"Christians and Politics: Charlie Kirk, Shane Claiborne, or Jesus?" by Micah Hozen

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Hey, good morning everyone, and welcome to Strength to Strength this morning. We are glad to have each of you on here that are joining our live meeting, and trust you can experience a blessing this early morning. Not quite as early for some of us as it is for Micah. He's from the West Coast, so he really sacrificed his morning sleep hours for our behalf.

We're thankful to have Brother Micah with us this morning, and he's going to share on the subject of Christians and politics: Charlie Kirk, Shane Claiborne, or Jesus. So we welcome him to share about the relationship of earthly politics and the Kingdom of God. And this subject comes up a few times here on our platform, but it's a subject we continue to grapple with in the Christian world. And politics has a lot of magnetic pull to it, so we have to continually help ourselves guard against it. Christianity and politics: exploring whether Christians should engage in politics and voting. Jesus' words, "My kingdom is not of this world," form the theological foundation for this discussion.

So in what ways is the Kingdom of God fundamentally different from worldly governments? There's professing Christians out there that profess that their political involvement is an expression of their Christianity, like Shane Claiborne on the left and Charlie Kirk on the right, or has been. Unfortunately, Charlie was shot recently and killed, but we're talking about people like him. But is this according to the historic Christian faith? This talk looks at the Jesus way regarding voting and political involvement. So we look forward to this talk, and as usual, save your questions and comments for the end, and we'll open it up and have a time for that discussion at the end. So at this time, we're going to just begin with a word of prayer, and then I'll let you start into this.

Brother Micah, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this opportunity this morning to again be together as brothers, and we pray for each one that has joined this live meeting, as well as we pray for the listeners in the future. May they experience a blessing as we dive into this topic. But we also ask your blessing on Brother Micah this morning. Give him courage and wisdom as he shares this with us, and help us to get a clearer vision of your kingdom and of you, our King Jesus. And help us, Lord, to just put our whole heart into our nation and pledge our whole allegiance to your cause and to your glory. May we continue to analyze our lives, that we are not getting pulled into the whirlpool of politics of this earth, and may this talk help us to analyze ourselves in that way.

We ask your blessing on this discussion and your blessing on Micah. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

All right, Brother Micah, you can go for it. Amen. Amen. Thank you for that, brother. Well, good morning, friends, brothers, sisters.

Let's—I think about the two things you're not supposed to talk about in polite company, you know, politics and religion. And I just thought we'd jump right into that fray, Lord helping us, and see what Jesus has to say about it. So I want to start with Jesus before Pontius Pilate.

It's a powerful scene. It's been portrayed in art, and it's the picture of the kingdoms of this world and the Kingdom of God looking at each other face to face. So John 18:33 to 37.

Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again and called Jesus and said unto him, "Are you the king of the Jews?" Jesus answered him saying, "You say this thing of yourself, or did others tell it of you?" Pilate answered, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you unto me. What have you done?" Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from here."

Pilate therefore said unto him, "Are you a king then?" Jesus answered, "You say that I'm a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice."

Give me a quick second.

Keep it quiet in here.

To Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate.

Pilate heard something about Jesus and questioned him about his kingdom. And Jesus said, "Where did you get this idea from? Did you think of it yourself, or did somebody tell you?"

And then Pilate asked him, he said, "Your own nation, what have you done? Why are they so—" Pilate couldn't understand why are they so mad at him. "Why are your people so angry, so upset at you?" And Jesus' answer, like he often does, his answer is not what I would expect. His answer was, "My kingdom is not of this world." He said, "Here's the point." He gets past jealousy and the Jewish people, and he talks about his purpose. He said, "My kingdom, it's not of here. It's not—so my kingdom is not of this world." Sometimes, you know, those phrases that we could sort of say and then move on and kind of forget, what does he actually mean?

It's not like this world. It doesn't gain its recognition from this world. It's not established or governed like this world is governed. And then he explains a little bit. He said, "If it was, if it was an earthly nation, my servants would fight." He knew his guys. He knew his disciples.

