November 1, 2024 • 36 mins
- Stassen & Gushee’s Kingdom Ethics
- Steven Felix-Jager & Yoon Shin’s Renewing Christian Worldview: A Holistic Approach for Spirit-filled Christians
- Steven Felix-Jager’s The Problem and Promise of Freedom: A Public Theology for God’s Covenantal Community (forthcoming 2025)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi friends, welcome back.
(00:02):
I always, I lost my train of thought.
Sorry, I'm gonna start it again.
It's okay.
Like welcome back.
Ah frick, what do I do now?
Welcome back, I don't know where to go from this point.
Welcome to TikTok Theology, a podcast that tackles
the major trending topics on social media
that concern the Christian faith.
I'm Meagan.
And I'm Steven.
(00:23):
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less,
but those videos can identify current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt
and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
Hi friends, welcome back on the final episode of season three.
Last one.
We did it.
We finally made it to the end.
(00:44):
And we're kind of wrapping up this season
by answering a question,
how political should pastors get from the pulpit?
And we think it kind of fits really well
with the theme of the kind of subtle themes
that has been permeating throughout this season,
especially because we've been in an election season,
we've been in an election year.
And because we take a lot of our topics from social media
(01:05):
and these are the conversations that are being had.
Everything's had.
It's important for people right now.
Yeah, like everything's had a little bit
of a political undertone in the sense.
We are dropping this episode a few days early
because we know Tuesday is election day.
Election day.
So that's gonna be a big one.
And we do think that maybe this conversation
(01:25):
should be had a few days before that.
Because we know everyone's already decided
probably where they're going to vote
and who they're gonna vote for.
But this was kind of on our hearts
that this is a conversation that we should be having.
It might be something that's food for thought
for how we should be handling ourselves
the next election season.
Yeah, especially as Christians too,
because this is not how people should vote,
(01:46):
but like this is how political should pastors
get at the pulpit.
So like it's asking a question of the church
and addressing the church in a political season,
which is a little different than just saying straight up,
you know, like vote for this person, vote for that person.
And I think that we've seen this kind of conversation
happen on social media.
Whether I've seen it a lot with even like pastors
(02:07):
slash Christian influencers get asked these questions a lot.
There have been like viral videos that have gone
of somebody who filmed a pastor in church or something
and who's having this conversation about
who they should vote for.
They're making very public statements
about who they feel like they would vote for.
And then even the more I think dangerous side,
(02:28):
which is who is the Christian vote?
Is the Christian candidate?
Who Christian should vote for?
Who God would want in office?
And I think that that we've seen like controversies
of like churches that host political rallies
or welcome all kinds of different candidates
into their space to like share.
And this is a both side thing.
This is not just a specific one side or the other.
(02:50):
I've seen-
Nationalist Christians seem to be doing it more,
but it is both sides.
And there is that intricate tie between Christianity
and politics and Americanized politics in certain churches.
But there's been a lot of response,
a lot of critique from Christians and non-Christians alike
about how politically involved churches have become
or certain churches have become,
(03:11):
because not all of them, but.
And so I think that in the protection of our witness
as Christians, we think that this is a really important
conversation to be having to make sure that everything
that we're representing as the capital C church
is the body of Christ is actually representing
who Jesus would be in situations like this.
Yeah.
And hear this often.
(03:32):
You hear Christians say this,
students, just other people in general,
and they say it in a kind of a defeatist way that like,
oh, we just have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Right.
And honestly, in a sense, that's true.
This sounds, people would be like defending like,
no, no, only one side below.
Nope, nope, think about it.
You're not saying that the people are evil.
(03:55):
Right.
So like whatever candidate it is,
this candidate can be a Christian or claim to be a Christian
or whatever will take them at their word.
So we're not saying that they are evil.
Just like any other person,
they could have things that are good,
but then they also have done things that are wrong
or whatever, just like any other person
that they're all working through their own lives
of holiness and whatnot.
So we're not saying that an individual is evil.
(04:17):
But if you think about it,
if Republicans and Democrats are both
different political factions in Babylon,
then it is because of Babylon is the antithetical
worldly government that is not the kingdom of God.
Then these are leaders within Babylon.
Yes.
So whatever party you're voting for,
you actually are voting for the lesser of two evils.
(04:40):
And so I think that's an important thing to say
because often we'll try to act like one party is evil
and then the other party is righteous or good
or like God ordained or something like that.
Both parties have a whole bunch of junk about them
that are wrong.
Oh yeah, government period is just so corrupt at this point.
But both parties also have things that are good
that are actually, they line up
with our biblical characteristics.
(05:01):
Both parties do that.
Both do, yes.
You know, and so we were just talking a little bit
for this, we were talking with some colleagues
and we were reflecting on this one blog,
the sub-stack that we were reading.
And they were making the judgment
that people get more conservative if they're in the church.
But the way they're talking about conservative
is totally politicized in a weirdly merged way.
(05:22):
What they're actually meaning is people are more concerned
about holiness when they're in the church.
Think about that.
Holiness is not equivalent to conservatism.
And justice is not equivalent to liberalism.
Those are not equivalent.
Okay, so thinking that one party has more moral uprightness
(05:42):
and the other party has more social uprightness or whatever.
You know, we can think of it whatever we want.
And those might be the elements of that party
that make it better in certain respects than others
or whatever, but those things are not right.
God calls us to be both holy and gracious people
that seek justice.
That means you're left and right.
Better than saying you're left and right.
(06:03):
It means you're neither.
And that's actually really, really appropriate.
I had this pastor say this a bunch of times
and we've heard different sentiments
of this he probably seen shirts and stuff.
But it's like, I don't serve the donkey
or the elephant, I serve the lamb.
Yeah, but that is true because Jesus is not gonna be
a Democrat or a Republican.
(06:24):
All those shirts that have Jesus totem guns
and Republican stuff or whatever,
those are just straight up blasphemous.
100% blasphemous.
Okay, and if you think Jesus can tote around
the things of the Democratic party, also blasphemous.
He won't do that.
He will not do that.
He is neither of these.
They are factions within a Babylonian government.
(06:46):
Keep that in mind because like if people don't think that
then they start baptizing their party
and thinking that that's the will of God
and all this kind of junk.
And that's how you start getting Christian nationalisms
and all sorts of stuff like that.
You know what I mean?
The one aspect of the separation of church and state
that is absolutely crucial is not that,
oh, now the church doesn't get funding, blah, blah, blah,
(07:07):
that kind of junk.
I'm not even worried about that.
You don't want the state to enter the church.
You don't want that reversal.
The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God.
The church is a reflection of it.
And you don't want classical liberal influences
coming into the church,
whether they're Republican or Democrat,
neither of these because they are factions of Babylon.
I think that's just a very, very important starting point.
(07:29):
100%.
So I guess the question is,
can we get some guidance from the Bible on this?
There's no Democratic party or Republican party in the Bible.
These things do not exist.
But we do see Jesus caring about politics in certain ways.
Now, the term politics,
when you're referring to the polis of like a group of people,
(07:52):
well, then yeah, we are political people
in the fact that we are communally oriented.
But that's not really the way people are using
the term politics, right?
They're talking about pandering and playing games
and trying to get people elected and stuff like that.
So I think for convenience,
we're gonna talk politics in that kind of negative sense.
And then we will talk about public engagement
(08:13):
as what polis and politics actually means,
but we'll use it like that.
So the difference between a public engagement
and a political engagement for our purposes here, is that?
Okay. Perfect.
So we'll see that Jesus is very, very concerned
about public engagement,
but not super concerned about political engagement
in that sense, right?
But some people will say that give to Caesar's what is Caesar's?
(08:35):
Like when Jesus said that,
the story where somebody brought Jesus a coin and said,
hey, do we tie?
Then it was basically his double bind
that we're trying to like entrap him to either saying,
like, hey, if you need to pay taxes to Caesar,
and if you do, then they'll go back to the Jews and say,
this guy is a shill for Rome.
He's trying to tell you to pay Rome.
(08:55):
And if he said don't, then they'll go back to Rome
and say, hey, this guy's trying to avoid taxes
and he's a rebel against Rome.
