Why and How Anabaptists should be Involved in Politics

Grace to you and peace be multiplied through Jesus Christ our Lord. It's certainly good to be together.

I just want to say this: our nation is the best nation on Earth, and our leader is the best one that we've ever had.

I'm hearing an Amen.

I'm being purposefully ambiguous in my language, which should raise the question of what nation am I speaking of and who is this leader.

The title of my message today is "Why and How Anabaptists Should Be Involved in Politics."

Why and how Anabaptists should be involved in politics.

I'm saying this with a twinkle in my eye, of course, and I'm also speaking from the premise that traditionally, historically, we as Anabaptists have not been involved in politics, at least as far as voting and things of that nature.

But it is more than just a clickbait phrase. I do intend to show you, at least to try, how in this message I believe Anabaptists should be involved and how we ought to be so involved.

Our text today is from First Corinthians chapter 1. If you'd like to turn there and follow along for verses 18 through 31. First Corinthians chapter 1.

In this chapter, Paul has just been pleading with the Corinthian believers to be unified among themselves, and he's now launching into a great contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God and the results of those two kinds of wisdom.

In First Corinthians 1 verse 18, he says, "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.'

Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.

For the Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, and not many mighty, not many noble are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty, and the base things of the world, and the things which are despised. God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence.

But of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that as it is written, 'He who glorizes, let him glory in the Lord.'" Earlier this week, I received a very short email from an older friend of mine that I really appreciate. I look up to him spiritually.

I consider him most certainly a spiritual brother. And his note said this to me. He said, "We have never been so close to the possibility of Sodomites running our country. Both Biden and Harris have ministered gay weddings. I have helped two neighbors, Amish families, get registered to vote.

I hope you are still putting legs to your prayers. We are accountable for our country's direction. Too many Christians are silent or messed up and voting for evil." If you got an email like that, how would you respond? Does God want us to help get out the vote? Get people out there to vote.

Dad Martin loves to recount this anecdote. In the 1960 election, the face-off was between John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, and Richard Nixon. I guess he was a self-avowed evangelical Protestant of some sort. A Quaker? Okay. And my understanding from what Dad has said is that this really stirred up a good number of the Anabaptist community. The thought that a Catholic could possibly be president of the United States of America was enough for at least a number of them to decide that they had to register and cast their vote for the right person.

They had to make sure that the Roman Catholic didn't get in. And history tells us the rest of the story. They voted, and John F. Kennedy won anyway. The Catholic got in. But William McGrath, who was a conservative Anabaptist writer, designed a leaflet, I guess, with the provocative title, "Did God Lose the Election?" as a bit of a reprimand to those who felt like they had to take some political action by voting.

Did God lose the election? It's a good question. It's good for us to consider today. Is it possible that in another week and a half, God could lose the election?

Does God long for us to engage in politics? Is he afraid of losing?

So why should Anabaptists be politically involved? Provocative, I know, but let me share a few thoughts with you along these lines. And I'm coming at it from a fairly simple angle, and that is that the whole concept of politics is simply based on the governance of a polis or of a city. It is how things operate in groups of people for the distribution of power, of resources.

It's a very basic thing. Nowadays, we think political, we think scrapping, we think at each other's throats, we think great divides. But at its very basic root, politics is about the governance of life. Politics happens even in families and in churches at a very basic level.

And so when I'm talking about involvement, I'm not talking about debating and marching and violence and voting and things like that.

I'm thinking about the scriptural commands that are very clear that we are to pray for the leaders of the nations. Paul in First Timothy 2:1-2 says, "I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and all who are in authority."

That's a lot going on there. Supplications, intercessions, giving of thanks, prayers. He's talking about the president, the vice president, the state governor, the county commissioners, the township supervisors. These are people in authority, in addition to those that we would think of: our pastors, our deacons, parents, and people like that.

Praying for those in authority, that doesn't sound like complete non-participation to me. That sounds like at least a minimal amount of involvement if we're being obedient to that command anyway.

Another reason I'd argue why Anabaptists should be involved in politics is because we're fine to get impossible to not be involved. What do I mean by that? Well, Exhibit A is the matter of masking. The politics and policies of the nation and the state are affecting us, and now we have to grapple with what are we going to do with these things? How are we going to live out our lives in relation to the governances, the requirements that are being passed?

We can't even go to the store without having to decide whether or not we're going to yield to certain policies of the government. How are we going to respond to that?

