How would Jesus vote?
If one thing’s bound to wind me up, it’s people of any political stripe trying to claim Jesus for their cause. I know plenty of leftists – it’s an occupational hazard of the eternal student – and I’m sick to the back teeth of the argument that goes, “We’re nice to people, the right wingers aren’t, so Jesus would be socialist.” On the other side of the fence the American right’s line goes something like, “We protect unborn babies and those lefties are rampant secularists, so Jesus would vote conservative.” Through all this, the British right look confused and carry on going to church, not quite aware that the CofE is in the hands of the s*cialists now, the ‘Tory party at prayer’ moniker being replaced with ‘Her majesty’s alternative opposition’.
There’s one main problem with claiming Jesus for your cause: Jesus didn’t fit into neat categories 2000 years ago and he still doesn’t today. A Jewish friend told me that Jesus was technically a pharisee, even though he got along infamously badly with the rest of the pharisee crowd (Pharisees were a religious grouping who could possibly be viewed as the evangelicals of their day, but who Jesus criticized for their addiction to laws). The title given to Jesus, “The Christ/Messiah*” was a political title given to the one who would deliver Israel from captivity and usher in a new age of God’s justice, but as we know, his idea of “Christ” was very different to the idea held by anyone else – it involved his own death, the ‘offence of the cross’ and a widening of God’s kingdom from Israel to the whole world.
It’s easy to paint a picture of a left wing Jesus; Feeding the poor, siding with the oppressed, talking truth to power, forming a community of followers in Jerusalem who shared everything they had. Then again, painting a traditional right wing Jesus isn’t so hard either: he stood by every smallest letter of the law (Matthew 5:18) and preached that you’ll face judgement on your own, the state of your soul is your own individual responsibility. He upheld a strong view of marriage and had no problem telling people when they were in the wrong.** The one political statement from Jesus that I can’t fathom, is his economic manifesto: “Give unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s, and give unto God what is God’s.” (Matthew 22:21). I’ve never quite worked out what it meant. Ideas, anyone?
A few years back, Jim Wallis wrote the book God’s Politics with the strapline, “Why the American Right Gets it Wrong and the Left doesn’t Get it”. He got a lot of things right. Jesus cares both about your own personal morality and also about the world, so neither the traditional leftist or rightist moralities are totally right, but they both contain an element of truth, and shouldn’t be rubbished. We concentrate on one or other sphere because we’re fallen, but Jesus cares about both. If we were perfect like he is, we wouldn’t need to vote along party lines of Left or Right, we’d simply do what was right.
As a Christian, it’s important that I put my politics under Jesus’ authority, just like any other part of my life. That means that for my view on any particular issue, he gets the last say – my politics should be bound by my theology and should submit to what I feel is the will of God. However, as I hope I’ve illustrated, it can be difficult to know quite what Jesus’ view of politics would be, since the will of God doesn’t fall neatly along party lines. We know the long term goal of politics, a society where the wolf lies down with the lamb but the medium term vision can be all too unclear. What we can know for sure, however, is how we should behave politically in the here and now, where our ends should never justify our means and we should examine each little action we take by God’s criteria:
And what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
*These titles are equivalent. The first comes from greek, the second from hebrew.
**Is this story the first example of compassionate conservatism? Jesus tells the woman she’s in the wrong (“Go and sin no more”) but unlike the other men, doesn’t try to punish her for it.
I think what you get wrong here is to assume that the government should be doing something about personal morality as you see it fit for them to do. If people are supposed to be accountable for their individual actions, what good is it to enforce social norms on people? Kind of takes away this whole “personal choice” thing.
Strangely enough, I was considering this myself. I think, that as the Christian deity seems fond of the concept of free will, They’d either not vote – allowing (UK) humans free will in their own elections – or They’d vote for a party that promised “a better sort of democracy”, whatever that might be. Then again, Their omniscence should mean that They already know the results of the election, and any vote of Theirs would be futile.
Hi Hann, it’s good to see you here! I suppose the really big question is whether God gets one vote or three. Hmmm.
Graham, I can’t see anywhere where I say that, could you cite me chapter and verse, please? Are you sure you’re not tilting at windmills? If you recall, I said, “neither the traditional leftist or rightist moralities are totally right, but they both contain an element of truth, and shouldn’t be rubbished”, so it really doesn’t bother me whether or not Jesus fits in some sort of stereotypical right wing authoritarian mould, since I never claimed that. While we’re on this subject, I’m glad that you’re all for personal freedom and hence I expect to hear you’re joining the Adam Smith society right away.