So he's trying to entrap Jesus.
But what Jesus ended up saying was whose image is on this?
And they were like, Caesar's.
And they was like, well, give to Caesar's
what is Caesar's give to God, what is God's?
So some people interpret that passage
as Jesus saying, don't get politically involved.
Okay.
(09:15):
Right?
Or publicly involved.
Like just like separate them, no involvement.
But I don't know if that's right.
I don't know if that's right either.
I don't know if that's right.
I don't know if that speaks to me.
No, you know what I mean?
That doesn't seem to have the ring of truth.
Yeah, I think that is a little bit
of an extreme interpretation of that verse.
Cause I feel like give to Caesar's what is Caesar's?
Becoming a whole political ideology in and of itself
(09:38):
is one of those pet peeves of mine.
Whenever people take one or two verses
and then they try and build a whole ology of it.
A whole ology.
A whole ology, whether it's a theology or whatever.
Where it's like, I don't know.
I don't know if I would take that verse and build the whole.
Yeah, I think we've got to take it a little more nuanced.
Yeah.
(09:59):
So how shall we take it more nuanced?
So for one, we can think about how did the Jews respond
to that?
To Roman occupation.
Yeah.
And there's various groups of that.
And then was Jesus part of any of these groups?
So first one we all know about.
We all have hate, hate relationships with.
We don't even have love, hate.
We just like.
A regular hate.
Yeah, we just want to like slap around.
(10:20):
Is the Pharisees.
You know what I mean?
The Pharisees, they're given a little bit of bad rap.
Yeah, for what they were trying to do and.
They were trying to keep holding it.
So I'm trying to follow rules.
My pastor, associate pastor was preaching this week
and she was making that point.
And they're trying to, you know,
is install holiness in the land.
But as we know, they're super fundamentalist
in certain respects in their day.
(10:41):
And their judgmental was heck, right?
So the Pharisees were the most important group
in this Jewish society.
They were seen as spiritual fathers.
They believed in the oral law that God gave Moses
at Sinai along with the Torah.
So they believed in the first five books of the Bible,
but then anything else that God gave them, right?
(11:01):
The Torah was basically akin to,
we would say the US constitution in the sense
that it is set down a series of laws
that were open to interpretation.
Obviously we know that.
In that comparison.
In that comparison.
In no other way.
No, because it's,
because the Torah is not surely a political document,
but it does contain the political document
(11:23):
of the Jewish people as well.
Of the day.
The afterlife, they believed existed
and that God punished the wicked
and rewarded the righteous in the world to come.
So that's very standard and most thought
and that's why it was dominant then
and it's dominant now, right?
And they believed that a Messiah would come
and herald in a world of peace.
Again, standard.
Most people held to that.
(11:43):
Okay.
So there's a second group called the Sadducees.
And they were this elitist group.
They're rich people that wanted to maintain the priestly caste,
but they were liberal in willingness
to incorporate Hellenism into their lives.
So nothing classical liberalism.
We're not talking about that.
They're basically progressive or something.
They're trying to Hellenize,
get Greek oriented in there.
(12:06):
And so they rejected the idea of the oral law
and insisted that the literal interpretation
of the written law was all they could really use, right?
And so they did not believe in an afterlife either
because it was not mentioned in the Torah.
It was written in other passages.
This group disappeared around 70
after the destruction of the second temple
and none of the writings of the Sadducees survived.
And basically these two parties,
(12:27):
the Pharisees and the Sadducees,
served in the Sanhedrin.
Sanhedrin.
Which is basically like the Jewish Supreme Court
to make an analogy.
To make these comparisons for the team.
Yeah, I feel like the comparisons aren't super helpful.
He said Stephen is crying every time he makes these comparisons
and physically icking and cringing really hard,
but for the sake of having this conversation,
they are very important comparisons
(12:48):
that we're making for a final point.
Exactly, exactly.
Not literal, please for the love of all that's good and holy
and don't make these literal comparisons.
Okay, so the Jewish Supreme Court,
or the Sanhedrin, was made up about
of 71 members who interpret the laws.
Most of them were Pharisees,
but there was a good constituency of Sadducees
in there too.
So the final group would be called the Essins, okay?
(13:09):
And so they emerged out of a disgust of the other two groups.
Oh wow, almost like I've seen that before.
We know this, the comparisons are not equal or fair,
but you can see reflections of this in today's government.
There is nothing new under the sun, huh?
There is nothing new under the sun.
There is nothing new.
We've been doing this.
Exactly, and so they basically believed
(13:31):
the others had corrupted the city and the temple, both.
And so they moved out of Jerusalem
and lived a monastic life in the desert,
adopting a strict dietary laws
and a commitment to celibacy.
So they were like pre-monks, right?
There you go.
Of the Christian monks.
And they possibly wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls
that were found in the Kumran in 1947.
Comparatively speaking, they would be like...
(13:53):
Your local Green Party.
Not even, because they're like very, very separate.
So they'd be like Amish or something.
The Amish.
Yeah, like, cause they're super separate
is from society.
Like they went off into caves and stuff.
And then the Pharisees and the Sadducees,
we could say they're like,
you can say there's right wing and left wing ideology.
It's not fair to call them nationalist or anything like that.
(14:14):
Like they're not really like that at all.
But you can see this kind of...
This very like baseline comparison.
Baseline comparison.
Jesus rejected many of the tenants of all these groups.
Correct.
So was he a separatist?
Nope.
No.
He wasn't an Essene.
He didn't go off into caves and be by himself.
Correct.
(14:35):
He wasn't a Pharisee.
He condemned them folks.
He condemned a heck out of them,
even though he held closest to their ideology.
Correct.
Like the literal resurrection and all that kind of stuff.
He didn't deal a lot with the Sadducees,
but like they just were like,
the Sadducees like almost like didn't care that much.
The Pharisees were the ones who were really upset
with Jesus' ministry.
(14:55):
And so there's the question.
Jesus doesn't fit under any of those.
Any of the quote political groups.
The political groups of his own day.
So why would we think he fits as a Republican
or a Democrat today?
Correct.
Well, even like he came and when Jesus was around
these parts, he was intentional about being someone
(15:17):
who didn't come as was expected.
Right.
Like was intentional about demonstrating the fact
that he was not who the Jewish people expected,
the Pharisees expected.
He was intentional about separating what he was called
the preach from what had been preached up into that point
by being like, you know, that you say this, this and this
and I say this, this and you know, the whole monologue,
(15:39):
the whole sermon on the mount.
And so I think that that's really important to point out
is like, I would argue that Jesus came to not,
and like obviously cares about the heart
of the political issue.
Like he came and he addressed and cared
about the heart of what the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and the Essenes like cared about,
but didn't engage in the political aspect of it.
(16:01):
It was the public and not the politics
and the way we're defining it.
He was very public about what he believed
and he was very public about what the like,
what God had the mission that God had given him.
And how to follow God.
And how to follow God in Babylon.
In Babylon.
For our favorite verbiage in this whole season.
But he refused to engage in any political.
He played her games.
No, he didn't.
(16:22):
He was completely public about what he believed,
but refused to engage in politics.
And I think that that is a crucial model for us.
The crucial model.
100%.
Cause if Jesus showed up today,
do you think that I don't think he would be a member
of any party because that's kind of the point.
He's not going to the RNC or the DNC.
Because that's the point.
Like I feel like politics and like parties
(16:43):
has become so like so corrupted
and so like innately human and fallen
that if he were to come, he would, we would just get the same.
Like today we would just get the same thing of like,
hey, you say this, I say this.
Like he would do the same thing again.
Exactly.
Because he's still not playing a political game.
(17:05):
And think about it.
Like the Pharisees weren't 100% wrong.
You know what I mean?
They were wrong in a whole bunch of stuff,
but they weren't 100% wrong.
They were affirmed in a lot of ways
in their readings of passages and stuff like that.
In the same way, our political parties
are not 100% wrong.
They're not.
Right, neither of them are.
Neither of them are 100% wrong.
But they're wrong in a lot of ways.
(17:26):
But what they're doing is they're playing
the politics of Babylon.
Just like they did back then.
Correct.