And so we find ourselves discussing and debating our responses in relation to these policies, these politics. And another reason why I think Anabaptists should be involved is because we're called to love our neighbors. And our neighbors have to deal with these things. They're facing all sorts of, I would say, wrong legislation, difficult, wicked even, that is influencing their lives. Whether it's legal abortion, legalized drinking, gambling, these are impacting our neighbors.

And we are called to love them. And so it challenges us to engage with them in the things that they are facing.

I believe Jesus calls us to step into that sort of thing and love them, just as Radford was talking about with the room. And I commend you for doing that.

So why should we be involved in politics? Well, we're commanded to pray for those in authority. We can't help it because all of a sudden these policies show up on our doorstep, and they affect how we worship and how we dress when we go shopping. And we're commanded to love our neighbors who are also struggling with poor choices many times related to policies and politics of the nation. Now, I'll be the first to confess that my why section here, why Anabaptists should be involved, is very thin. Okay? It's based more on the things that just happen to us. It's not about us going on the offense of necessarily, but it is about just the daily interactions that we face.

And really, it's just, I think, common to all Christians in whatever nation we find ourselves. As we pass through those nations on our pilgrimage, we're going to find ourselves dealing with various things related to politics and to political force. I'm not speaking at all about violence or anything of that nature. In fact, my main drive this morning, my main thrust this morning is simply this: that in political involvement, we exalt King Jesus using kingdom methods exclusively.

That's my entire drive. So now you can relax. That is the thrust. Some people looking on would question whether such a thing is possible. Can we be politically involved in such a way that exalts King Jesus and that exclusively uses kingdom methods?

Is that possible?

I think it is. Is it possible to do it consistently? That is a question. We sat here in Sunday school and even debated whether the Apostle Paul consistently used his politics in a way that he ought to have.

And so it reminds me that I need wisdom. I need God's help to know how to live out this matter of being a stranger and a sojourner in the nation God has placed me in. But this brings me to the second and favorite part of the message for me, and that is how, and not just why, but how should Anabaptists be politically involved?

As kingdom Christians, and I'm using Anabaptists and kingdom Christians interchangeably here, as kingdom Christians, I believe that we bring a lot of good to the table. As far as helping people who are politically weary and fearful, we have a lot to offer.

We have the goods, so to speak. And so I want to emphasize three good things that we bring. First of all, we offer good fear. If there's anything that there's a lot of in America today, and really a lot of other nations of the world too, it's fear. Almost the entire globe seems to be gripped by fear.

The fears differ a bit, but COVID-19 is at the top of the list. And depending on what nation you're in and what political cycle you're a part of, it's, yeah, the election of leaders and all that is up there too. And so people are stocking up on food. They're stocking up on guns and ammunition.

The guns are just flowing through the doors, from my understanding. The sportsman's warehouse had just opened up in our area. Talking to a neighbor whose son works there, he says, "Would you wouldn't believe the guns are going through?" My aunt and uncle that live in North Carolina, she said, you know, she has a friend that works at a gun store. "You wouldn't believe the guns that they're moving through their store."

Well, those kinds of fears generate more fears. I don't care how much you stock up on, the fear won't go away. It's just going to increase. And I believe that's what we are seeing. And fear in that sense begets fear.

Now, I do have a confession to make, and that is, in the past, I have been politically involved in voting. I grew up in a home where it wasn't an issue necessarily to vote or not to vote. And so in my late teens, when I was working, I started listening to Rush Limbaugh on talk radio as I was driving the loader that I was driving at the sawmill. And I liked Rush Limbaugh.

And don't hold that against me, please. But Rush Limbaugh is entertaining. And that's his main purpose for being on the radio, is to be entertaining. But he's also very astute in cultural analysis. When he looks across the landscape of America, he sees things and he says things about that landscape that I didn't hear anybody else saying. I'd listen to Sean Hannity some. I'd listen to Glenn Beck some. But Rush, one of his statements was he has half his brain tied behind his back just to make it fair for everybody else.

He's a genius. I don't know that he's that sharp. And he always talked about, you know, with talent on loan from God.

It was interesting. And so I was listening some to Rush and not so much in the years that I was in Bible college. But then after I graduated and took up a pastorate, and a good chunk of my years there when I was pastoring, I would drive school bus in the morning. I'd go maybe once or twice a week, get a newspaper to catch up on the news. Incidentally, it was called The Patriot from Harrisburg, The Harrisburg Patriot. So I'd be reading that. And then I'd putter around the parsonage doing things, and I'd have Rush on in the background. You'll listen to Rush Limbaugh, what's going on, what's happening.

