An Unpopular Perspective (edited version)

I tend to be pretty uninterested in political opinion and the such. I think most people having itching ears and are longing for someone to appease their appetites of selfish gain by telling them what they want to hear. The promises, commitments and vows politicians make pre-election are mostly empty and usually motivated out of a desire to be liked. Very few men and women involved in politics have pure motivation and that is because most politicians are wicked. Granted, we are all full of deceit and only Christ in us can be looked at as pure and righteous, so humanity is pretty broken in general. Which leaves me disillusioned by my country’s political system. Serving the people with selfish motivation is still considered living for yourself and Jesus was pretty clear about what that does to the human heart.

I think we as Christians can get so caught up in judging those we vote for, come November, that we forget to judge ourselves. Why do we so passionately stand for certain economic or social issues? Why do we get angry about those who fight for the opposite of what we believe to be “right”? I think it comes down to our cultural influences of living for today. When we are living for our betterment in this age, we will indeed be swept up into the politics of the day. It will consume us because we are in it for how it affects our lives and our futures.

Jesus did not live for his own future. He was not concerned with financial stability or gas prices. He was looking towards another age and consumed with being about His Father’s business. He was busy laying up treasures in heaven by keeping His heart in constant communion with the Spirit. He asks us to do the same. The Bible says we are pilgrims and strangers in this land, whose home and maker is God. Our true homeland is the place where God’s Kingdom has full reign and where we will live under the Theocracy of Jesus.

I  challenge you to reexamine your motivation behind your political views. Is it about you and your betterment? Or righteousness?

The only thing I have really come to stand for when it comes to politics is life. I will always be concerned with the unborn because it’s personal. We should all be given the chance to life, even if is it under really hard circumstances. I know we are called to stand for righteousness and voting is a mode that allows us to this. Some of the other aspects to my political views are about me and motivated out of my own interests. But I will continue to wrestle with how I can cast a vote that does not come out of my own desire to lay up treasures on earth. Here is a quote from a book that is challenging me to live from the inside out. Motive matters most; not behavior.

“When, at the time of a General or local Election, we are called on to make a choice of candidates, do we find ourselves believing that one political point of view is altogether right and the other altogether wrong? If we do, I suggest we are somehow or another laying up for ourselves treasures on earth. If we say that the truth is altogether on one side or the other, then if we analyze our motives we shall discover it is because we are either protecting something or anxious to have something. Another good way of testing ourselves is to ask ourselves quite simply and honestly why we hold our particular views. What is our real interest? What is our motive? What, when we are quite honest and truthful with ourselves, is really at the back of these particular political views that we hold? It is a most illuminating question if we really honest. I suggest that most people will find if they face that question quite honestly, that there are some treasures upon earth about which they are concerned, and in which they are interested.” – Studies in the Sermon on the Mount by Martyn Lloyd-Jones