The most fruitful discussion that I ever had with someone involved in politics all but confirmed that a man's energy is better spent preaching the eternal, not debating the political or discussing the cultural.
Getting people to vote conservative is like witnessing for Christ, one local leader told me. Indeed, if witnessing for conservatism is like witnessing for Christ, then where does the preeminence belong? With Christ, of course!
I resisted this truth for so long. I was convinced that I could support the more conservative political candidates, and Christ and Him Crucified could be the perfect culmination.
The more that I consider the problems which frustrate people today, the more apparent it becomes that the state, the political process, the debating culture, the campaign mantras cannot save anyone. Unlike the assertion of a local Republican Club President, Democrats are not successful because they "shape the culture", but rather because they accommodate human nature, one which is fraught with sin and error, a sense of alienation borne out in the face of a universe created in gracious complexity.
There is a God, He ain't me, and this world is too good for me to conclude that He is a bad god. So should the thinking go for many people. Yet at the same time, like Adam and Eve after they ate from the Forbidden Tree, men seek to justify themselves and make God wrong, or conclude that God does not exist. This conflict is resolved in the Truth. God is Good, and God is Great. God is Love, and God is Light. God is Just, and God wants to join us.
The Solution -- Jesus Christ!
The need for those who are dependent on the state in any way, shape, or form is not a political party which says -- "We will not give you free stuff."
The answer is the one who gives all things freely with Himself:
"31What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 32He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" (Romans 8: 31-32)
Men and women are looking for fullness and purpose, stability and certainty, necessities which only God can meet, needs far more than the freedom-flailing of outlier libertarians like Ron Paul (who reality tap into the anxious narcissism of today's youth rather than the dual balance of liberty and responsibility, sense and sensibility, playing a game, but playing by the rules, not rules which you make up).
God has met man's every need in Christ.
Indeed, conservatism follows once men and women understand that the fullness which they seek, which they need, cannot be found in this world:
"15Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. 17And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." (1 John 2: 15-17)
Man has eternity in his heart (Ecclesiastes 3: 11), and only eternity will suffice -- not the traditions of men, nor their political wranglings. Man must see this eternal need, that this eternal need cannot be met in finite ends.
"Happy is the man that feareth alway: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief." (Proverbs 28: 14)
and
"Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.
6For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh; but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, in a salt land and not inhabited.
7Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is.
8For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
For the record, the red states gone redder manifest a culture which recognizes Christ and Him Crucified, while blue states have ignored His power. To the extent that states make the state nothing and man's faith in the eternal everything, to that extent a community, a government, a state can prosper. Does this make me a champion of Republican causes? Not at all. Any state can just as well abuse its power in the name of "God" as well as "Good."
Witnessing for the Truth, Jesus Christ, is the necessary element. Conservatism will follow only when the eternal is the thing that matters. As Christian apologist C. S. Lewis wrote: "That which is not eternal is eternally out of date."
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