You know, he saw the ear chopped off the night before. He knew these young brothers, and he knew their zeal, and they would fight. They still didn't grasp that whole picture yet. He says, "But now is my kingdom not from here?"

And Pilate, possibly scratching his head, said, "Are you even a king then? You know, is this just an idea? Is this just this idea of the king? Are you even a real king? Right? If it's not of here and governed by power like Rome is, then are you even a real king?" And Jesus said, "You say that I'm a king. You say correctly that I am a king.

And to this end was I born. And for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." And so this cause of being a king and bearing witness of the truth. And he said, "Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice."

If you want to understand, you need to love truth. And then Pilate goes on and says, "What's truth?" And then walks away, right? Showing that he didn't really want to know what the truth was. He had the opportunity to hear it, but he left.

So we're looking today not just the idea of Christians and politics in general.

There's a lot to say, and I'm not going to say everything that there is, but want to look just kind of a cursory view of the idea of Christians and politics. Primarily, we're going to look through an introduction of the two kingdoms, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of this world. We're going to look at reasons why professing Christians think they need to vote. Look at some of those reasons, and then look at the case from the scriptures. I'm going to make the case from the scriptures that Christians ought not to vote nor be involved in politics of this world. And then we're going to look at some respond to some claims or objections about that, and then finally look at the effect of the church's involvement in politics throughout history.

So that's about, I don't know, three years of lectures in everything that I just said, and we're not going to cover it all, but just kind of want to look over the whole picture, start the conversation, start the discussion.

So let's start with this question. Is America a Christian nation? Right?

Primarily, did the framers of the Constitution, right, the men who were involved in establishing this nation, this republic, did they think they were establishing a Christian nation? Maybe that's the bigger question.

And I think the answer is maybe, arguably, and it depends on which one of those framers you talk to. So what it seems like is there was a degree of compromise. The Declaration of Independence mentions God. The U.S. Constitution doesn't mention God. And so there's some mixture. The colonies definitely had established religions.

But let's look at a quote from John Adams, one of the early founding fathers of this nation, the United States. He said this. He said, "The Constitution is for a moral and religious people and is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

He saw this genius of the American Republic, and it really is. It really is. And I know sometimes believers goodheartedly want to look at this nation and be like, you know, really get down on it. But it was brilliant. What they did there from the late 1700s and into the early 1800s, probably 1770s to like 1812, what was going on there is there was a real quick growth of ideas. So there's other epochs in the history of the United States, like right around the time of the Industrial Revolution, the changes that happened in that 30 to 50 year period, right, the end of the 1800s, early 1900s.

There were some serious changes that happened with the urbanization, and the whole nation shifted. There were ideas and technology and things that were changing, and it changed real rapidly. And people would even—there's some even people that would say right now we're in another season of that where these ideas and technology are all coming together, things like AI, things like cheaper energy, and all of this stuff coming on that we're in the middle of a big shift, right? If you think about—I'm kind of looking at the age of the men on this call right now. You know, I remember before the smartphone. I remember my cousin had got the world-famous iPhone for the first time, and the shift that happened, right?

We had phones. There were car phones. There were big ones. But just in one lifetime, how quickly things shifted. And it's going on right now. Well, real quickly, back in the late 1700s, early 1800s, there was a shift of ideas. This whole idea of a nation-state governed of the people, by the people, and for the people. It was a unique idea.

It was still a government. It was still a government that was ruled by the principles of the governments of the world. But the idea that the power was put into the people, the sovereignty of the nation was established in the people and the representatives, it was a brilliant idea.

And here we are 250 years later, and there's still, you know, some good things coming out of that. But let's look at—let's now turn to the question of what's our involvement as believers. So there's a—this is a conglomeration of quotes. This idea that Christians ought not to be spectators, not to be idle or pessimistic nor apathetic, but active in politics.

What do we think about that? Right? I think about that quote, and it's all a bunch of ideas put together. Christians ought not to be spectators. Amen. We ought not to be idle or pessimistic about the world or apathetic.

Right? Amen. But active in politics. And now it turns a corner and applies that to something. And so I want to look at those ideas. I want to start with a couple of quotes.

