The gospel is many things, but at its heart, it is a story of reconciliation and belonging. We are reconciled first to God (2 Cor. 5:16–21) and then to one another (Eph. 2:11–22), and all this happens through the torn and broken body of Jesus (v. 16).
All Christians have been given the task of telling this Good News to the world (Mark 16:15), and there are many ways to tell it. We can proclaim the gospel with our lips, but the truth of our faith is revealed not only by what we say but also by how we live. Our way of life is what gives weight to the gospel we preach. As Jesus says toward the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).
Living in a way that imitates Jesus and glorifies the Father is never simple or easy for Christians in a world marred by sin and evil. Jesus himself promised that his path would be difficult and narrow (7:14), and in many ways, the challenges we face are nothing new. But it also seems fair to say that the present political climate in the United States comes with particular temptations to “hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions” (Gal. 5:20)—especially factions, which was the American founders’ term for what we now call political parties.
This is a time of political turmoil within the US church. Some of that turmoil may be unavoidable: As we grapple with the social and political implications of the gospel, faithful Christians may sometimes come to radically different conclusions. But some of this turmoil is avoidable—in fact, Jesus commands us to avoid it. It is caused by our prioritization of our factions, our partisanship, above the way of Christ.
In The Peaceable Kingdom, theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes that telling the story of the gospel “requires that we be a particular kind of people if we and the world are to hear the story truthfully”:
That means that the church must never cease from being a community of peace and truth in a world of mendacity and fear. The church does not let the world set its agenda about what constitutes a ‘social ethic,’ but a church of peace and justice must set its own agenda. It does this first by having the patience amid the injustice and violence of this world to care for the widow, the poor, and the orphan.
This is the story Jesus told his followers to embody. It is the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, and, practically speaking, we embody it by obeying the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ other teachings. “If you love me,” Jesus said, “keep my commands” (John 14:15), commands of meekness, mercy, purity, peace, courage, and self-sacrificial love, even for our enemies (Matt. 5).
None of that “works” in our political climate. This climate is, in Hauerwas’s words, one of “mendacity and fear.” Our politics lie to us about people who are not like us, making us angry and afraid. Are all Republicans racists and fascists trying to pull this country into tyranny? Are all Democrats Marxists trying to brainwash children and overthrow the family? The answer is obviously no—but lies like this are everywhere in our country. They teach us to “bite and devour each other” (Gal. 5:15), even our siblings in Christ.
It is in exactly this kind of turmoil that the church of Jesus is called to stand as a witness to an alternative story, a story where God makes his enemies his friends and offers them a place at his table (Rom. 5:10). If that is not the story we’re telling—if the loudest thing we’re saying is a Republican story, a Democratic story, or any story from American politics—then the world will not hear the truth of Jesus, nor will we ourselves be able to hear God’s story rightly. We will tickle our own ears and ultimately clog them to the truth.
Jesus left us with quite specific instructions for how to embody his story with our lives: Make active reconciliation with people you know you’ve upset (Matt. 5:23). Give no place to lust or sexual immorality (vv. 27–30). Be truthful in everything (v. 37). Be materially generous (6:2–4), even with those who would belittle you (5:40–42). Love and pray for those who harass you (v. 44).
These commands are not saccharine. They require diligence, forbearance, and courage. They invite us to the difficult—maybe even painful—way of Christ, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6–7).
Is this the story US politics are telling? Is this the story we’re living? The answer matters greatly, because the gospel we live is the gospel we believe.
Too often the story US politics tells is a tale of enemy making disguised by the language of policymaking. We want to protect your rights, claims one party, but they want to take your rights away. We want to protect A, but they want to destroy it. We want to give you B, but they want to give it to bad people.
This may be more or less true in any specific instance, depending on the party and policy in question. But I want to suggest that questions of policies and rights, though important, for Christians must be secondary to reconciliation in Christ—to the community constituted by, in, and around Jesus: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33).
Truthfully, there is much to be angry about in our nation and in the wider world. Sins of every scale are in the headlines. Injustices are perpetrated all around us. But it’s precisely in this context that Jesus calls us to obey his commands. And those commands teach us to give rather than horde, to bless rather than hate, to forgive rather than avenge, to seek peace instead of war. In a world of mendacity and fear, Jesus commands us to love.
Joshua Bocanegra lives in Kansas City, Missouri. He serves with Estuaries, a ministry dedicated to discipling community leaders in a way that is rigorous, Spirit-filled, and holistically healthy.
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