I’ve attempted to write a several different posts about Christians in politics. As I wrote earlier, a simple definition of politics is decision-making in a group or organizational setting, which means I am considering politics in a broader scope than just national or state governmental politics. I intended to write about the various groups in which politics affects us because there are so many groups we make decisions, and I still intend to do so. But as I considered the various types of groups of which most people participate, I realized that while there are many different types of groups and idiosyncrasies in the groups, for Christians there seemed to be some core principles that should guide our involvement in politics of any type. While these principles are by no means exhaustive, they seem to me to be at the core of how we follow Jesus in teachings and character. For brevity I won’t include scriptures that support these points…

#1- Decisions should be “Biblical, but also appropriately Biblical. It’s been said you can prove anything you want from the scriptures if you use them for your own purposes, Satan proved to be an expert at that when tempting both Eve and Jesus. When seeking proper political decisions in any setting there should be a commitment by Christians to understand the best way to apply the scriptures to that decision.

#2- Political decisions in being appropriate recognizes different weight for different parts in making the decision. Almost all decisions are based on giving differing weight to various aspects of the decision. Jesus talked about the “weightier matters of the law”. The idea is that some parts of God’s commands have more importance and therefore greater weight than others. Sometimes that difference is so small as to be perhaps insignificant for us and to the Lord. But there are some aspects of any political decision that must be given greater importance.

#3- Decision making should reflect the character of Jesus Christ. When making the appropriate decision the result should also best reflect how the LOGOS, the incarnate word would decide. “WWJD” actually has merit.

#4- Decisions should be made humbly. By that I mean that the process of making the decision should reflect that we as humans “…see as if in a dim mirror” and so we should make our decisions the best we can but also recognize our inherent frailty in adequately doing that.

#5- Political decisions made by man can never frustrate the purposes of God. The scriptures are abundantly clear that God is sovereign over all things, we do not have the ability to frustrate that sovereignty. However, that doesn’t mean that every decision we make is according to God’s will or that God approves of every decision. But there is a certain amount of peace that comes with knowing God cannot be frustrated by our stupidity.

I’m certain there are more parts to consider when it comes to Politics but these maybe a good start for the discussion. In future posts we will consider how each of these (perhaps more as this post is amended) will be applied in various political settings like Family, work, governmental politics and church. Feel free to add any thoughts about these ideas