Well, first, let's do this. Should Christians vote or be involved in politics? That's the question I want to look at. And I want to make the case from the scriptures that, no, Christians ought not to vote nor be involved in politics. I do want to make one caveat that sometimes the idea of voting in of itself, meaning voting in anything, you know, some churches function in certain aspects by voting and certain businesses are managed by voting. The idea of voting for something in of itself is not an immoral act. I just wanted to clarify that. Sometimes we get overly fundamentalist about that idea of voting. But I'm talking about Christians being voting or involved in the political systems of this world.

And we just happen to be in a nation where there's that ability. Other nations, they don't have that. I went through the country of Dubai recently, United Arab Emirates, and they don't have that. It is an absolutist monarchy there. They don't want to hear the voice of the people.

So let's look at these two quotes, particularly from professing Christians who think that we ought to be involved in politics. So let's look at—I want to look at a quote from two sides of the political spectrum, from the right and from the left. So first, I want to look at a couple of quotes from Charlie Kirk. So Charlie Kirk, if you don't know, recently, he had been in the news. He was a young father, a professing Christian, was very involved in politics.

Sadly, recently, he was assassinated, has some young children, left a widow now.

But he thought it was his Christian duty to be involved in politics. And let's hear what he has to say. And so this isn't particularly an attack on an individual, but these ideas that are put forth as though they're Christian duty.

So he said this. He said, "Trump and his allies are working to protect all the small things that both parties dismissed: local businesses, families, churches, and the rights of the individual." He said, "Donald Trump has done more for the unborn in this country than any other president in history."

Is that true? Arguably. But very pro-Donald Trump, pro-right-wing American politics. Another professing Christian, Shane Claiborne, he said this. He said, "As a Christian, I'm deeply troubled by Trump, but I'm even more troubled by the Christians who support him. If you decide to come up with a worldview that is the direct opposite of the gospel of Jesus, you couldn't do much better than Trump.

Jesus blesses the peacemakers. Trump blesses the warmakers. Jesus blesses the poor. Trump blesses the rich. Jesus blesses the meek. Trump blesses the strong. Jesus welcomes refugees. Trump deports them. Follow Jesus, not Trump."

So these two men, speakers, teachers, both have an idea that it's their Christian duty to be involved in politics, and both come down on the opposite side of this political spectrum.

Which one's right?

I'd argue neither. But let's look at it. Let's dig into—let's start with laying down a brief theological foundation of the two kingdoms, the idea of the two kingdoms. Now, there are a couple of different historical theologians that have an idea of two kingdoms. Martin Luther did, Augustine did. But I'm looking at, like, the early church, early Anabaptist, the idea of the kingdom of God being separate from the kingdom of this world. So Jesus in Mark—oh, I'm sorry.

We just—the passage in John that I just now read, Jesus said, "My kingdom's not of this world. It's not like this world. It's not established by the principles of the governments of this world." And we have an example of Jesus being offered political power. Actually, two examples. But let's look at Matthew 4, Matthew chapter 4, verse 8.

When Jesus was in the wilderness, after the Spirit, after his baptism, after the Spirit drove him in the wilderness to be tempted three times.

I know this is slightly debated, but I think Satan's temptations were legitimate. They were things that were legitimate offers. And in Matthew 4:8, it says this: "Again, the devil took him up into an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them. And he said unto him, 'All these things will I give you if you will fall down and worship me.'

Then Jesus said to him, 'Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'" I think Satan made a legitimate offer that right now, you know, God is sovereign over all, but he has turned over or allowed Satan to rule. He's called the prince of the power of the air. The nations are being ruled by the powers of darkness right now, you know, again, under the sovereignty of God. But he made a legitimate offer to him. I don't think Satan would have tempted the Son of God with something that he didn't have the ability to give. But here's the difference. Jesus came. He said, "For this cause came I into the world to establish a kingdom."

But he was offered it not on God's terms. He was offered political power, not according to God's principles. Also in John 6:15, when Jesus saw that his disciples were going to make him king by force. Also the same type of thing. It was the same offer of power, but not according to the terms of the kingdom of God.