And so that's, this is crucial because
when we start thinking about our political arena
and stuff like that, you know, it's easy to say,
I served a lamb and not the elephant or the donkey.
But like, what does that mean?
It means you better not be gung-ho.
(17:48):
For either side.
About a Babylonian government.
You better not deify them.
You better not make that integral to your faith.
You know what I mean?
But that doesn't mean you don't engage publicly.
We must engage publicly.
We're supposed to be a witness in this world.
Which is a much more difficult concept.
And I think let's get to that real quick.
(18:08):
Because you brought up the sermon in the mount
and that's I think super duper appropriate.
Because Jesus gave us principles
and this is a gushy and stassin do this
in their book called kingdom ethics to talk about this.
Which is really good.
They say that we can look at three principles.
The principles of salt, light and deeds
that are talked about in the sermon in the mount.
And they tell us how to engage publicly, right?
(18:29):
And again, the appropriate word politically,
if we look at it as polis, then that is.
But that's not how most people are looking at it.
No, no, no, no.
So saltiness.
Saltiness entails being an alternative community
that's different from the world
and not conformed in the world.
So when we know this like when salt loses saltiness,
you just put it on the ground and stuff like that.
Cause that's what they would have done.
(18:51):
Salt does a bunch of things.
It preserves food, right?
It preserves things back then
when they didn't have refrigeration systems.
And it also gives flavor and taste into what it is.
And so this analogy is really important.
When you're an alternative community,
you're supposed to be different.
You're supposed to add flavor.
You're supposed to preserve the things that are good.
You're supposed to be this, right?
Almost like the church should be there.
(19:12):
The church should be salty.
Instead it's salty in the wrong way.
There you go.
You know what I mean?
Be salty, not salty.
Yeah.
You're gonna say it with an inflection.
Be salty, not salty.
And if that don't clear it up, I don't know.
I don't know how.
I don't know how else I could be clearer about that.
That's it, man.
(19:33):
That's it.
That's good.
We nailed that.
Perfect.
So okay, the second one is light.
Now light is being a caring community
that does not withdraw from the world,
but instead serves the whole of human family.
The whole.
Because it's light.
The entirety.
Light shines on everybody, right?
So here, beckoning outsiders and weary ones,
(19:57):
we're bringing light to dark places inhabited by outcasts
and the wretched of the earth, all that.
Think about that.
What does light function as?
It illuminates dark places.
When things are dark, they're scary.
We don't know what's going on.
We're filled with fear because we don't know
what's lurking behind the shadows and stuff like that.
Light illuminates those places,
(20:18):
makes you lose your fear, right?
I did this one sermon example when I was a youth pastor.
I thought it was pretty dope.
This is a cool example.
You're like, I think about it sometimes still
because it was so good.
Youth pastors out there, y'all can steal this if you want.
I was at a church in Florida
and it had a massive basement, very unheard of.
And the reason why is because this church was on a big lake
and so it actually had the ability to do that.
(20:40):
The Floridians don't really have basements at all.
Yeah, neither do Californians, so I get it.
No, yeah.
But this was randomly had one.
And it's a big old basement.
We made it look like a music venue
and we used to do shows and stuff.
It was super cool.
Yeah, it was super cool.
And we called it the underground.
Of course.
Of course, cause cool.
So one day I was doing youth
and I had everybody, my youth group,
(21:00):
and it was brought like, I don't know,
25 students or something like that.
And we were up-ground, not in the underground.
And above ground, if you want to.
We were on sea level.
And I was like real hush hush
and like making it real serious
and getting people like really interested in what's happening.
I was like, all right, guys, why don't y'all hold it
and keep it down.
We're gonna do something special.
And you're like, what?
And it's like, you're gonna go down to the basement.
(21:23):
It's gonna be dark, but you know,
use the rails as you're going down
and be quiet, don't say a word.
And when you're down there, sit wherever you like.
And then we'll start.
So they all went single file down there one by one.
Get them.
And then they sat down.
I had the whole place dark and it got super dark
because it was like an underground basement.
Oh, underground, yeah.
(21:44):
And I put this one candle in the middle of the room
that is the only light that was in there.
So it was one little burning candle.
When they got in, I like slowly turned on the lights
and I was like, look around,
look where you guys are sitting.
All of them were huddled around the candle
except for one little weird guy that was like,
that was kind of like off in the corner.
Like this little dude was just like, what?
(22:04):
You know, but everybody was huddled around the candle.
And I was like, this is a sermon analogy.
People are attracted to light.
It illuminates dark places.
When you are the actual light of the world,
people will be attracted to that.
You get warmth when it's cold.
You see in the dark places, we're called to be that.
And I think people mess up royally right here
(22:28):
because what they think they are supposed to do,
they think they're calling
is to make the world conducive to light.
But that's not our calling.
Our calling is to be light in the dark places.
The darker the place, the more they need light.
Stop thinking about how to make Babylon conducive
(22:48):
for the gospel, but think about how to be a bearer
of the good news in this place, how to be the light.
Well, even the politicizing,
like the how polarizing it's become
to be either one side or the other.
I feel like even Christians on both sides
have almost adopted this mindset
(23:09):
that like if you are of an alternative political belief,
you don't even deserve to have that light.
There's a demonizing of people
who believe something different than you.
And so they're like, oh, well, you don't even deserve that
because you're voting such and such.
Or that they think there's no possible way you can be that.
Or a condemning of fellow believers, fellow Christians,
because of a different political view.
(23:31):
Because they voted on one Babylonian view
instead of the other.
And I think that that is such a tactic of the enemy
to create divisiveness.
Yeah, that divisive nature in the church.
Because if he can divide the people of God,
that's a huge win for him.
It is.
And so I feel like politics, unfortunately,
has become a huge tool of division
(23:54):
that the enemy is used in the lives of the church
and in Christians.
The last one of these is deeds.
And so this is where I think it's so important
to not talk about, oh, the right is holy
and the left is justice oriented.
Because then you might think of deeds
as being just as oriented and progressive or leftist.
But being a disciple making community
(24:15):
means that you're living out Christ's actual commands.
Jesus never only preached.
He also fed and healed and helped people everywhere he went.
Those two things were intricately tied together
in every facet of Jesus' ministry.
And it wasn't Jesus' liberal side
(24:36):
versus his side that spoke the truth.
Get the heck out of here with this junk.
Get the heck out of here with this junk.
I hope listeners can start seeing the foolishness
of applying political ideologies
into what Jesus was doing.
Man, it's crazy.
Look, when we prop up particular parties from the pulpit,
you're baptizing a Babylonian state,
(24:56):
you're letting it seep into Jesus,
you can't imagine, and I know Preston Sprinkel
talked about this, you can never imagine Jesus
promoting Caesar.
No.
Or any of his senators or anything like that.
You can't imagine that, right?
Or like vouching for a particular Pharisee
to make it to Sanhedrin.
Yeah.
Like you can't fathom that.
Yeah, it's not conducive with who we know Jesus to.
(25:17):
So think about that.
So that kind of brings us to our final point,
which is the question of the topic here.
How political should pastors get then?
So I think the first thing we would say
is don't prop up Babylonian leaders.
That's I think crucial.
Jesus wouldn't do it, don't do it yourself.
Yeah, especially pastors hold a specific calling
(25:41):
and they have an anointing and they are leaders
in the church.
That comes with a very, very strict judgment.
It comes with a very high calling of way of life
because you're leading other believers,
you're leading other Christians.
It's the ministry that you've been called to.
And I feel like there needs to be a very, very
(26:01):
specific submission to Jesus.
And not a promotion of their own personal beliefs
or their own personal, especially when it's political,
especially when it's these kinds of things
because your job is to lead people closer to Jesus.
And if in any way you as a pastor or a leader
are leading people away from Jesus,
(26:24):
that you're responsible for that.
You will be held accountable for those things that you do.
And so I think that there needs to be,
before any pastor runs through a pulpit
and is like this is either A, who I'm voting for,
B, who we should all be voting for,
C, how Jesus interacts with these specific parties,
whatever, oh, I think we need to be so, so careful
(26:45):
before we state those kinds of things publicly.
