Can Politicians be Followers of Jesus?

[Bootstrap]

Political (GaryK)

1. Supporting politicians.
2. Supporting political viewpoints.
3. Failing to call politicians to leave the Kingdom of the world and join forces with the Kingdom of God.

Is that accurate? If not, can you help me get it right? We can always change our definitions as the conversation progresses ...

I don't think I understand what you mean by Political (GaryK) and the 3 points following. Are you saying that is how you view my positions?

Yes, I am trying to figure out what your definition of political is, because I think that's one of the ways we are talking past each other. I tried to derive a definition from one of your messages. I'm wondering how close this is to how you would define political. Obviously, you should own your own definition, feel free to reject this and write another one, or to tell me where it's wrong, or whatever.

Also - is disagreeing with politicians and political viewpoints also Political (GaryK)?

I'll work on a Political (Bootstrap) too. I'd be interested in seeing definitions from others. Currently, I think part of the difficulty in this thread is that we use the same words to mean significantly different things, then think the other person simply doesn't understand or worse. And I, at least, need to understand what people mean by these words to understand what they are saying.

[GaryK]

Political (GaryK)

1. Supporting politicians.
2. Supporting political viewpoints.
3. Failing to call politicians to leave the Kingdom of the world and join forces with the Kingdom of God.

Is that accurate? If not, can you help me get it right? We can always change our definitions as the conversation progresses ...

I don't think I understand what you mean by Political (GaryK) and the 3 points following. Are you saying that is how you view my positions?

Yes, I am trying to figure out what your definition of political is, because I think that's one of the ways we are talking past each other. I tried to derive a definition from one of your messages. I'm wondering how close this is to how you would define political.

I'll work on a Political (Bootstrap) too. I'd be interested in seeing definitions from others. Currently, I think part of the difficulty in this thread is that we use the same words to mean significantly different things, then think the other person simply doesn't understand or worse. And I, at least, need to understand what people mean by these words to understand what they are saying.

Okay, I understand now.

1. I do not support politicians.

2. I rarely express support for political positions.
a. Especially so when it comes to injecting Christian morality into political viewpoints around abortion, sexuality, etc.
b. There have been times in real life where I have discussed with local people the impact political positions have had on my business and the economy in general. That is the closest I believe I have gotten to expressing support or non-support for particular policies.

3. "I GaryK, not Political GaryK, hereby call all earthly politicians to "come out from among" the earthly political kingdoms they are part of and to join the Kingdom of Jesus, which is the only Kingdom that can truly change the hearts and lives of people.

[JohnL]

1. I do not support politicians.

2. I rarely express support for political positions.
a. Especially so when it comes to injecting Christian morality into political viewpoints around abortion, sexuality, etc.
b. There have been times in real life where I have discussed with local people the impact political positions have had on my business and the economy in general. That is the closest I believe I have gotten to expressing support or non-support for particular policies.

3. "I GaryK, not Political GaryK, hereby call all earthly politicians to "come out from among" the earthly political kingdoms they are part of and to join the Kingdom of Jesus, which is the only Kingdom that can truly change the hearts and lives of people.

This is how I've always viewed your posts. But then I'm not obsessed with politics to the point it constantly colors my view of others.

[Bootstrap]

2. I rarely express support for political positions.
a. Especially so when it comes to injecting Christian morality into political viewpoints around abortion, sexuality, etc.
b. There have been times in real life where I have discussed with local people the impact political positions have had on my business and the economy in general. That is the closest I believe I have gotten to expressing support or non-support for particular policies.

Are you saying you don't take a position one way or another on whether abortion should be illegal, because that is Caesar's domain? Or that you don't take a position on whether the state should support gay marriage for the same reason?

[JohnH]

That certainly makes it appear more partisan. But that is true when it's the other way around as well.

Indeed, someone who rants and raves about the evils of Obama but was mysteriously silent about Bush seemed partisan to me back then, and seems partisan to me now. I would not appreciate at all preaching from the pulpit criticizing the Democrats yet which was silent about evils in current administration like IVF. (Sorry if this is a bit political, but it's hard to explain without using concrete examples.)

If I heard such things from the pulpit, I would express concern and ask (a) for less politics in the pulpit, and (b) less partisanship. I also believe the person would probably not be willing to understand they are being partisan. Perhaps it is easy for me to identify since I have been in non-Mennonite circles for the majority of my life, where extreme partisanship was the norm.

[JohnH]

Are you saying you don't take a position one way or another on whether abortion should be illegal, because that is Caesar's domain? Or that you don't take a position on whether the state should support gay marriage for the same reason?

I would say that murder should be illegal. I would, however, question someone who thinks that the fact abortion should be illegal means Christians must need support Republicans, and would instead redirect the conversation to the myriads of ways Republicans have cynically allowed abortion to remain legal and continue to wink at it in some of its most grotesque forms, such as our current President deciding to try to force people like me to pay for IVF.

I don't think it is politically "feasible" to outlaw abortion, or abortion-involved IVF, or other evil things. But they certainly should be illegal, and are wrong. I can speak of a political opinion that (for example) it isn't possible right now, but also that it is quite evil that it has not happened yet. At one time, outlawing slavery wasn't politically feasible either. That was the reality. It was still wrong.

