Danny ChaiBack to boring topics.
I was entertained by V For Vendetta. Wholly engaged the whole time while watching it. So I’m gonna say I’m more pro than con about it. My reservation is, I think I may be against the message. I’m unsure because even after thinking about it for a while, I’m not really sure what the message is. There are hints of something, and I think I’m against those hints, but no overall coherent message.
The one thing I came away with most: the Church needs to get the heck out of politics. Not that individuals shouldn’t be involved. But the whole Christian organizations pushing a Christian political agenda is doing more harm than good, I think. It’s clear from watching VFV that the world thinks the Christian right is a bunch of power hungry, politically motivated hypocrites. And that’s a really bad thing for the kingdom, worse than any good we could achieve by what we’re doing.
Henry is of the opinion (and I hope I’m not misrepresenting him here) that God’s laws are not just spiritually beneficial but also practically so. A country enacting laws as closely aligned as possible with God’s law makes the country practically better, even if the spiritual component isn’t taken into account.
I kind of buy and respect that, but disagree. I think it’s missing the forest for the trees. If I read Scripture correctly (and I might not be), the primary purpose of the Old Testament law was to show us that we can’t measure up to God’s law, that it’s not possible for us to do, and because of that, we need Jesus. Not that it didn’t have any practical benefits that made it not worth following. It’s just, there was a problem when people saw the law as being the most important thing, and didn’t see that it was meant to show something else.
I kind of think the same thing applies today. I think the most important task for Christians outside of worship is to reach the world for Christ. And that’s why I’m against Christian political groups – the impression this leaves on the people we’re trying to reach damages our most important cause. Would there be practically good effects in fulfilling the Christian political agenda? Quite probably. Meanwhile, we alienate tons of people, and the world comes to think of the “Christian right” as a bunch of extreme nutsos. Great. I think we’re missing sight of what’s most important.
This may be crazy, but I would take it pretty far. Just, Jesus (also Paul) had every opportunity to say, Christians, rise up and change this absolutely wicked empire. But they never did. Instead, they said render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Submit to the authorities. And they were some pretty frickin evil authorities doing repulsive things. Clearly, it’s a little different when Christians have the opportunity to be a part of the ruling authorities. But regardless, I just see political activism as being way low on the priority list based on what Jesus and Paul taught.
I’m also standing on the 80+ years of Billy Graham, who in that interview with Newsweek I posted a while back said, when asked how politically active Christians should be, said we should be concentrating primarily on Bible study and prayer. Amen, Rev. Graham.
So yeah, my dream is of a day when the church would not be depicted as in VFV any longer, because we’d have the favor of the people, we would be known primarily for doing good, not for being power-hungry political blowhards. In the grand scheme of things, I think that would do far more for the kingdom than whatever we hope to gain by the current type of Christian politial activism.