And it just seemed like, you know, he was connecting the dots in ways that I found intriguing. And so I would go, not to every primary, but yeah, I'd go to the primary and vote, typically Republican. I was registered as a Republican. And I'd vote in the general election, and well, Republican, of course.

And it was the presidential election of 2012. So this was eight years ago. Things were really heating up, and Barack Obama was running for his second term, and Mitt Romney was the Republican nominee. And like many of the presidential elections before that, if you've followed any sort of history, it seemed like every election for the last five, six, seven election cycles has been the election of a lifetime. We've got to get this one right, or we're doomed. And so that was the case. If President Obama got in for a second term, there would be no more free elections. That was just the long and short of it. We had to get Mr. Romney in.

And so naturally, that was my choice. And it's ironic because you think about just 50 years previous, in 1960, the Anabaptists felt like they had to vote in order to keep the Catholic out. Now here's an Anabaptist feeling like he has to vote to get the Mormon in.

That's a bit of a change, isn't it? Okay?

So, and a lot of Anabaptists were feeling that way in 2012. And, you know, I went to the polls, didn't take long at all, maybe 10 minutes, cast my vote. And then throughout the day, just kind of checking in, talk radio, see how things are going. And I felt really good all day long. It just, Romney was up in the polls, and it looked like Mitt was going to sweep this thing.

And just really exciting. And then once you know it, President Obama came from behind, and he completely took the election and gained, of course, a second term. I was devastated. I just didn't know what to make of it all.

It's not that I invested a lot of money into anything at all, but the time, the emotion. And so the next day, I tuned into Rush Limbaugh. What's Rush going to have to say about all this, you know?

And Rush Limbaugh had nothing to say. My hero had nothing to say. I couldn't believe it. But you know that was really good for me. That was the last election that I voted in. For me, it was a turning point. I had been embracing kingdom up to that point and learning more about it. But that became for me the defining moment when I realized I'm more involved in this than I thought. It doesn't feel like it. It doesn't seem like it. It's one of those things where you don't realize till you've stepped away from something how involved. This happens in relationships. You know, two young people start liking each other. We're just friends. We're just friends.

But it's only when you step away you realize, wait a minute, I was heavily invested in this talk radio and in the entire electoral process. And it just feels like such a waste. But more than that, it made me a fearful person. And that's exactly the thing that Proverbs says. It says that, Proverbs 29:25, "The fear of man brings a snare." And that's what so much of this involvement does. It snares people. They're so afraid of what the future will bring if the right thing doesn't happen.

And what's so exciting to me is, as kingdom Christians, we've got the answer. We've got the good fear. And the good fear is the fear of God. And that's what the rest of that verse in Proverbs 29:25 says, "But whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe." Okay, I'm not dechristianizing anyone who votes or listens to talk radio or anything like that.

I don't sense that I was wicked when I was doing those things. But it really took me off track. It gave me a fear of man. And what's so interesting is, when I was pastoring, I used to preach against television. I'm very strong against television. You know, I had older people in my church that had television. And I could tell when they were watching too much TV because they were extra pessimistic. It's like, oh, they're watching the news again. No! Okay? And the same thing happened to me.

And I want to just put a little plug in here. The same thing can happen to you. We allow internet, brothers and sisters, and you can watch just as much news on internet as you can on a TV. Okay? And it affects us just the same.

The fear of man brings a snare. And that's what had happened to me. Elizabeth Elliott says this, "Fear arises when we imagine that everything depends on us." It doesn't. I'm so glad. Depends on God. We need to fear God. That is the beginning of wisdom. That's the beginning of living in reality.

What does America need? What do all the nations of the world need? They need the fear of God. It's when the fear of God comes down that people start living in the way that is healthy and right and sane.

Other than that, we're stuck in this loop of insanity.

The Apostle offers four pithy statements in 1 Peter 2:17. He says, "Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the King." And I think those last two, particularly, we need to make sure that we keep them in their proper place. Fear God, honor the King.

It's not honor God and fear the King. As Anabaptists, we are free to not fear any man. We honor all, but we fear God.

And so our desire is to bring good fear, the fear of God, to every person with whom we come in contact. Because such a fear banishes all other fears. We sang it there in Hymn 78 earlier this morning.