We're trying to help make disciples of Jesus Christ,
not disciples of Trump or Harris.
Correct.
But if that is gotta say it, we just have to say it.
We are not making disciples of those two.
No, we're not.
But of Jesus Christ.
And also not of yourself.
(27:06):
And so sometimes when people like,
they wrap their political ideology up to their own
ministry and teaching and stuff like that,
then are you making a disciple of Christ
or a disciple of you?
So think about those kinds of things.
I promise you, I promise you,
I don't even know how you're gonna vote, Megan.
(27:26):
And it doesn't matter.
And I'm not saying be private about it,
don't talk to people about it.
You can say whatever you want.
We're talking about from the pulpit.
We're talking about pastors, that pastoral integrity.
You know what I mean?
You can have conversations about it.
But my point making about this is like,
how insignificant it actually is
to our calling as Christians in this world.
Look, you are called to be light
(27:48):
regardless of who it becomes.
Half of the country is gonna be depressed on Tuesday.
So now pastors should have a even bigger thing to look at
because your congregation, half of them might be upset.
How do you lead them and guide them in that?
That's the actual question, right?
Look, you are called to be a Christian.
You were called to be a follower of Christ no matter what.
(28:10):
So don't endorse a politician.
Don't endorse a Babylonian.
Don't do that junk publicly from the stage.
You're gonna have your old thing
and your relationships with people.
Also pastors need to be aware of their influence
and aware of their understanding.
And so like you said, they need to be held to,
they are held to a higher account.
So don't just like flippantly say stuff
(28:31):
because people are gonna be listening very clearly
about what you're saying.
Give people freedom and space.
You can, if they ask you, be like, all right,
this is how I'm voting.
I'm not telling you how to vote.
Okay, this is how I'm voting and this is why.
But I want you to pray about it and think about it yourself.
Give people that space that you have to do that.
Because it's very unlikely that every church will have,
that your church will have everyone that aligns to one
(28:52):
political party.
So there's somebody in that room,
if you endorse a candidate.
You're gonna diss infranchise.
Exactly, who has been either hurt or confused or whatever,
if you're equating your Christianity with this specific
person that we have to vote for.
And what's worse, that's what causes a ton of people
to leave the church and don't know why that happens.
(29:12):
You know, it's like one of the biggest points
of deconstruction and rightly so,
because you're creating something
that's not Christianity anymore.
Correct, I would agree.
You know what I mean?
Okay, so how do we then talk about the responsibility
that we do have to lead the people as pastors?
Like if you're a pastor in a church,
you do have a responsibility.
So I would say, talk about,
If it were me.
(29:32):
Yeah, if it was me, talk about how to be Christ
given whatever the new situation is.
How do you be Christ in this world?
That is it.
Yeah.
Because you're asking how to be like,
how to be salt, how to show the deeds, the good deeds.
Like how can you be Christ in a Trump administration?
(29:54):
How can you be Christ in a Harris administration?
Cause that's the only question, right?
Because both of them require you to be light.
Both of them require you to be salt.
And the world is always gonna have challenges.
So how can you be salt and light in the midst of it?
You know what I mean?
There was an example, I was at a church
and the pastor came up
(30:15):
and he said this, this is right after,
and this is a big church,
right after Roe versus Wade was overturned.
And I thought he did such a good job on this.
And he was like, before he even started,
he was like, all right guys,
I just wanna talk to you guys.
We have this situation probably feeling
a lot of different emotions right now.
Because in some ways, this is a good thing
because we are promoters of life.
(30:35):
But in other ways, this is a bad thing
because how many women now feel like they have no future
and feel like they have rights taken away from them.
And this is the reality of the world we live in.
This is the reality of the public
of what they're going through.
So he was saying to the church,
don't be braggadocious about stuff.
And then look at how to help people
where they're at, even in this situation.
(30:56):
Because for some people, that was a massive loss.
And for some people, it was a great win.
And so don't think about that.
Don't brag and put it in people's face
or anything like that.
But think about those people that are hurting.
How can you help them in this new situation
that we're in now?
And he was like, the church needs to be leading the front
on helping these women see a future
(31:17):
when they see like it's been taken away.
And I thought that was a really, really good way
to approach it because what he was doing
was not saying whether it was good or bad.
He actually said ultimately, things of life are good.
He did say that, but like, he didn't talk about it
in any kind of demonizing way.
And he talked about in the sense of,
now my people need to be led.
(31:38):
If I'm their shepherd, I need to lead them.
And what you need to lead them here
is how to be a loving, gracious presence in this world,
non-anxious, not hurting people, right?
What do you think of that?
I mean, I think that's really important.
I think that you can have so many sermons
and conversations from the pulpit
about what is a biblical value.
Neither of us are sitting here telling you
(31:59):
that you shouldn't value the things that God values
and not vote in accordance with those things.
No one's telling you to do that.
But instead of maybe if you were a pastor
taking the pulpit instead of being like,
I'm gonna vote so-and-so on election day.
If you have a sermon series talking
about the important political issues
and you really like go in and you research these,
(32:20):
the hot topics and then you present a biblical view on them
and let people sift through for themselves.
Okay, well, how am I gonna act now
that I know that these things reflect the heart of God?
I feel like that is so much more effective than saying,
oh, you should vote for this candidate
because I'm voting for this candidate,
especially because a lot of people equate
(32:42):
the voice of their pastor-
As the voice of God.
As the voice of God.
For better or for worse.
There are a lot of people who if their pastor says something
to them, that is what they need to be doing.
And so if we are pastors and leaders,
we need to be really encouraging people
to seek the Lord for themselves,
for what he has called them to do and live and vote
(33:03):
and align and all these things.
And your job is to just point back to scripture,
point back to the Lord,
point back to what God says about things.
Lead and be disciples.
Exactly, not, and which I love the example
about your pastor, where it's like,
we can hold to a sanctity of life viewpoint.
Without demonizing people.
Without demonizing people.
And we can hold to the value of all people
(33:26):
and the dignity of human life,
while also deeply empathizing and supporting women
who have either thought about it, gone through with it,
all that kind of stuff.
Like there has to be both.
And that's why I think sermons about that
could be really effective.
His wasn't even a sermon.
No, I mean like, but I'm saying if they took that.
Right, but I think this is a good point too.
He didn't do a whole sermon on it.
(33:46):
He just did like seven minutes at the beginning of a service
because something monumental just happened in the world.
And I think that's important.
Like churches should not ignore what's going on in the world
at all.
Like people need leading and guidance.
People need guidance.
So take that seven, eight minutes, you know,
and just be like.
And address the hard thing.
Address the hard thing in a loving, gracious, godly way.
(34:07):
That's not partisan.
That's not Babylonian.
Man, your people need that.
And believe us, we are praying for all of the pastors
and leaders who will take the pulpit on Sunday
after we find out the election results on Tuesday, Wednesday.
And we'll have to deal with the fallout.
How do you offer solace and guidance to show people
how to be Christ in this new administration,
(34:28):
whichever one it is.
And then how do we, if you are a pastor
and your candidate lost, how can you take the pulpit
and say, but we've still been called
to submit to leadership.
We've still been called to respect the government
that we're a part of.
We've still been called.
How do we make sure that as pastors and leaders,
we are able to lead well when we feel like our candidate won
(34:50):
and when we feel like our candidate lost?
Important.
Because that's it.
That's it.
So I want to leave with this little,
bringing it back to the give to see is what a Caesar's, right?
There's an implication on that.
He said, whose image is on this coin?
Caesar's.
Well, give to Caesar's, what is Caesar's?
And then he said, give to God, what is God's?
(35:11):
Why was it Caesar's?
Because it bore his image.
The implication is, if you're going to give God,
what is God's, you're going to give him
what bears his image and who bears the image of God.
We do.
That gets exactly to the heart of the issue.
Jesus took that and said, this is not political,
but this is public.
It's about people.
(35:32):
And that's what God cares about.
So I want to encourage you guys to go,
whether on Tuesday is going to be a good day
or a bad day for you, let that not matter.
Let what matters is you showing your people,
if you're a pastor, how to be Christ,
regardless of the situation.