Another thing we need to look at and be mindful of is the idea of Old Testament Israel. There we have saints that were involved in the Israelite government. Deuteronomy is the law code of the Israel nation-state. Matter of fact, nations that have used Deuteronomy as a law code, they've done so wisely. And actually, it's a pretty—it's not too bad of a way to govern a nation of this world using the law code in Deuteronomy as ruling a nation.

Also, we had believers in the Old Testament involved in Babylon, Persian government in different ways. The important thing to remember, because this does get brought up as an argument, the important thing to remember when we're dealing with the Old Testament, very important, when we're dealing with the Old Testament, we have to remember 1 Corinthians 10:11 says, "These things are happened for our admonition. These are types and these are shadows." The story of Israel is a type and a shadow of the Christian life. And so when we try to take the Old Testament stories and cram it into like moral or ethical teaching, we do so often at doing violence to New Testament principles.

And so it's really important to remember Jesus brought the fullness of the revelation of God, the revelation of Christ. Let's look at Colossians 2:3.

In Colossians 2:3, it says, "In whom, in Christ, are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." That in Christ is where we stand. So we have a Christocentric view of the scriptures. Some people would have this idea of a flat view of scripture and say, "Well, Jesus came to bring principles. But does that mean we throw the Old Testament in the trash?" Well, no, of course we don't. But we start with Jesus, his word and his example, his teaching, his kingdom, and view the whole of scripture from that perspective.

It's too easy to jump to King David or Joshua, you know, taking the promised land and go, "Look, they were politically involved and got involved in war, and so we need to too." And this talk isn't really going to address non-resistance, loving our enemies, radical peacemaking, that whole aspect of things, trying to focus primarily on the political involvement part of things, but it does touch that as well.

So as we're looking at the Old Testament, we interpret the Old Testament through Jesus and obedience to him and his example. So anytime we're going to go to the Old Testament for an example, we need to remember why was that written. What's the purpose of that story? Is that laying down New Testament ethics? Is Moses up on the mountain raising his hands and Joshua fighting a battle and getting a sword and chopping heads off? Is the point of that so that us Christians can be involved in establishing a nation-state according to this world?

Moving on, we as Christians, so still under the idea of the two kingdoms, we as Christians are citizens of another kingdom. Now, we could say that whatever nation that we live in, if we're living in the United States, if we're living in the United Arab Emirates, if we're living in Kyrgyzstan, we are always citizens of another kingdom.

Most of the time, we have a citizenship here, a worldly citizenship. But Philippians 3:20 says this. He says, "For our—" in King James, it says, "For our conversation, that word means our citizenship. For our citizenship is in heaven. From once also, we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ." We are always, as believers, as Christians, we are always citizens of somewhere else than here. We're citizens of heaven.

And it's another kind of kingdom. I've said that before, but I think it's very important that we're going to—I'm going to take a few different times. Paul said to say the same thing for me is not grievous, but for you, it's safe. I think it's important that we come back to that whole idea is Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is another kind of kingdom." It's not just another kingdom, but it's another kind of kingdom governed by entirely different principles established on entirely different principles. It is not worldly. So sometimes we think of worldly and we think of, "Well, it's the guy wearing too baggy of pants or he's got a bleached his hair or something like that."

But essentially, the nations of this world are governed in a worldly way, not necessarily evil. Not necessarily evil, but it's governed like this world.

And we're citizens, but we're more than citizens. So Jesus chose this word for his people established on earth. It's translated in our English as the word church, but it's the word ekklesia. And the ekklesia was a government assembly. Now, by those who would argue that Christians should be involved in politics have said that, "Look, Jesus used the word ekklesia. It meant I will establish my government structure. So we need to establish government structures of this world." And what that does is it does a little switcheroo there. Jesus said, "I will build my ekklesia. I will build my government structure on this rock. Will I build my church?"

So we need to remember whose government is Jesus building and did he build through his church, right? Through his disciples, what is he building? He's building a heavenly kingdom. He's building a kingdom that will rule and reign over this world. And at this point, so we have the parables of the kingdom. Over and over and over and over, we see it start small and it gets bigger. It's an inward hidden thing that becomes outward and manifested.