[JohnH]

Josh, If this is true of Ernie and I do not think it is, then why is it not also true that you have been sucked into the conservative political world? Your message seems to pretty consistently mirror what the conservative worldly voices are saying?

Probably because you only ever see me arguing with Ken and a handful of other people on this board who have consistently archetypal liberal or liberal-progressive positions. If you interacted with me in other arenas, then you'd know that most my conversations with politics with family or friends who seem to be outsourcing a lot of their thinking to right-wing clickbait is about the serious concerns I have with the emerging new right, the existing "establishment" right, and so on.

But we never really get space to talk about that here. I have started several threads about concerns I had with Trump, for example. Almost no responses and no engagement, so...

Your message seems to pretty consistently mirror what the conservative worldly voices are saying?

I don't actually think I do. It's just that whenever I don't mirror that, nobody here argues with me about it. So the thread is started, I make a post or two, at that's the end.

I made a decision a while ago to stop arguing with temporal1 and Valerie about their particular flavor of right-wing politics. I think that was a good decision. Part of my reasoning is that they do not claim to have been Anabaptists nor to have ever been. So I respect their viewpoints from that perspective. (If you would care to find ancient posting history on MennoDiscuss, you could see some quite spirited debates.)

[GaryK]

2. I rarely express support for political positions.
a. Especially so when it comes to injecting Christian morality into political viewpoints around abortion, sexuality, etc.
b. There have been times in real life where I have discussed with local people the impact political positions have had on my business and the economy in general. That is the closest I believe I have gotten to expressing support or non-support for particular policies.

Are you saying you don't take a position one way or another on whether abortion should be illegal, because that is Caesar's domain? Or that you don't take a position on whether the state should support gay marriage for the same reason?

As a Christian, I think it's evil to kill babies. As a Christian I am called to make disciples for Jesus. If the church was better at doing that, I think a lot less babies would get killed through abortion. Abortion is only a symptom of something much deeper than the state has the capacity to fix. What the state does to address this is up to it. I know what my responsibility is.

The local man who lived in our basement for 3 years could not understand why I wouldn't take a position on whether the Supreme Court should overturn Roe. After it was overturned, he fully expected that abortions would plummet, but after some time he seemed disappointed that it wasn't doing what he expected. I explained to him what I said above as the reason I wouldn't take a position on Roe.

[joshuabgood]

Yes, if you don't want to be labeled as partisan, then it is important to be "consistently doing this across the political spectrum", making sure that the ratio stays within the 49-51% range. A 45/55 ratio will probably get you labeled and a 40/60 will definitely get you labeled.
(This last point could be discussed further in the "partisan indications" thread. viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7695)

But if one's goal is to call out the actions of those who profess to be followers of Jesus, as concerns manifest themselves, and to lament injustices to humanity, and to expose hindrances to the kingdom of God, and if one does not care about being labeled partisan, then there is no need to aim for the 49-51% range, but rather one can focus on the issues at hand. In one era, a person may appear to lean left, in another era a person may appear to lean right, but their consistent message over the decades will remain stable, regardless of the political winds.

Another path is to just not worry about what the percent is or what people think and accuse. It seems likely that at times, if that is done, political partisan people will in certain decades think you are, leftist neomarxists (as Anabaptist Perspectives is finding out) and in other decades will consider you theocratic Chrsitian moralists.

If Herod needs called out, call him out.

The bottom line is, in my view, the political parties should feel a measure of threat from the kingdom of God if our faith, that is allegiance, is actually with the Kingdom of God.

If one pays attention to political messaging at all, it’s quite easy to see when a group claiming to represent the kingdom of God is just repeating partisan political messaging.

An example of this problem is from our friends at Anabaptist ViewPoint:

https://anabaptistviewpoint.org/wp-cont ... wPoint.pdf

This has an identical worldview to mainstream sources, including handwaving away the evil of stem cells with the bogus argument “Tylenol uses stem cells too!” (which it doesn’t and didn’t, being invented long before anyone even knew what stem cells were). Such an embrace of the world leaves the Anabaptist with no power to actually combat the shifting political winds.

One of my strongest arguments I make with conservative Anabaptist people being seduced by Trumpism was his stance on the Covid vaccine, stem cells, and IVF, all of which I consider serious restless evils. Most people attracted to right wing politics haven’t even really thought of that and aren’t aware Operation Warp Speed depending on ground up aborted baby parts. I have credibility to say this, since anyone who knows me I would gladly level the same accusations at Biden or Harris.

In the real world of actual plain Anabaptism, the acceptance rate of COVID vaccines amongst Amish was 1.7% (see https://plainanabaptistjournal.org/inde ... /view/8310 ). Amish may not know the particular details of stem cells, but overall have a belief in trusting God, and have in a large part stayed free of this grave sin.

Your perspective on Anabaptist Perspectives says more about your political views, methinks, than it does theirs.

[JohnH]

Your perspective on Anabaptist Perspectives says more about your political views, methinks, than it does theirs.

What did I say about Anabaptist Perspectives?