And then if you are a church goer, a Christian,
(35:52):
a congregant, and you just had this really bad news
and you might be experiencing dread
because your person didn't win or whatever,
remember that God is still calling you to be on mission.
The mission might change a little bit,
but you are still called.
That's the main thing to think about.
And that would be keeping, you know,
following the lamb instead of the elephant
(36:12):
or the donkey, I think.
Well, that's it for season three.
We did it.
How about it?
How about it?
A good last mic drop episode
before we leave you all for the next couple of months.
We'll be back.
I think last time we came back in March,
so probably around there again.
March, 2025, somewhere on there.
2025, that sounds.
Maybe February, I don't know.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like so far away.
(36:35):
Shiver my timbers.
2025.
All right.
Well, we'll see you guys next year.
Yeah, we will.
This episode, just like the other ones,
was brought to you by the School of Theology and Ministry
at Life Pacific University.
We'll see you next time.
See ya.
Hi friends, welcome back.
(00:02):
I always, I lost my train of thought.
Sorry, I'm gonna start it again.
It's okay.
Like welcome back.
Ah frick, what do I do now?
Welcome back, I don't know where to go from this point.
Welcome to TikTok Theology, a podcast that tackles
the major trending topics on social media
that concern the Christian faith.
I'm Meagan.
And I'm Steven.
(00:23):
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less,
but those videos can identify current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt
and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
Hi friends, welcome back on the final episode of season three.
Last one.
We did it.
We finally made it to the end.
(00:44):
And we're kind of wrapping up this season
by answering a question,
how political should pastors get from the pulpit?
And we think it kind of fits really well
with the theme of the kind of subtle themes
that has been permeating throughout this season,
especially because we've been in an election season,
we've been in an election year.
And because we take a lot of our topics from social media
(01:05):
and these are the conversations that are being had.
Everything's had.
It's important for people right now.
Yeah, like everything's had a little bit
of a political undertone in the sense.
We are dropping this episode a few days early
because we know Tuesday is election day.
Election day.
So that's gonna be a big one.
And we do think that maybe this conversation
(01:25):
should be had a few days before that.
Because we know everyone's already decided
probably where they're going to vote
and who they're gonna vote for.
But this was kind of on our hearts
that this is a conversation that we should be having.
It might be something that's food for thought
for how we should be handling ourselves
the next election season.
Yeah, especially as Christians too,
because this is not how people should vote,
(01:46):
but like this is how political should pastors
get at the pulpit.
So like it's asking a question of the church
and addressing the church in a political season,
which is a little different than just saying straight up,
you know, like vote for this person, vote for that person.
And I think that we've seen this kind of conversation
happen on social media.
Whether I've seen it a lot with even like pastors
(02:07):
slash Christian influencers get asked these questions a lot.
There have been like viral videos that have gone
of somebody who filmed a pastor in church or something
and who's having this conversation about
who they should vote for.
They're making very public statements
about who they feel like they would vote for.
And then even the more I think dangerous side,
(02:28):
which is who is the Christian vote?
Is the Christian candidate?
Who Christian should vote for?
Who God would want in office?
And I think that that we've seen like controversies
of like churches that host political rallies
or welcome all kinds of different candidates
into their space to like share.
And this is a both side thing.
This is not just a specific one side or the other.
(02:50):
I've seen-
Nationalist Christians seem to be doing it more,
but it is both sides.
And there is that intricate tie between Christianity
and politics and Americanized politics in certain churches.
But there's been a lot of response,
a lot of critique from Christians and non-Christians alike
about how politically involved churches have become
or certain churches have become,
(03:11):
because not all of them, but.
And so I think that in the protection of our witness
as Christians, we think that this is a really important
conversation to be having to make sure that everything
that we're representing as the capital C church
is the body of Christ is actually representing
who Jesus would be in situations like this.
Yeah.
And hear this often.
(03:32):
You hear Christians say this,
students, just other people in general,
and they say it in a kind of a defeatist way that like,
oh, we just have to choose the lesser of two evils.
Right.
And honestly, in a sense, that's true.
This sounds, people would be like defending like,
no, no, only one side below.
Nope, nope, think about it.
You're not saying that the people are evil.
(03:55):
Right.
So like whatever candidate it is,
this candidate can be a Christian or claim to be a Christian
or whatever will take them at their word.
So we're not saying that they are evil.
Just like any other person,
they could have things that are good,
but then they also have done things that are wrong
or whatever, just like any other person
that they're all working through their own lives
of holiness and whatnot.
So we're not saying that an individual is evil.
(04:17):
But if you think about it,
if Republicans and Democrats are both
different political factions in Babylon,
then it is because of Babylon is the antithetical
worldly government that is not the kingdom of God.
Then these are leaders within Babylon.
Yes.
So whatever party you're voting for,
you actually are voting for the lesser of two evils.
(04:40):
And so I think that's an important thing to say
because often we'll try to act like one party is evil
and then the other party is righteous or good
or like God ordained or something like that.
Both parties have a whole bunch of junk about them
that are wrong.
Oh yeah, government period is just so corrupt at this point.
But both parties also have things that are good
that are actually, they line up
with our biblical characteristics.
(05:01):
Both parties do that.
Both do, yes.
You know, and so we were just talking a little bit
for this, we were talking with some colleagues
and we were reflecting on this one blog,
the sub-stack that we were reading.
And they were making the judgment
that people get more conservative if they're in the church.
But the way they're talking about conservative
is totally politicized in a weirdly merged way.
(05:22):
What they're actually meaning is people are more concerned
about holiness when they're in the church.
Think about that.
Holiness is not equivalent to conservatism.
And justice is not equivalent to liberalism.
Those are not equivalent.
Okay, so thinking that one party has more moral uprightness
(05:42):
and the other party has more social uprightness or whatever.
You know, we can think of it whatever we want.
And those might be the elements of that party
that make it better in certain respects than others
or whatever, but those things are not right.
God calls us to be both holy and gracious people
that seek justice.
That means you're left and right.
Better than saying you're left and right.
(06:03):
It means you're neither.
And that's actually really, really appropriate.
I had this pastor say this a bunch of times
and we've heard different sentiments
of this he probably seen shirts and stuff.
But it's like, I don't serve the donkey
or the elephant, I serve the lamb.
Yeah, but that is true because Jesus is not gonna be
a Democrat or a Republican.
(06:24):
All those shirts that have Jesus totem guns
and Republican stuff or whatever,
those are just straight up blasphemous.
100% blasphemous.
Okay, and if you think Jesus can tote around
the things of the Democratic party, also blasphemous.
He won't do that.
He will not do that.
He is neither of these.
They are factions within a Babylonian government.
(06:46):
Keep that in mind because like if people don't think that
then they start baptizing their party
and thinking that that's the will of God
and all this kind of junk.
And that's how you start getting Christian nationalisms
and all sorts of stuff like that.
You know what I mean?
The one aspect of the separation of church and state
that is absolutely crucial is not that,
oh, now the church doesn't get funding, blah, blah, blah,
(07:07):
that kind of junk.
I'm not even worried about that.
You don't want the state to enter the church.
You don't want that reversal.
The kingdom of God is the kingdom of God.
The church is a reflection of it.
And you don't want classical liberal influences
coming into the church,
whether they're Republican or Democrat,
neither of these because they are factions of Babylon.
I think that's just a very, very important starting point.
(07:29):
100%.
So I guess the question is,
can we get some guidance from the Bible on this?
There's no Democratic party or Republican party in the Bible.
These things do not exist.
But we do see Jesus caring about politics in certain ways.
Now, the term politics,
when you're referring to the polis of like a group of people,
(07:52):
well, then yeah, we are political people
in the fact that we are communally oriented.
But that's not really the way people are using
the term politics, right?
They're talking about pandering and playing games
and trying to get people elected and stuff like that.
So I think for convenience,
we're gonna talk politics in that kind of negative sense.
And then we will talk about public engagement
(08:13):
as what polis and politics actually means,
but we'll use it like that.
So the difference between a public engagement
and a political engagement for our purposes here, is that?
Okay. Perfect.
So we'll see that Jesus is very, very concerned
about public engagement,
but not super concerned about political engagement
in that sense, right?