So that's one of our goods. Secondly, as kingdom Christians, we seek to bring good focus. Good focus.

You know, the answers to any nation's problems are not governmental, they're not political, they're not military. And that's what annoyed me. Once I analyzed what I had done and how I had lived those years, I felt like I got off focus because I was so wrapped up in so many of these things that didn't offer substantial solutions.

I think one of the things that we bring of value is we are focused on morality related to the conscience rather than legality related to the Constitution. And let me just open that up a little bit. Mr. Russell, who is a professor at Faith Builders, I've heard him share this, and I talked with him about it. He was involved a bit back in the 1970s in talking with people about abortion.

And this was back before it was legalized through Roe v. Wade. And he talked about how different times when they were engaging with people who were arguing for abortion, that the Christians who were talking with the non-Christians or whoever, they always used the moral arguments. And they would say to these people, "Look, this is a child made in God's image. We shouldn't kill anybody that's made in God's image." And he said the response of those who disagreed was that they would hang their heads. And they didn't really have anything to say. They didn't agree. They still felt like abortion should be legal. But they just didn't agree.

And he said when 1973 came and Roe v. Wade was passed, he said the people who were debating this, suddenly they shifted. And the Christians now were arguing about the fact that abortion shouldn't be legal. It was legal, but it shouldn't be. And they were arguing from a legal framework rather than from a moral framework. And what's fascinating is that Mr. Russell says the response of those who disagreed was completely changed.

Instead of hanging their heads in shame, they got angry. Who are you to say? The Supreme Court has decided. And to me, it illustrates the reality of what we face. If we're going to go at this from a legal standpoint, people are going to be very angry and annoyed and upset with us. They're not going to listen.

But if we maintain the moral position, we do have the high ground. Not so we can beat people up, not so we can shout at them, but so that we can care about them and express to them the reality of what is.

And to me, that's the power. That's one of the great things that we have as kingdom Christians. We're not seeking to change things through the Supreme Court or through the House of Representatives or the Senators or the Senate. But we are seeking to maintain the moral high ground, not trading it off for the political low ground.

This is the leverage that God has given us, and we dare not give it up.

It seems to me that so much of the modern church is working harder and harder to see fewer and fewer results. And I think it's because of that trade-off. I also think that we bring a better, sharper focus because we're focusing on principalities versus people. So much of the focus politically is on this person and that person and calling that person names or categorizing them and putting them in a box or what letter is behind their name. Is it a D? Is it an R? Is it an I?

And the reality is, and we know this, is that we're not wrestling against flesh and blood. It's not about President Trump. It's not about Governor Wolf. It's not about the person. It's about what is behind the person. What is behind the system? What are the principalities at work in all of these various groups today?

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principles, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. We are to love our neighbors, and that includes our neighbors in Washington, D.C. And we recognize that our struggle is against the evil forces working behind those people. Now, are there wicked people? Definitely, yes. But we still recognize them as people in the image of God who are being used by Satan to carry out his purposes.

And really, it does take God's wisdom to see people for who they are and for what it is that is behind them. Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 2:6, "We speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing."

And not only are the rulers of this world coming to nothing, but the rulers who follow them, who follow these principles, they also are coming to nothing. Presidents rise and fall, governors come and go. But we have a king and a kingdom that are eternal.

And that's what we are focusing on. And so this brings us back to our main point that in political involvement, we exalt King Jesus using kingdom methods exclusively. Does my engagement, whatever that engagement is, if I'm pulling my citizenship card like Paul did, or if I'm praying for the leaders as we are commanded to do, does this engagement clarify that Jesus is our king and that his nation is our nation?

Or does it tend to cloud those things? That's my paradigm that I want to have. That's my lens through which I want to look.

And of course, we also offer this focus of the kingdom of God versus the kingdoms of this world. And I'm concerned that when we start to do the little things, innocuous things like voting, it has a way of shifting our focus.

We lose focus just ever so little. We can still see the kingdom of God, certainly, certainly. But it starts to make the kingdom of God a little fuzzy, a little harder to see in its clarity and its beauty and in its power.

And before we get too self-congratulatory that we don't vote, and I'm glad that we don't, I do think it would be good for us to make sure there aren't any political beams in our eyes. And particularly, I'm thinking of it along the lines of speech. Peter very clearly calls us to be sojourners and strangers in his epistle.

Are we using pilgrim language in our speech?

