I’ve wondered long, hard, and deep about a Christian’s role and responsibility within the political realm.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve felt the waters as if with my pinkie finger, wanting so badly to bathe in the stream of that answer.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 This morning the answer hit me like a flood.<\/p>\n
A friend pointed out that Judaism is the only world religion in which faith seeks to inform power instead of grasping at it.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I understand now that a modern Christian’s responsibility is to do the same.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 My friend put the Old Testament prophetic tradition into an entirely new context for me.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 What is a prophet?\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 According to Abraham Heschel, a Jewish scholar, “The prophet is not only a prophet.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 He is also poet, preacher, patriot, statesman, social critic, moralist.”<\/p>\n
As American Christians, we are called to speak God’s Word.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 We are called to speak prophetically.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 We are called to start with the message of salvation and redemption, but we’re not to stop before addressing systemic oppression and the dirtier threads of the fabric of our society.<\/p>\n
The answer for me came along with another set of questions.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 My previous question (What should Christians be doing about politics?) became: What should I be doing to speak prophetically to our culture?\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 How can I best be a voice to the nations?\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 And what’s the weight of that task?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve wondered long, hard, and deep about a Christian’s role and responsibility within the political realm.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve felt the waters as if with my pinkie finger, wanting so badly to bathe in the stream of that answer.\u00c3\u0192\u00e2\u20ac\u0161\u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a0 This morning the answer hit me like a flood. A friend pointed out that Judaism is the only … Continue reading Faith and Politics: An Answer to the Question<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,4,2,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-politics","category-religion","category-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdZlL-45","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}