But some people will say that give to Caesar's what is Caesar's?
(08:35):
Like when Jesus said that,
the story where somebody brought Jesus a coin and said,
hey, do we tie?
Then it was basically his double bind
that we're trying to like entrap him to either saying,
like, hey, if you need to pay taxes to Caesar,
and if you do, then they'll go back to the Jews and say,
this guy is a shill for Rome.
He's trying to tell you to pay Rome.
(08:55):
And if he said don't, then they'll go back to Rome
and say, hey, this guy's trying to avoid taxes
and he's a rebel against Rome.
So he's trying to entrap Jesus.
But what Jesus ended up saying was whose image is on this?
And they were like, Caesar's.
And they was like, well, give to Caesar's
what is Caesar's give to God, what is God's?
So some people interpret that passage
as Jesus saying, don't get politically involved.
Okay.
(09:15):
Right?
Or publicly involved.
Like just like separate them, no involvement.
But I don't know if that's right.
I don't know if that's right either.
I don't know if that's right.
I don't know if that speaks to me.
No, you know what I mean?
That doesn't seem to have the ring of truth.
Yeah, I think that is a little bit
of an extreme interpretation of that verse.
Cause I feel like give to Caesar's what is Caesar's?
Becoming a whole political ideology in and of itself
(09:38):
is one of those pet peeves of mine.
Whenever people take one or two verses
and then they try and build a whole ology of it.
A whole ology.
A whole ology, whether it's a theology or whatever.
Where it's like, I don't know.
I don't know if I would take that verse and build the whole.
Yeah, I think we've got to take it a little more nuanced.
Yeah.
(09:59):
So how shall we take it more nuanced?
So for one, we can think about how did the Jews respond
to that?
To Roman occupation.
Yeah.
And there's various groups of that.
And then was Jesus part of any of these groups?
So first one we all know about.
We all have hate, hate relationships with.
We don't even have love, hate.
We just like.
A regular hate.
Yeah, we just want to like slap around.
(10:20):
Is the Pharisees.
You know what I mean?
The Pharisees, they're given a little bit of bad rap.
Yeah, for what they were trying to do and.
They were trying to keep holding it.
So I'm trying to follow rules.
My pastor, associate pastor was preaching this week
and she was making that point.
And they're trying to, you know,
is install holiness in the land.
But as we know, they're super fundamentalist
in certain respects in their day.
(10:41):
And their judgmental was heck, right?
So the Pharisees were the most important group
in this Jewish society.
They were seen as spiritual fathers.
They believed in the oral law that God gave Moses
at Sinai along with the Torah.
So they believed in the first five books of the Bible,
but then anything else that God gave them, right?
(11:01):
The Torah was basically akin to,
we would say the US constitution in the sense
that it is set down a series of laws
that were open to interpretation.
Obviously we know that.
In that comparison.
In that comparison.
In no other way.
No, because it's,
because the Torah is not surely a political document,
but it does contain the political document
(11:23):
of the Jewish people as well.
Of the day.
The afterlife, they believed existed
and that God punished the wicked
and rewarded the righteous in the world to come.
So that's very standard and most thought
and that's why it was dominant then
and it's dominant now, right?
And they believed that a Messiah would come
and herald in a world of peace.
Again, standard.
Most people held to that.
(11:43):
Okay.
So there's a second group called the Sadducees.
And they were this elitist group.
They're rich people that wanted to maintain the priestly caste,
but they were liberal in willingness
to incorporate Hellenism into their lives.
So nothing classical liberalism.
We're not talking about that.
They're basically progressive or something.
They're trying to Hellenize,
get Greek oriented in there.
(12:06):
And so they rejected the idea of the oral law
and insisted that the literal interpretation
of the written law was all they could really use, right?
And so they did not believe in an afterlife either
because it was not mentioned in the Torah.
It was written in other passages.
This group disappeared around 70
after the destruction of the second temple
and none of the writings of the Sadducees survived.
And basically these two parties,
(12:27):
the Pharisees and the Sadducees,
served in the Sanhedrin.
Sanhedrin.
Which is basically like the Jewish Supreme Court
to make an analogy.
To make these comparisons for the team.
Yeah, I feel like the comparisons aren't super helpful.
He said Stephen is crying every time he makes these comparisons
and physically icking and cringing really hard,
but for the sake of having this conversation,
they are very important comparisons
(12:48):
that we're making for a final point.
Exactly, exactly.
Not literal, please for the love of all that's good and holy
and don't make these literal comparisons.
Okay, so the Jewish Supreme Court,
or the Sanhedrin, was made up about
of 71 members who interpret the laws.
Most of them were Pharisees,
but there was a good constituency of Sadducees
in there too.
So the final group would be called the Essins, okay?
(13:09):
And so they emerged out of a disgust of the other two groups.
Oh wow, almost like I've seen that before.
We know this, the comparisons are not equal or fair,
but you can see reflections of this in today's government.
There is nothing new under the sun, huh?
There is nothing new under the sun.
There is nothing new.
We've been doing this.
Exactly, and so they basically believed
(13:31):
the others had corrupted the city and the temple, both.
And so they moved out of Jerusalem
and lived a monastic life in the desert,
adopting a strict dietary laws
and a commitment to celibacy.
So they were like pre-monks, right?
There you go.
Of the Christian monks.
And they possibly wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls
that were found in the Kumran in 1947.
Comparatively speaking, they would be like...
(13:53):
Your local Green Party.
Not even, because they're like very, very separate.
So they'd be like Amish or something.
The Amish.
Yeah, like, cause they're super separate
is from society.
Like they went off into caves and stuff.
And then the Pharisees and the Sadducees,
we could say they're like,
you can say there's right wing and left wing ideology.
It's not fair to call them nationalist or anything like that.
(14:14):
Like they're not really like that at all.
But you can see this kind of...
This very like baseline comparison.
Baseline comparison.
Jesus rejected many of the tenants of all these groups.
Correct.
So was he a separatist?
Nope.
No.
He wasn't an Essene.
He didn't go off into caves and be by himself.
Correct.
(14:35):
He wasn't a Pharisee.
He condemned them folks.
He condemned a heck out of them,
even though he held closest to their ideology.
Correct.
Like the literal resurrection and all that kind of stuff.
He didn't deal a lot with the Sadducees,
but like they just were like,
the Sadducees like almost like didn't care that much.
The Pharisees were the ones who were really upset
with Jesus' ministry.
(14:55):
And so there's the question.
Jesus doesn't fit under any of those.
Any of the quote political groups.
The political groups of his own day.
So why would we think he fits as a Republican
or a Democrat today?
Correct.
Well, even like he came and when Jesus was around
these parts, he was intentional about being someone
(15:17):
who didn't come as was expected.
Right.
Like was intentional about demonstrating the fact
that he was not who the Jewish people expected,
the Pharisees expected.
He was intentional about separating what he was called
the preach from what had been preached up into that point
by being like, you know, that you say this, this and this
and I say this, this and you know, the whole monologue,
(15:39):
the whole sermon on the mount.
And so I think that that's really important to point out
is like, I would argue that Jesus came to not,
and like obviously cares about the heart
of the political issue.
Like he came and he addressed and cared
about the heart of what the Pharisees and the Sadducees
and the Essenes like cared about,
but didn't engage in the political aspect of it.
(16:01):
It was the public and not the politics
and the way we're defining it.
He was very public about what he believed
and he was very public about what the like,
what God had the mission that God had given him.
And how to follow God.
And how to follow God in Babylon.
In Babylon.
For our favorite verbiage in this whole season.
But he refused to engage in any political.
He played her games.
No, he didn't.
(16:22):
He was completely public about what he believed,
but refused to engage in politics.
And I think that that is a crucial model for us.
The crucial model.
100%.
Cause if Jesus showed up today,
do you think that I don't think he would be a member
of any party because that's kind of the point.
He's not going to the RNC or the DNC.
Because that's the point.
Like I feel like politics and like parties
(16:43):
has become so like so corrupted
and so like innately human and fallen
that if he were to come, he would, we would just get the same.
