The Commentariat Speaks (27)

Over at Doug Wilson’s place, Jackson asks:

“Why are pastors so terrible at political philosophy? It seems to me that most pastors just assume a modern political theory of democracy, constitutionalism, liberalism, or republicanism and then read it into the Bible.”

Good question, and an observation that is largely true.

Politics and the Platform

Every time I have seen a pastor — or any Bible teacher, really — opine about geopolitics from the platform, he has been laughably out of touch with the current realities and inconsistent or incoherent in his advice to average Christians, not only concerning what’s actually happening out there, but about how we should be processing it and what — if anything — we ought to be doing. That includes speakers I like a lot, sadly. I find myself grimacing in pain at times when they throw out half-baked or ill-informed takes on the latest lies from CNN.

Doug responds:

“Jackson, they are woefully ill-informed because they have never studied it, or read any books on it. But then a crisis hits, and because they are up front and in a position of leadership, everyone looks at them. What do we do now? And so they wing it.”

Well, yes, that’s certainly what it looks like from the front row.

Should we expect better political leadership from the pulpit? Is that a fair demand to make of men who are already investing countless hours in the study of scripture and who, in the best possible world are, like the apostles, devoting themselves to “prayer and the ministry of the word”? Does that seem reasonable to you?

I guess it depends, doesn’t it.

The Post-Millennial Pastoral Obligation

In Doug Wilson’s post-millennial worldview, maybe pastors should be political leaders. After all, they believe and teach that Christians are both empowered and responsible to convert and disciple nations as well as individuals, to transform both hearts and public institutions. They tell their congregants to hope and work toward a Christianized world where theocratic principles are applied to every aspect of government and every issue of state is solved by asking, “What would Christ want here?” Who would be in a better position to offer believers a practical vision of earthly utopia than those who study it all the time?

In such a scenario, anybody offering spiritual leadership ought to be concerned that what he has to say about politics from the platform be at very least consistent with his eschatology and his efforts at transforming the world. If not, pastors, in that respect at least, are not terribly useful to the average man or woman in the pews.

The Premillennial Pastoral Obligation

Premillennial dispensationalists are kind of in a different boat though. We are looking for the return of Christ to transform this world. We have no confidence in man’s ingenuity and energy to fix anything that is wrong with this planet and no expectation that even our best efforts at evangelism will do much more than increase the numbers answering the trumpet call when our Lord returns for us. Our goal is to win and disciple individuals and bring them to maturity in Christ. If that has a broader impact on society or even the political landscape, we are delighted, of course. At some times it history it clearly has, and maybe it will again.

Now, of course, some of us are still political theorists. We occasionally ask questions along the lines of “If our government were to act Christian-ly about this issue, what would that look like?” But that’s really not much more than an exercise in abstract thinking. We are hobbyists rather than strategists because we do not imagine for a second that we will get to actually act on our aspirations for society.

Post-Millennial “Terrible”

So when we talk about Bible teachers and political philosophy, what does “terrible” look like?

For the post- or amillennial teacher, it looks like incoherence. It’s trying to reconcile aspirational republicanism with scripture that teaches the opposite. Can we realistically expect to teach a largely unregenerate population to behave as if they are “all one in Christ Jesus”? If not, multiculturalism is doomed. Something spiritual needs to happen in a whole lot of hearts before we can ever dream of making one nation out of many. Can a largely unregenerate population be trusted with the privilege of free speech? Not safely, as we are rapidly finding out in the West; our institutions have become hives of woke ideology while we were sleeping. Even Israel had its blasphemy laws. Should we encourage and vote for religious freedom, allowing immigrants to build mosques or worship idols on the same streets where we go to church? Israel didn’t. The theocratic model of the Old Testament converted the pagan, at least outwardly, or else encouraged him to get packing. Otherwise, we end up in the high places sacrificing our children to Molech. That’s the cost of “religious freedom”.

It is as Jackson says: they “just assume a modern political theory of democracy, constitutionalism, liberalism, or republicanism and then read it into the Bible”. Actually, that is terrible. In a post-millennial worldview, pastors are leaders. But leaders had better be careful they point their people in the right direction. A little more hard study of the Old Testament might go a long way to shaping a consistent and coherent “Mere Christendom”.

Premillennial “Terrible”

For the premillennial Bible teacher, “terrible” looks like getting out of our lane, yapping away about things we don’t understand and can’t change rather than talking about the mission at hand, which is to call men and women to Christ and then work away like beavers at helping them live that out. That doesn’t mean we can’t talk frankly about the mistakes being made by this world’s current leadership, but our emphasis ought to be on drawing lessons from those macro social errors so that we don’t imitate them ourselves in our little micro society, or worse, in our homes.

In premillennial churches, a “terrible” teacher is a guy who believes every sad narrative on his TV, and every lie perpetrated by the media, and then rails away about the evils of police brutality, climate change, lack of diversity and inclusiveness or systemic racism from the platform when his facts are all wrong and his view of the world is framed by leftist propaganda. He’s lost track of what his job is, which is to “serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven”. In a premillennial worldview, we are not looking for a bunch of little would-be Moses clones to lead the broader society into the Promised Land, and we should be discouraging teachers who erroneously try to take on that role from the platform.

That too can be pretty painful to sit through.

Different Kinds of Terrible

So then, there are different kinds of terrible. Where a good conscience is concerned, the important thing is to speak and act consistently with our perceived mission.

Mind you, if we’ve got the mission wrong, the best conscience in the world won’t help us with coherence.