Christianity and Politics
Looking towards the coming election in my country, politicians are becoming everything to everyone to win as many as possible. All manners of things are being thrown into the fire to keep it burning. The most inflammatory are those issues that people care about the most.
Over the years, people have learned and have gotten used to living the most vital parts of their lives as if government hardly exists. If the government closes down today, people may not feel it in a year. Most homes generate their electricity by themselves and most neighborhoods arrange for their securities. Water is supplied either by home boreholes or by commercial water retailers, mega and mini. In more endowed communities, the roads and the street lights are provided by the communities. And it's difficult to connect employment with government efforts, and if anyone is in business, he must have sourced for capital outside any well known government policy.
In a state as this, political campaigns hardly dwell around issues. People are hardly fooled anymore by any overblown promise. There's hardly anything to say as a promise that'll move people to vote for any politician or political party.
So politicians result to using people's emotions and sentiments to woo them and make them follow. The end is to gain or retain power while they continue with their regular neglect of the people.
So ethnicity is a major issue, where we have already inculcated in our skulls by our constitution, the anomaly of 'federal character' in appointments and governmental positions even if those positions were supposed to be occupied by the best hands not minding who they are. We prefer federal character reflecting in appointments rather than in welfare or in the fundamental results of good governance.
Such a people as we are would easily be moved by ethnic sentiments and so politicians quickly pounce on that as a way of controlling the people.
The other tool in their hand is religion. Nigeria is rated at a time as the most religious country in the world. I doubt if any other country is anywhere near us as I speak. We are more religious than the people the oracles were even committed to.
Religion not as in the spiritual interpretation of the phenomenon but in psycholigical alignment. Our religion will move us to mosques on Friday and to churches on Sunday. In our forms we fill what religion we belong to and such spaces can't be left blank. It's only a means of identification, our names are more religious than our hearts, our religiousity affects our demography more than any other thing in our society. Our public conducts may not have been touched by our religions but we know which religious party we belong and that of our neighbors and we are quick to defend our side with all we have got.
So religion becomes a good tool in the hands of politicians.
It is in this light that Christianity is put at this time. Christianity is not a religion in the spiritual sense of it. It is a way of life and essentially personal. It is patterning ones life to conform to that of God and of Christ through Christ, His Spirit and His Word and separating oneself from the corruption that's in the world through lust on our journey towards heaven.
Be that as it may, we can not separate ourselves as Christians from our environment. We are rather to help sanitize and influence the happenings in our environment of which politics is major.
Politics leads to governance and the governor is over all. The Christian too will have to make choices in a democratic environment and he cannot shy away from that responsibility. It is both a responsibility and a right.
The question however is if Christianity needs politics or the government to thrive or expand.
Though politics is a civic responsibility and everyone has a right to participate, we must not allow politicians to define the role of politics in Christianity. Christianity may have a role to play in politics and in governance but there is no direct biblical injunction as to the need of government in the success of Christianity.
Yes, history has it of the mix of the kings and the priests ruling...that mix was what sent Jesus to the cross, it hardly supports the cause of Christ and it's hardly needed. Christianity has thrived under hostile governments, and may have really suffered lots of setbacks under so called friendly rulers who brought such ease that erased out the line that demarcates between disciples and the crowds.
The sentiments of political campaign has been that a non Christian political leader will exterminate Christianity as if Christianity depends on a worldly kingdom or king to be what it was meant to be.
Meanwhile, in the injunctions of scripture of what a ruler should be as ordained of God we don't have it that the leader must be a Christian yet certain roles are expected of him that makes whoever that is a 'minister of God' Read Romans 13
Those things separate a godly ruler from an ungodly one and not really the religious affiliations. It's just like any other profession that bears on people's lives and destinies. You would hardly ask which religion your pilot belong before booking or boarding your flight and if you have any fear, you call on your God in a personal conversation.
But you won't board if that person is of your religion but without adequate certification or training as a pilot.
God has raised each person to fulfil certain purposes and that goes beyond religion. God uses people to accomplish his will and they don't even have to believe He exists to use them.
It is dangerous and ungodly therefore to nurse and disseminate the sentiments that only a Christian can occupy a political position to rule over Christians under God, particularly in a multi-religious society as ours.
It is doing a disservice to God and His Christ to make the thriving of His kingdom depend on a worldy, temporal, human government. It doesn't portray God as the omnipotent being who created the heaven and the earth without the help of any man.
If a national church get spitted out of the mouth of Jesus, it is because such is neither hot or cold and had refused the warnings of Christ and not because a physical government rose against the church to defeat it. It is clear from the book of Revelation.
Political seasons will come and go, to return again, such rollercoaster phenomenon is too unstable to define what Christianity is or stands for. Christian leaders selling such ideologies aren't doing so to support Christ or His cause.
If we call a political ruler a Christian leader, we present such as representing our ideals and if such fails we tarnish the image of Christ. He may be a Christian but he is a political leader and not a Christian leader. He may use his Christianity to achieve positive results as a political leader as expected and nothing more.
These are crucial moments which call for the truth and the interpretation of things in the light of the truth.
Christian, don't vote because someone bears a Christian name, vote someone who will do the will of God. Someone who can punish the evil doer and commend the good and not the other way round. If such is a Christian, all well and good if not, it removes nothing from him as a Romans 13 ruler!
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