Like today we would just get the same thing of like,
hey, you say this, I say this.
Like he would do the same thing again.
Exactly.
Because he's still not playing a political game.
(17:05):
And think about it.
Like the Pharisees weren't 100% wrong.
You know what I mean?
They were wrong in a whole bunch of stuff,
but they weren't 100% wrong.
They were affirmed in a lot of ways
in their readings of passages and stuff like that.
In the same way, our political parties
are not 100% wrong.
They're not.
Right, neither of them are.
Neither of them are 100% wrong.
But they're wrong in a lot of ways.
(17:26):
But what they're doing is they're playing
the politics of Babylon.
Just like they did back then.
Correct.
And so that's, this is crucial because
when we start thinking about our political arena
and stuff like that, you know, it's easy to say,
I served a lamb and not the elephant or the donkey.
But like, what does that mean?
It means you better not be gung-ho.
(17:48):
For either side.
About a Babylonian government.
You better not deify them.
You better not make that integral to your faith.
You know what I mean?
But that doesn't mean you don't engage publicly.
We must engage publicly.
We're supposed to be a witness in this world.
Which is a much more difficult concept.
And I think let's get to that real quick.
(18:08):
Because you brought up the sermon in the mount
and that's I think super duper appropriate.
Because Jesus gave us principles
and this is a gushy and stassin do this
in their book called kingdom ethics to talk about this.
Which is really good.
They say that we can look at three principles.
The principles of salt, light and deeds
that are talked about in the sermon in the mount.
And they tell us how to engage publicly, right?
(18:29):
And again, the appropriate word politically,
if we look at it as polis, then that is.
But that's not how most people are looking at it.
No, no, no, no.
So saltiness.
Saltiness entails being an alternative community
that's different from the world
and not conformed in the world.
So when we know this like when salt loses saltiness,
you just put it on the ground and stuff like that.
Cause that's what they would have done.
(18:51):
Salt does a bunch of things.
It preserves food, right?
It preserves things back then
when they didn't have refrigeration systems.
And it also gives flavor and taste into what it is.
And so this analogy is really important.
When you're an alternative community,
you're supposed to be different.
You're supposed to add flavor.
You're supposed to preserve the things that are good.
You're supposed to be this, right?
Almost like the church should be there.
(19:12):
The church should be salty.
Instead it's salty in the wrong way.
There you go.
You know what I mean?
Be salty, not salty.
Yeah.
You're gonna say it with an inflection.
Be salty, not salty.
And if that don't clear it up, I don't know.
I don't know how.
I don't know how else I could be clearer about that.
That's it, man.
(19:33):
That's it.
That's good.
We nailed that.
Perfect.
So okay, the second one is light.
Now light is being a caring community
that does not withdraw from the world,
but instead serves the whole of human family.
The whole.
Because it's light.
The entirety.
Light shines on everybody, right?
So here, beckoning outsiders and weary ones,
(19:57):
we're bringing light to dark places inhabited by outcasts
and the wretched of the earth, all that.
Think about that.
What does light function as?
It illuminates dark places.
When things are dark, they're scary.
We don't know what's going on.
We're filled with fear because we don't know
what's lurking behind the shadows and stuff like that.
Light illuminates those places,
(20:18):
makes you lose your fear, right?
I did this one sermon example when I was a youth pastor.
I thought it was pretty dope.
This is a cool example.
You're like, I think about it sometimes still
because it was so good.
Youth pastors out there, y'all can steal this if you want.
I was at a church in Florida
and it had a massive basement, very unheard of.
And the reason why is because this church was on a big lake
and so it actually had the ability to do that.
(20:40):
The Floridians don't really have basements at all.
Yeah, neither do Californians, so I get it.
No, yeah.
But this was randomly had one.
And it's a big old basement.
We made it look like a music venue
and we used to do shows and stuff.
It was super cool.
Yeah, it was super cool.
And we called it the underground.
Of course.
Of course, cause cool.
So one day I was doing youth
and I had everybody, my youth group,
(21:00):
and it was brought like, I don't know,
25 students or something like that.
And we were up-ground, not in the underground.
And above ground, if you want to.
We were on sea level.
And I was like real hush hush
and like making it real serious
and getting people like really interested in what's happening.
I was like, all right, guys, why don't y'all hold it
and keep it down.
We're gonna do something special.
And you're like, what?
And it's like, you're gonna go down to the basement.
(21:23):
It's gonna be dark, but you know,
use the rails as you're going down
and be quiet, don't say a word.
And when you're down there, sit wherever you like.
And then we'll start.
So they all went single file down there one by one.
Get them.
And then they sat down.
I had the whole place dark and it got super dark
because it was like an underground basement.
Oh, underground, yeah.
(21:44):
And I put this one candle in the middle of the room
that is the only light that was in there.
So it was one little burning candle.
When they got in, I like slowly turned on the lights
and I was like, look around,
look where you guys are sitting.
All of them were huddled around the candle
except for one little weird guy that was like,
that was kind of like off in the corner.
Like this little dude was just like, what?
(22:04):
You know, but everybody was huddled around the candle.
And I was like, this is a sermon analogy.
People are attracted to light.
It illuminates dark places.
When you are the actual light of the world,
people will be attracted to that.
You get warmth when it's cold.
You see in the dark places, we're called to be that.
And I think people mess up royally right here
(22:28):
because what they think they are supposed to do,
they think they're calling
is to make the world conducive to light.
But that's not our calling.
Our calling is to be light in the dark places.
The darker the place, the more they need light.
Stop thinking about how to make Babylon conducive
(22:48):
for the gospel, but think about how to be a bearer
of the good news in this place, how to be the light.
Well, even the politicizing,
like the how polarizing it's become
to be either one side or the other.
I feel like even Christians on both sides
have almost adopted this mindset
(23:09):
that like if you are of an alternative political belief,
you don't even deserve to have that light.
There's a demonizing of people
who believe something different than you.
And so they're like, oh, well, you don't even deserve that
because you're voting such and such.
Or that they think there's no possible way you can be that.
Or a condemning of fellow believers, fellow Christians,
because of a different political view.
(23:31):
Because they voted on one Babylonian view
instead of the other.
And I think that that is such a tactic of the enemy
to create divisiveness.
Yeah, that divisive nature in the church.
Because if he can divide the people of God,
that's a huge win for him.
It is.
And so I feel like politics, unfortunately,
has become a huge tool of division
(23:54):
that the enemy is used in the lives of the church
and in Christians.
The last one of these is deeds.
And so this is where I think it's so important
to not talk about, oh, the right is holy
and the left is justice oriented.
Because then you might think of deeds
as being just as oriented and progressive or leftist.
But being a disciple making community
(24:15):
means that you're living out Christ's actual commands.
Jesus never only preached.
He also fed and healed and helped people everywhere he went.
Those two things were intricately tied together
in every facet of Jesus' ministry.
And it wasn't Jesus' liberal side
(24:36):
versus his side that spoke the truth.
Get the heck out of here with this junk.
Get the heck out of here with this junk.
I hope listeners can start seeing the foolishness
of applying political ideologies
into what Jesus was doing.
Man, it's crazy.
Look, when we prop up particular parties from the pulpit,
you're baptizing a Babylonian state,
(24:56):
you're letting it seep into Jesus,
you can't imagine, and I know Preston Sprinkel
talked about this, you can never imagine Jesus
promoting Caesar.
No.
Or any of his senators or anything like that.
You can't imagine that, right?
Or like vouching for a particular Pharisee
to make it to Sanhedrin.
Yeah.
Like you can't fathom that.
Yeah, it's not conducive with who we know Jesus to.
(25:17):
So think about that.
So that kind of brings us to our final point,
which is the question of the topic here.
How political should pastors get then?
So I think the first thing we would say
is don't prop up Babylonian leaders.
That's I think crucial.
Jesus wouldn't do it, don't do it yourself.
Yeah, especially pastors hold a specific calling
(25:41):
and they have an anointing and they are leaders
in the church.
That comes with a very, very strict judgment.
It comes with a very high calling of way of life
because you're leading other believers,
you're leading other Christians.
It's the ministry that you've been called to.