And in the book of Revelation, we see heaven come down on earth and heaven and earth becoming one. The point of heaven isn't that we die and go to heaven, but it's that heaven is coming here to earth, that even those who are dead are waiting the resurrection so that heaven and earth can become one and heaven can entirely rule over earth, though that it's started now. It started at the time of Jesus, and it's continuing on until it's fulfilled when Jesus comes back.

So we're citizens. We're more than citizens. We're involved with his government structure. And so this, I guess, when we're done with this talk, I think there'll probably be discussion, "Hey, you should have talked about that and that and that and that and that more." Yes, amen. There's a lot of little side roads here.

And particularly, okay, now, if we're the ekklesia of Christ, what does that look like in local church life, right? What is the authority of the local church to manifest the kingdom of God on earth? What is the authority that the church has to bring people into this kingdom? Things like that. So there's a lot there as well.

So we're citizens. We're involved in Jesus's government. Also, we're soldiers. So we're soldiers in an army already. 2 Timothy 2:3, Paul to Timothy says this. He says, "Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that wars entangles himself with the affairs of this life so that he may please him who has chosen him to be a soldier."

We're soldiers, and we have a captain of our host, and he has put us—he has put us in the army, has put us in the war, right? Ephesians talking about fighting against principalities and powers and rulers of darkness.

And we're supposed to be involved in that warfare, not the affairs of this world. We're here. We're in this world, but not of this world. We're here fighting on behalf of our nation, on behalf of our king. And that's a spiritual war. That doesn't mean it's invisible. The effects of that battle are visible in the world, but it is a real battle.

Also, the example of the church being a prophetic voice to the nations, Jesus said, "You are the salt of the world. You are the light of the world." Now, he said, "I'm the light of the world." He said that about himself. And then he left and he told us, he told this church, "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world." He gave us that. Oh, God, help us to be the light of the world, to manifest Christ to this world. And so in order to have that prophetic voice, we need to be untainted by the affairs of this world.

Politics are dirty, right? Some would say that John the Baptist got involved in politics. If John the Baptist got involved in politics, he would have got a gathering and stormed the castle and somehow established himself on the throne and taken that power. But what he did was he stood off and he pointed at the powers and he called them to repentance. He called them to obedience to God. And he called out their sin. He called out that darkness. He had this prophetic voice. And as soon as he's—if he got involved in that, if he got involved and picked, "Okay, am I a Sadducee? Am I a Pharisee?" Right? Because you got to get involved. You got to pick one.

And then how much compromise do you need to make to be involved in this one and that one? It gets dirty. And the voice of the church historically—and again, at the end, I'll briefly touch on that. I know I'm familiar with Brother Dean Taylor. He's touched on that quite a bit. Brother David Brissot as well. I have touched on that quite a bit. What has happened throughout history when the church has got involved in politics? Just as a church recently, we read through the book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down by Brother David Brissot and discussed it each time. Each week, we discussed a chapter of it and wrestled with those ideas. And in there, and in a lot of these historical topics, you can see what happens when the church gets involved, because it has to make compromise.

In order for the church to govern like the nations govern, there has to be a compromise made. And we're going to look at that, what happens briefly.

I want to look at two other witnesses. I want to look at a witness from the early church and then a witness from the early Anabaptists. And I appreciate it. I think it was Brother David Brissot had said, you know, the early Anabaptists had pretty much grabbed hold of that genius of the early church. And so I like to hear their voice as well. So Tertullian was a brother who wrote around a little bit before the year 200.

And he said this regarding Christians and politics. In his apology, he said this. He said, "We have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings, nor is there more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state. We acknowledge one all-embracing commonwealth, the world."

He says, "We don't see these chopped-up divisions of the world. There's nothing more foreign to us than the affairs of the state." Also, in the Slighthound Confession, so this was an early Anabaptist confession of what they believed. I'm going to skim through a few. This is the sixth point in there. He talks about the sword primarily. So we're going to look in a little bit. We're going to look at Romans, the end of 12 and Romans 13, which talks about the sword and the duty of Christians and the government. But let's hear what they had to say. He said, "The sword is ordained of God." This is in the Slighthound Confession. "The sword is ordained of God, ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ."

