Impossible to Be a Christian if Involved in Politics
specifically the point of “Render unto Caesar…”
Jesus was radically apolitical. There was nothing in anything he said or did that promoted being involved in politics. The parable of the coin specified that position.
A coin was found. Jesus was asked if paying taxes was paramount to using money to support his mission, as in using it for charity. Jesus asked whose inscription was on the coin. Obviously, it was Cesar’s. So Jesus famously said, “Render unto Cesar what is Cesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.”
Along with other things Jesus said and did, that made it perfectly clear that to be a follower of his had nothing to do with changing the world politically. His mission was all about and only about being the best individual a person can be (accepting that no one can be perfect), and in that way bringing the leavening of goodness into the world.
To be involved in politics is to usurp the work of the Holy Spirit. It is to exhibit thereby a lack of faith.
Contemporary critics of Christianity point out that Jesus accepted slavery. Defenders of Jesus routinely point out that slavery was at that time simply ‘the way of the world’.
That is precisely my point, but to look at it from the other way around, as well. I’m not criticizing or defending Jesus here, only talking about, based on his words and actions, whether a person can be involved in politics and validly call oneself a Christian. I say that one cannot.
While it is impossible for us these days to reconcile owning a slave and being a Christian, we aren’t immersed in a world in which slavery had been a fact of life for the entire history of civilization — even at the time Jesus was on Earth, for a few thousand years already. There were better owners of slaves and worse. Moreover, slavery in some forms, under a more benevolent master, was a more tolerable life materially than that lived by many non-slaves. I’m not talking about slaving in a salt mine or a ship’s galley, but to be a household slave of a decent master was a life for which people would voluntarily sell themselves and their children.
This isn’t about defending slavery or reconciling owning slaves with being a Christian. I’m pointing out that slavery was a fact of societal existence in Jesus’s time, and Jesus was not concerned one bit with changing the structure or the functioning of the institutions of society. That is precisely what politics is: seeking to change the structure and/or the functioning of the institutions of society, or seeking to ensure that neither does change.
So to be involved in politics is anything but a Christian thing to do. It is to act unlike Jesus.
Christians counter that Jesus said that God will judge the nations. I say that he meant by that that God will judge the rulers of nations — more generally, those who are involved in politics and are therefore responsible for the state of the nation. Given the strict avoidance of politics that he otherwise exhibited, that is the only reasonable interpretation of those words that I can see.
That reinforces the position that being involved in politics and being a follower of Jesus have nothing to do with one another. Render unto Cesar what is Cesar’s and leave it to God deal with Cesar; God will deal with those who are responsible for the societal conditions in which Christians find themselves.
That brings us to another point about Jesus’s attitude towards slavery. A person can be a follower of Jesus — or not — in any material circumstances in which one might find oneself. Putting the needs of others before oneself, especially those who are worse off, whatever that might entail in whatever circumstances one might be in, is always possible. That is what being a follower of Jesus is all about.
Without Christians involved in politics society could get very bad. Sin could run rampant. It might even be especially, horribly bad for people who are Christians, say, through state-sponsored persecution. That is to say, avoiding politics could invite having to suffer, perhaps in awful ways, for one’s faith.
Suffering for one’s faith is a Christian thing to do. Getting involved in politics is not.