I began this message by saying that our country is the greatest one on earth and our leader is the best one that we've ever had.

And I did that purposefully because I wanted it to be an exercise. When I said that, what was your first thought? Did you think America? President Trump? Or did you think kingdom of God? King Jesus? I heard an amen, so I'm pretty sure that at least one was tracking with me. But I purposefully worded it that way because of to illustrate how quickly and easily we can shift out of the kingdom focus.

And this is my little challenge to you.

I would like you to try to sensitize yourself about using the words our country and our president. And I heard both of those terms this morning from two brothers that I highly respect.

I really believe that we should be using the terms the nation, the country, the president. We do need to be praying for the elections, praying for the leaders, praying for the president, praying for the country. But when I'm thinking about my country, my leader, my nation, I want to think about my ultimate allegiance.

And you may think I'm quibbling about words here, and there's just semantics, but I really do believe that words have a way of influencing us. And so just this morning, I've heard our elections, I've heard our president, and I want you to be very clear and understanding. I'm not encouraging any amount of disrespect or sedition or rebellion.

We have the command to honor the leaders, and we do so to the best of our ability. But what I'm calling for us to recognize is our ultimate allegiance. And that is something that no president, that is something that no nation can ever have from me. My ultimate allegiance must always go to Jesus, must always go to the kingdom.

And so now let me tell you what's going to likely happen in the next week or two weeks or so. Invariably, somebody's going to say that we should pray for our nation. We should pray for our elections. We should pray for our president. And a bunch of you are going to want to look around and look at me and smile.

It's hard. I've been sensitizing myself for several years now. And occasionally, I still say my country, my president, whatever it is, because it just feels so natural. Okay, so I'm sharing this with you as a challenge for us to sharpen our kingdom focus. And you know the person that messes up, they just forgot, they weren't here, didn't hear the message, or we'll just enjoy it. We'll understand it for what it is.

The reality is we are all passing through a nation of this earth, and God has placed us in that nation for a purpose.

And so I'm going to look back at you, and we'll just smile, and we'll share this little secret together, okay? And they'll request prayer for our country, and then we'll all just kneel down, and we'll pray for the country, and praise God that we get to make our pilgrimage through America. And America is a wonderful country through which to make our pilgrimage. I'm not bashing that at all. There are people that are dying to come to this nation. And so I'm not downplaying how amazing this country is.

My concern for myself is it's so amazing that it's easy for me to lose sight of the kingdom. Okay, so as far as this pilgrimage through this country, it's amazing.

God has put us here for a reason, and I want to make the most of it. So a good focus. And then finally, the third good that we bring to the table is good force. Good force.

The power with which to be reckoned. When I think about reading newspapers, online political blogs, listening to talk radio, watching online news, all of those things feel like I'm doing something. But you know what? I'm not really. I'm taking stuff in, but it's not really a force. It's more of a farce.

Especially when I look back at the amount that I consumed in previous years.

And I think God has designed us, particularly as men, to desire dominion. That's a good thing. We want to govern well. Our families, our homes, our churches, our business. We want to, that's a God-given desire. And so there's a sense in which, by keeping up with the news, it helps us in that governance. And I'm not bashing listening to the news at all. I don't think there's extra special spirituality in ignorance.

After all, how do you pray for your leaders if you don't even know their names? That's one of my pet peeves with some of the conservative Anabaptist world. And I'll just tell you that. We have the command to pray for the leaders. Do we know their names?

And if we don't, are we actually praying for them?

But we want to make a difference. God has put that desire within us. And I think it's important for us to think about how we're making a difference. We don't want to be involved in things that we shouldn't. We don't want to be meddling in other people's affairs. One of the big things in the last round of the political season in the last four years was whether or not Russia meddled with the American election.

And I had to think to myself several times, well, what would people think if they knew that there are kingdom citizens whose ultimate allegiance is not here, who were meddling with the American election? Peter says very clearly, 1 Peter 4:15, "Let none of you suffer as a busybody in other people's matters." That doesn't mean that we don't care about the country through which we make our sojourn. We do. We want the best for whatever nation God has put us in. We care about our neighbors. We care about the overall scene.

But we don't meddle in the affairs of the nations. So do Anabaptists have any sort of power at all? America is the one superpower in the world. What about Anabaptists? What about the kingdom of Christ? Well, for us, it's even better.

We're the one supernatural power in the world, okay?