And so what they did was they didn't undermine it and say, "Government is all wicked and evil and stupid, and we should reject all that." He said, "It's ordained of God, right? Amen. But it's outside of the perfection of Christ.

It punishes and puts to death the wicked and guards and protects the good.

In the perfection of Christ, however, only the ban is used for a warning and for excommunication of the one who has sinned without putting the flesh to death." So he said, he gives the difference of how the government structures work, the authority of the government structure, and the authority of the government in the kingdom, how the ekklesia works, how the ekklesia, the strongest force that the ekklesia, that the Church of Jesus Christ has, is excommunication, is church discipline. That's the church exercising the authority of the kingdom of God here on earth within her own ranks.

The question, "May a Christian use the sword to protect the good since the sword protects the good? May a Christian use it?" They say this, "Christ teaches and commands us to learn of him, for he is meek and lowly in heart.

Also, Christ to the woman taken in adultery, he didn't go to stoning, but in mercy and forgiveness and warning to sin no more."

The question, "Should Christians pass sentences in worldly disputes, government, jury duty, those kind of things?" He said, "Christ didn't pass judgment between brother and brother in the case of inheritance, but refused to do so. Therefore, we should do likewise." How about the sword? Should a Christian be a magistrate? So I did a brief study on what the magistrate was during the time of the early church, first couple of years, also during the medieval times. So a magistrate was like a low-level judge, kind of like a sheriff, but more like a judge, but it's sort of in between those things. So if we think of what a magistrate is, they wished to make Christ king, but he fled and did not view it as the arrangement of his father.

Thus we, and not walk in darkness. For he himself says, "He who wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." Also, the sword, he said, "The worldly princes lorded over them on and on."

Finally, the Christian should not be a magistrate because the government magistrate is according to the flesh. The Christians is according to the Spirit. Their houses and dwelling remain in this world, but the Christians are in heaven. Their citizenship is in this world, but the Christians is in heaven. Their weapons of their conflict and war are carnal and against the flesh only, but the Christians' weapons are spiritual against the fortifications of the devil. The worldlings are armed with steel and iron, but the Christians are armed with the armor of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God.

Amen. I really appreciate their take on that. So that's a brief foundation of the two kingdoms and its application to the Christians' involvement in politics and things like voting.

So let's go on and let's talk about why ought Christians to vote, all right? Let's hear their case. Let's hear their voice and let's look at why professing Christians argue that we, the church, should be involved in politics.

Now, I want to share my screen. So I've got here on my screen on the left, it says the left or the political left, and on the right, it says the political right, and then down at the bottom, it says both. So what I want to do, I want to open it up here and hear from some of you. Let's start with the right because that's a little bit easier. It gets talked about more often. Why would those on the political right argue? And what are the reasons? Now, you don't have to; it doesn't have to be your conviction, but why would those—why are the reasons that those on the political right say that Christians ought to be involved in politics?

So I'll just open it up right now. If you unmute yourself and let's give some and I'll just type them in here. Come up with the best laws. Come up with the best laws.

Okay. I'd say maybe both would say that, arguably. All right. Let's think of specific, like right-wing type of arguments. There's some of the— They would say we've been tasked with being salt and light in the world, and we need to be that preserving salt in an ungodly society.

Okay. So I'm going to put that here as well as a general idea, right? Probably. Let's think of the particular right, like the politically right, Republican. What are some of those things? Protect the unborn. Protect the unborn, right?

Thank you. So that's talking about abortion. So protect the lives of the unborn, okay. I had a Christian tell me that if we don't vote, it's just letting the devil take over. If we don't get involved, if we as Christians don't get involved in politics. Okay.

All right. I'm going to put that down here under both. Because both Christians on both sides would probably argue that. All right. How about— Preserve marriage in the family. Marriage in the family, yeah.

