How should we, as Christians, offer public commentary – to the media or to our political leaders – about issues that concern us?
Someone suggested recently that answering ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ might give some cues. Well, we know what Jesus did – he spoke to the religious leaders of his day in the most inflammatory and abrasive of ways. But New Zealand’s political leaders are not religious leaders!
In making this distinction, I don’t want to continue the Enlightenment pretence that religion (what-we-worship) and politics (how-we-rule) are seperable. They are not. In fact, they’re inseperably intertwined.
Thus, the Pharisees and other religious leaders of Israel had been given an explicit politico-religious job description by the law of the Mosaic covenant. They were Jews, bound by God’s gracious choice to be the light of the world, and to be so in a particular way: lock, stock and barrel. They had accepted the job – and by Jesus’ time, used all sorts of methods to proclaim their righteousness in fulfilling it. And yet in reality, they were complete hypocrites and rebels against the law. That’s why Jesus spoke to them so harshly – as an Old Testament prophet representing God’s total anger.
Our politicians have not been chosen and commissioned by God to lead His kingdom. While they owe the same general allegiance to God as everyone does, they haven’t accepted the Christian job description via Jesus. Much less do they proclaim their righteousness in fulfilling it, and less still expect God to bless and vindicate them.
So I think that our mode of discourse with them or about them should not be patterned after the prophets, or after Jesus’ example in his time and place. The circumstances don’t fit.
Rather, I suggest that we should be evangelistic – seeing our leaders and the public at large as ordinary people who need every help in coming to understand the God of Scripture. They need to grasp what it means for Jesus to have been made King by that God. They need to know that this King is forming a new people. This people participate in Jesus’ risen life by his Spirit, and therefore are a new type of humanity. And our leaders and public are invited to be part of this people, to see themselves in terms of it and so to accept a new job description.
The leaders and public need to understand that because the religion of God’s new humanity is different, so its politics is different. The persons of this humanity are servants of their neighbours, life-givers and nurturers. They live quietly and mind their own business, and work hard so that they may give to others. They form faithful and loving families, respect and care for one another, and compensate for each others’ weaknesses. They sacrifice for each other in extraordinary ways. They have a strong ethic of self-denial – shaping their characters against the norms of selfish indulgence and the unbounded pursuit of pleasure, whether gained by sex, money, or power. They are not divided by race, status, age, gender, or wealth, but united in the name and love of this Jesus, whom they follow completely. They are as a large extended family, with a common life, common ancestry, and communal care.
I suggest that this body of people has the loudest voice of all. It speaks by being. Let’s bend all our efforts toward its articulation. Let the politicians, let the media, let the public see and hear it!
So, how should we speak? Well, using words only if absolutely necessary. But above all, in a winning way – attractive and engaging.
The first object of communication is to be understood by the audience; the second, to gain the right of another hearing. Let us speak in such a profound way as to be understood by people’s hearts – as they yearn for the newness and peace of the new creation that God’s worship brings – and let us speak in such a winning way that they cannot wait to hear us again!