Do we have power? Have we been left weaponless? No. No, we have more power than we would know what to do with if we would just appropriate it. If we'd stop trading kingdom of God weaponry for kingdom of this world, BB guns and blow darts.

So what kind of options do we have? How can we be politically involved in ways that exalt King Jesus through exclusively following kingdom methods? I think there are a number of things we can do. One thing I believe is fasting.

Fasting. Not fasting for a certain outcome, but fasting that God's will be done. That He be exalted. That men and women be delivered from bondage.

That little children be protected. That unborn babies have a chance. I think God's okay with that kind of involvement. A little over five years ago, I decided I would like to learn a trade. I'm not unnatural with my hands.

And so I thought I should learn, try to learn a skill. And for somebody that's not naturally skilled, that's hard. But I thought I'd give it a go. I thought I'd try to learn carpentry. And so that's what I've been learning the last five years. And it's coming. I used to tell people I only felt like a dummy every other day. And I think now it's up to about every third or fourth day now I feel like a dummy. So I'm making progress.

But we were living in the Pens Creek area when I started working for a guy in construction. And I remember that we went to a job in Harrisburg for a man named Max. Max is an older man, a successful businessman. He had some success in the drag racing circuit. He owns an energy drink company. He has a graphic design company. And we were working on one of his rental properties in Harrisburg. And a gruff guy, no nonsense. And the first time I met him, he said, "Do you vote?" And I was like, "Well, I had just voted in 2012." And this was two years after or whatever, three years after. So I said, "Well, I have." "Okay."

And then he went to my foreman. And he knew my foreman. And he knew that my foreman didn't vote. And so he pigeonholed John and he said, "Do you vote?" "Well, no." And he knew that, "You need to vote. You know the country's going down and things are just terrible." And I didn't know what to make of Max. Max is a bit prickly. And I wasn't sure how to take him. But he was all right.

Fast forward a year and a half, we went to Max's house. And we were putting on a metal roof. And this was just a couple of weeks before the 2016 showdown between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. And Max was talking politics. And you know as a business owner, depending on how things went, he was going to have to probably cut some employees and back off on his business. And you know he was just clearly concerned about the way the way things were going. And the one day I just decided I was going to fast over lunch or maybe fast the day. It was, I think, a week and a half or a week before the election.

And so I showed up at work at Max's house. He said, "Today my wife is going to make hamburgers for all of us for lunch."

And typically, if that happens, what I'll do is I'll just move my fast day quietly. I won't tell anybody. Just move it to the next day. But I had put out on Facebook that I was planning to fast. And I invited anybody else that wanted to join me. And I'd gotten some responses that they were planning to join me in this.

Now what do I do? So later in the morning, I pulled Max aside. I said, "Hey." I said, "I used to vote. I don't vote anymore." I said, "But I'm fasting about the elections. And so I won't be able to come to the meal today. I hope you're not offended that I won't be eating your wife's burgers." "Oh, no, no. No offense. No offense. That's fine." I was like, "Okay, good. I thought I was going to get a voting sermon from Max."

But yeah, that's all right. And so you know I left over lunchtime, came back later and all. And something happened the next day. I think it rained. We didn't get back to Max's house. And so then the next day, we went back and and we're working away. And sometime in the morning, Max pulled me aside. He said, "Hey." He said, "Whatever you're doing, keep it up."

He said, "There was a big document dump on Hillary yesterday. And Trump is really up in the polls."

What should my response be? I was shocked.

I wasn't fasting for any particular outcome. I was just fasting for the upcoming election.

But what it illustrated to me is we're not responsible for how people perceive our actions, okay? Our king takes care of that. But we can be involved in ways that I trust speak to people and clarify where our allegiance is and who our leader truly is.

When I think about the people around us, the neighbors looking on, and they look at us and we say we don't vote, we don't participate, I wonder what they think. And I'm sure you wonder that too. And I am a little concerned. And I just want to speak for the neighbors who aren't here and can't speak for themselves. I'm a little concerned that sometimes we take this non-participation in a lazy sense.

Because you know what? If I don't spend any time thinking about elections and leaders and stuff like that, I have a lot more time to focus on my business and my second farm and my nicer tractor and my quilt and lots of other things that my time will be divided with if I were politically involved.

And my concern is that neighbors looking on see this non-participation as a self-centered thing. Where it's not about seeking first the kingdom of God, it's about me seeking first my kingdom. And my Anabaptist life is going very well, thank you very much. And as long as it is, I don't have to be involved in anything out there.