Hard on crime. What's that? Harder on crime. Harder on crime, okay.

All right. Punishing crime. So marriage and family, that would be like the parents' rights, right? So those would be parental rights would be a particular right, politically right thing. And I'm not arguing whether these are biblical or not. I'm just saying the reasons why. So parental rights, marriage and family would also include things like what would be under that one? What else?

LGBTQ. LGBTQ, LGBTQIA+. Nope, not equals. Plus. Okay.

What else here? So from the left, they would argue that we need to vote for that view to protect the minority groups or the immigrants. Okay.

Protection for minorities on the left. Let's try to stick to the right first, and then we'll get to the left. All right. What about religious liberty for the right, right? That's historically been a more politically right idea.

What else? Are there any more? National sovereignty. National sovereignty, okay. Yeah. And again, I'm not national sovereignty, so I put that under the right. Again, let's— Go ahead. On compromising support for Israel. Israel, okay. Support for the nation-state of Israel.

All right. Any more on the right?

And thinking about any professing Christians who would stand, any stances.

How about willing strength or, let's see, peace through strength, right?

That has to do with maybe more militaristic.

A lot of times that becomes— Another one would be gun rights.

Okay, okay.

Gun rights, right? Okay.

Let's get that out of the way. Okay. That's good. Okay. So on the right, we have protection for the unborn, abortion, marriage and family, family values, parental rights, standing against this LGBTQIA, the gender things, right? Not giving gender-affirming mutilation surgeries to little children.

Firm stance on crime, religious liberty, national sovereignty, support for Israel, peace through strength, usually militaristic gun rights. Now, how about the political left? Professing Christians who stand for, who think that Christians should be on the political left. So if we have protection for minorities here, what else?

Protection for the environment, God's creation. Okay.

So protection for the environment, right? Because God created us as being stewards of creation.

Protection for single moms or women. Yeah, yeah.

Also, kind of in general, protection for the marginalized, right? And that could include minorities, immigrants, the poor, right? How about we put that one here? Care for the poor, right? Jesus cared for the poor, right? God cares about the poor.

Let's see something come up in the chat there. Healthcare for all. So somebody popped up in the chat there. Healthcare, right? Jesus healed people. And I think arguably, arguably there's some discussion about this, is medical care somewhat continuing that on, continuing that work. Not to say it replaces miraculous healing and prayer for the sick, but just healing, right? Healthcare.

Some people pop it in the support for laborers, control of oppressive capitalists, unfair bosses. Let's see another. It's usually in the chat here. Affordable housing, right? The Lord cares that our needs are met.

They would say the pro-life when it comes to war. Ah, so less militaristic.

So we could say pro-life in that way. Okay, yeah, so the left would be less militaristic.

They would also say that be opposite the right on gun control and stop supporting Israel. Okay. Okay. So less guns for the idea of saving life, right? Because people use guns to kill people, right? So if you can't see this, this is great. But for those of you that are just listening, we have less militaristic on the left and more militaristic on the right, both arguing because God. Less guns on the left and more guns on the right, gun rights on the right, both arguing because those are important.

Oh, so the idea of less support for Israel, what would be the reason the left, the Christians on the left would say that?

Maybe 60,000 Palestinians dead, right? Maybe preserving life in that way, right? So the idea, essentially, not everybody, but some of the idea would essentially be preserving life, right? Let's see if I had anything else here.

Healthcare.

How about abolishing the death penalty?

There are particular professing Christians who are for this abolishing of the death penalty, not imposing our morals on others, right?

Now, what about both sides? What would both—so down here on both sides, in the beginning, some of those came up, right? Both sides would say, because the Bible has the best laws, right? Both sides would say we're supposed to be salt and light. Both sides would say we can't let the devil take over.

What would be a couple other kind of big picture reasons for both sides?

There'd be the idea of ushering in the kingdom of God through force on both sides, whether hard or soft force. Okay.

Through force. Yeah. So that force part is interesting.

How about advocating for a moral or ethical view that aligns with our values? That's kind of like the best laws, right?

