global Kingdom of people whose allegiance is not to Britain, Israel, Palestine, Russia, Brazil or America. This nation, this Jesus nation, wants to restore God’s creation to its original goodness, from people to planet. And my first allegiance is to this Kingdom, now and forever.

Why church?

The cascade effect of postmodernism, the speeding up of society, the emergent church movement, and other things have led to American Christianity facing parishoners increasingly “church shopping” or removing church from their lifestyles, altogether. At this point, studies show that 25% of church-goers are considering leaving their churches, bringing up all manner of questions.

• Is it poor marketing?
• Services too long?
• Not enough revival?
• Not spiritual enough?
• Too theological?
• Not enough outreach?
• Not enough worship
• Too much being fake
• Too harsh
• Too judgmental?
• Too lenient?
• Not enough prayer
• Not prophetic
• Not enough zeal for the House
• Too many meetings

Truth is, I’ve heard arguments for all the above (which makes me think its often a bunch of armchair quarterbacks who are better at finding problems than fixing them). So it is that, for one of these reasons or others related, people eject from their seats and live lives outside Christian communities – most whom claim it to have been the best decision they ever made. I considered it (briefly) at one point, but chose not to eject for a few reasons.

“Jesus…envisaged that, scattered around Palestine, there would be small groups of people loyal to himself, who would get together to encourage one another, and would act as members of a family, sharing some sort of common life and, in particular, exercising mutual forgiveness. It was because this way of life was what it was, while reflecting the theology it did, that Jesus’ whole movement was thoroughly, and dangerously, ‘political’. And…the main characteristic of the cells that Jesus called into being was of course loyalty to Jesus himself.”

-N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God

I think the reason for all the church shopping is people’s Americanized expectation of church. In their conscience, here are questions many think:

• This service had better do something for me. I came to get something out of it.
• That person needs to hear this.
• Don’t teach me how to think – tell me what to think.
• I don’t want all that theology – just tell me what the Bible says.
• Here we are now. Entertain us.
• I really don’t need to read the Bible much because I’m in church all the time.

The first key to understanding how we should “do church” is to stop making it about ourselves.