Does that make any sense? I'm trying to speak for the neighbors out there that are possibly thinking these things, but they're never going to say that to us. And so non-participation is not about laziness. It's not about apathy. It's not about building my own kingdom. It's about seeking first the kingdom of Christ and His righteousness.

That's one of my burdens. Yeah, I have a lot more time now that I'm not involved in talk radio and the newspaper. But what am I doing with it? Is it just more time for me? Or do I really care about my neighbors? And I think that's the big thing.

Gary Miller, well-known author, gave a fabulous talk at Reach. He interviewed dozens and dozens of people who come from non-Anabaptist backgrounds, some who have stayed, some who have left. And he said, "What's the big issue that you have with conservative Anabaptists?" And I'll tell you right off, it's not the duds. The duds are not the offense.

One of the big offenses for them is that we are so self-sufficient. And it seems like we don't need anybody. We don't need our neighbors. We hardly even need each other. Because I've got my own bank account, thank you very much. And I've got my own place.

Now I'm grateful for our brotherhood that we are attempting to change that and make it very real in this matter of seeking first the kingdom and of the good of one another.

And so when my friend's email came through about, "I hope you're putting legs to your prayers." And I got two Amish families signed up to vote. I tried to hear what he was saying. And what I think he's saying is he's afraid.

He's afraid. And our neighbors need to know that we care. Just because we don't participate doesn't mean we don't care. Doesn't mean that we're not concerned. We're called to love them.

And so my response to him was brief, but it was, you know, I agree. There's just a lot of terrible policies out there that shouldn't be. But I really changed my thinking about voting. And here's some of the reasons why. And I sent him a few attachments of articles that some of our Anabaptist brothers have written. The reality is, brothers and sisters, we have the power if we're willing to use it.

The problem is we're just sitting on it too much. Because life has been going so good and we don't feel like we have to use it. We don't need God. We're self-sufficient. We don't need to pray. We don't need to fast too often.

The Anabaptist dream is just the American dream dressed up in plain clothes.

It's a self-sufficiency. But we have the weapons. Paul says that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. But if you didn't know what that verse said next, what would you say the next word would be? It's not carnal, but, well, if it's not carnal, it's spiritual.

But that's not what Paul says. He says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty. Mighty. And so here's what I've come to believe about voting and things of that nature. And it's this. It's not that political force is too wicked for kingdom of God people to wield, as much as it is too weak to carry out kingdom of God objectives.

It's impossible to effect change at the deepest, most important level with kingdom of this world weaponry. That's why so much of the church is trying harder and harder to accomplish less and less. It's time for us to get back to the weapons. We've got the word. We've got prayer. We've got giving alms. We've got fasting. We've got a whole array of things available to us that give us the power to effect true change.

And it doesn't involve trying to pack the Supreme Court.

Oftentimes in the years that I was voting, I would justify what I was doing by saying, "Well, you know, I just have to choose the lesser of two evils." It's all that's available. Just the lesser of two evils.

But as kingdom Christians, we've got so much more. We've got the one thing that will overcome evil. And there's only one thing. Paul said it very clearly. Overcome evil with good. Good. That's the one thing that will overcome it. Evil can restrain evil, but it can never entirely vanquish it.

And so that's why I've been emphasizing the goods in this message. The good fear. The good focus. The good force. Because it is the good that overcomes evil in any nation and in every nation.

This reality also helped me to understand better a verse or two that have puzzled me. We referenced it earlier. This is the one where Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:1-2, he says, "I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority."

And then the reason that he gave that we should be praying for these leaders like this, the reason that he gave always puzzled me a bit. I would expect him to say, "Pray so that you can go out to the mission field. You can have big evangelistic campaigns.

You can have wonderful vacation Bible schools. You can reach unreached tribes." But that's not the reason that he gives at all. Do you remember?

That we might live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. Not all about you, but that seems very anticlimactic to me. That seems kind of lame. It almost sounds self-focused. Oh, so I can live a quiet and peaceful life, me and my family in our little house.

I don't believe that's what Paul was saying, though. I think what he's doing is he's defining good. And good is living a good life. It's living according to the mandates of the kingdom. It's caring about children, the unborn, the older, the sick. It's living out all the things that Jesus has given to us in the Sermon on the Mount. And what I believe he's saying is that as we engage in these very low-key, covert, unimpressive things, God is effecting an amazing change out of proportion to what it seems like it is.