You kind of started here, but the fact that the perception that we're a Christian nation and we need to keep it that way. Okay. Usually that's on the right. I don't hear that from believers who would push the left as much because that would be more the national sovereignty.

The left would be more global.

Yeah. Okay. That's interesting there. So ushering the kingdom through force. So what's the force that government uses? What are the three kinds of force? All right. Money, jail, death, right? This is the force that the governments of this world have: fines, citations. So both sides would argue for ushering in the kingdom through force or voting for government officials who will legislate or enforce our laws, whatever our laws are, through fines, imprisonment, or the sword or death. So those three, those are the three, and those are increasing levels of force, right? If you don't pay your property taxes, they're going to fine you or take your land away. If you stand on your land and you say, "You can't take me away," and if you come on here, "I'm going to defend myself," they'll try to get you and put you in jail.

And if you try to defend yourself by force, they're going to use force back. So all of these, all of these ultimately, in the end, come down to force. I like whoever said both sides would have this idea of ushering the kingdom through force. Both sides would have that. Now, whether they would use that terminology or not, at the very least, it would be putting forth our laws through fines, imprisonment, or death, using money, jail, or the sword.

So, oh, let's see. There's a couple more in the chat here. Let's see what I missed. Women's rights, affordable housing, living wages would be on the left. Yeah. So living wages, affordable housing, affordable life. So, yeah, if you're not seeing this, I'll just read them off real quickly. So on the right, we have abortion, marriage and family rights, parental rights, firm stance on crime, religious liberty, national sovereignty, support for Israel, peace through strength, gun rights. So those would be Christians on the right would argue those things in general. There would be Christians on the left who would say, "We need to protect the minorities, women, the poor, marginalized, because Jesus did." Environmental protection. So some would argue environmental protection as being a steward of God's good earth.

Healthcare because Jesus healed and healing is good. Affordable life, so housing, things like that. Those on the left would, with the idea of pro-life, be less militaristic, want less guns, even abolish the death penalty for the same reasons as those on the right. Let's move on to why—so we just now looked at the case for why Christians should be involved in voting or politics. Now, let's now look at why Christians ought not to vote or be involved in the politics. So we're going to go back to that first section on the two kingdoms.

First, we are citizens of another kingdom. We have vowed our loyalty to another kingdom other than the one that we're living in.

And our warfare is there. Our warfare is for that kingdom, and our energy is to be put toward that kingdom. Further, the nature of earthly governments is force. The nature of the way that earthly governments ultimately are governed is force compared to the nature of the church of the kingdom of God, which is not that way.

So the nature of the U.S. government allows all voices, including Christian voices. And so some would argue because Christian voices are allowed, our voices ought to be involved in ruling and governing and the direction of this nation. So the nation of the U.S. government allows all voices, including Christian voices, values, and viewpoints.

So do we then use that? Do we use that aspect of the U.S. government to gather enough support to enforce our values on the nation? Is that what Jesus left us here to do, to take our values, good values, and force those on the nations?

Did Jesus want us to use force? So I use the word force.

A lot of times we don't think of our vote as being something of force. But remember, enforcement of those laws, enforcement of the laws that are legislated by state senators and Congress and national senators and Congress, right? Those are where the laws come from. Their laws are enforced by force, by fines, imprisonment, and death. So ultimately, when it comes down to it, the things that we vote for or the individuals that we vote for who are governing, their rule is enforced by force.

And the nature of the church—so the nature of government is force. The nature of the church is not forcing people to do right, but convincing, right? 2 Corinthians 4:2.

2 Corinthians 4:2 says, "Where am I at? There we go."

Well, 3:2. 2 Corinthians 4:2. But we have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. The authority that he's given us is to commend ourselves and the way of life that Jesus has given us to commend that before every man's conscience. 2 Corinthians also going on to chapter 5, verse 10. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the things done in the body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. Verse 11. Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, knowing therefore the fear of God, we persuade men.

But we are made manifest unto God, and I trust also are made manifest in your consciences. The nature of the church is persuasion and the putting forth of the truth and letting that bear on men's consciences. It comes from—it's a change of heart that flows out to a change of life.