And I feel like there needs to be a very, very
(26:01):
specific submission to Jesus.
And not a promotion of their own personal beliefs
or their own personal, especially when it's political,
especially when it's these kinds of things
because your job is to lead people closer to Jesus.
And if in any way you as a pastor or a leader
are leading people away from Jesus,
(26:24):
that you're responsible for that.
You will be held accountable for those things that you do.
And so I think that there needs to be,
before any pastor runs through a pulpit
and is like this is either A, who I'm voting for,
B, who we should all be voting for,
C, how Jesus interacts with these specific parties,
whatever, oh, I think we need to be so, so careful
(26:45):
before we state those kinds of things publicly.
We're trying to help make disciples of Jesus Christ,
not disciples of Trump or Harris.
Correct.
But if that is gotta say it, we just have to say it.
We are not making disciples of those two.
No, we're not.
But of Jesus Christ.
And also not of yourself.
(27:06):
And so sometimes when people like,
they wrap their political ideology up to their own
ministry and teaching and stuff like that,
then are you making a disciple of Christ
or a disciple of you?
So think about those kinds of things.
I promise you, I promise you,
I don't even know how you're gonna vote, Megan.
(27:26):
And it doesn't matter.
And I'm not saying be private about it,
don't talk to people about it.
You can say whatever you want.
We're talking about from the pulpit.
We're talking about pastors, that pastoral integrity.
You know what I mean?
You can have conversations about it.
But my point making about this is like,
how insignificant it actually is
to our calling as Christians in this world.
Look, you are called to be light
(27:48):
regardless of who it becomes.
Half of the country is gonna be depressed on Tuesday.
So now pastors should have a even bigger thing to look at
because your congregation, half of them might be upset.
How do you lead them and guide them in that?
That's the actual question, right?
Look, you are called to be a Christian.
You were called to be a follower of Christ no matter what.
(28:10):
So don't endorse a politician.
Don't endorse a Babylonian.
Don't do that junk publicly from the stage.
You're gonna have your old thing
and your relationships with people.
Also pastors need to be aware of their influence
and aware of their understanding.
And so like you said, they need to be held to,
they are held to a higher account.
So don't just like flippantly say stuff
(28:31):
because people are gonna be listening very clearly
about what you're saying.
Give people freedom and space.
You can, if they ask you, be like, all right,
this is how I'm voting.
I'm not telling you how to vote.
Okay, this is how I'm voting and this is why.
But I want you to pray about it and think about it yourself.
Give people that space that you have to do that.
Because it's very unlikely that every church will have,
that your church will have everyone that aligns to one
(28:52):
political party.
So there's somebody in that room,
if you endorse a candidate.
You're gonna diss infranchise.
Exactly, who has been either hurt or confused or whatever,
if you're equating your Christianity with this specific
person that we have to vote for.
And what's worse, that's what causes a ton of people
to leave the church and don't know why that happens.
(29:12):
You know, it's like one of the biggest points
of deconstruction and rightly so,
because you're creating something
that's not Christianity anymore.
Correct, I would agree.
You know what I mean?
Okay, so how do we then talk about the responsibility
that we do have to lead the people as pastors?
Like if you're a pastor in a church,
you do have a responsibility.
So I would say, talk about,
If it were me.
(29:32):
Yeah, if it was me, talk about how to be Christ
given whatever the new situation is.
How do you be Christ in this world?
That is it.
Yeah.
Because you're asking how to be like,
how to be salt, how to show the deeds, the good deeds.
Like how can you be Christ in a Trump administration?
(29:54):
How can you be Christ in a Harris administration?
Cause that's the only question, right?
Because both of them require you to be light.
Both of them require you to be salt.
And the world is always gonna have challenges.
So how can you be salt and light in the midst of it?
You know what I mean?
There was an example, I was at a church
and the pastor came up
(30:15):
and he said this, this is right after,
and this is a big church,
right after Roe versus Wade was overturned.
And I thought he did such a good job on this.
And he was like, before he even started,
he was like, all right guys,
I just wanna talk to you guys.
We have this situation probably feeling
a lot of different emotions right now.
Because in some ways, this is a good thing
because we are promoters of life.
(30:35):
But in other ways, this is a bad thing
because how many women now feel like they have no future
and feel like they have rights taken away from them.
And this is the reality of the world we live in.
This is the reality of the public
of what they're going through.
So he was saying to the church,
don't be braggadocious about stuff.
And then look at how to help people
where they're at, even in this situation.
(30:56):
Because for some people, that was a massive loss.
And for some people, it was a great win.
And so don't think about that.
Don't brag and put it in people's face
or anything like that.
But think about those people that are hurting.
How can you help them in this new situation
that we're in now?
And he was like, the church needs to be leading the front
on helping these women see a future
(31:17):
when they see like it's been taken away.
And I thought that was a really, really good way
to approach it because what he was doing
was not saying whether it was good or bad.
He actually said ultimately, things of life are good.
He did say that, but like, he didn't talk about it
in any kind of demonizing way.
And he talked about in the sense of,
now my people need to be led.
(31:38):
If I'm their shepherd, I need to lead them.
And what you need to lead them here
is how to be a loving, gracious presence in this world,
non-anxious, not hurting people, right?
What do you think of that?
I mean, I think that's really important.
I think that you can have so many sermons
and conversations from the pulpit
about what is a biblical value.
Neither of us are sitting here telling you
(31:59):
that you shouldn't value the things that God values
and not vote in accordance with those things.
No one's telling you to do that.
But instead of maybe if you were a pastor
taking the pulpit instead of being like,
I'm gonna vote so-and-so on election day.
If you have a sermon series talking
about the important political issues
and you really like go in and you research these,
(32:20):
the hot topics and then you present a biblical view on them
and let people sift through for themselves.
Okay, well, how am I gonna act now
that I know that these things reflect the heart of God?
I feel like that is so much more effective than saying,
oh, you should vote for this candidate
because I'm voting for this candidate,
especially because a lot of people equate
(32:42):
the voice of their pastor-
As the voice of God.
As the voice of God.
For better or for worse.
There are a lot of people who if their pastor says something
to them, that is what they need to be doing.
And so if we are pastors and leaders,
we need to be really encouraging people
to seek the Lord for themselves,
for what he has called them to do and live and vote
(33:03):
and align and all these things.
And your job is to just point back to scripture,
point back to the Lord,
point back to what God says about things.
Lead and be disciples.
Exactly, not, and which I love the example
about your pastor, where it's like,
we can hold to a sanctity of life viewpoint.
Without demonizing people.
Without demonizing people.
And we can hold to the value of all people
(33:26):
and the dignity of human life,
while also deeply empathizing and supporting women
who have either thought about it, gone through with it,
all that kind of stuff.
Like there has to be both.
And that's why I think sermons about that
could be really effective.
His wasn't even a sermon.
No, I mean like, but I'm saying if they took that.
Right, but I think this is a good point too.
He didn't do a whole sermon on it.
(33:46):
He just did like seven minutes at the beginning of a service
because something monumental just happened in the world.
And I think that's important.
Like churches should not ignore what's going on in the world
at all.
Like people need leading and guidance.
People need guidance.
So take that seven, eight minutes, you know,
and just be like.
And address the hard thing.
Address the hard thing in a loving, gracious, godly way.
(34:07):
That's not partisan.
That's not Babylonian.
Man, your people need that.
And believe us, we are praying for all of the pastors
and leaders who will take the pulpit on Sunday
after we find out the election results on Tuesday, Wednesday.
And we'll have to deal with the fallout.
How do you offer solace and guidance to show people
how to be Christ in this new administration,
(34:28):
whichever one it is.
And then how do we, if you are a pastor
and your candidate lost, how can you take the pulpit
and say, but we've still been called
to submit to leadership.
We've still been called to respect the government
that we're a part of.
We've still been called.
How do we make sure that as pastors and leaders,
we are able to lead well when we feel like our candidate won
(34:50):
and when we feel like our candidate lost?
Important.
Because that's it.
That's it.
So I want to leave with this little,
bringing it back to the give to see is what a Caesar's, right?
There's an implication on that.
He said, whose image is on this coin?
Caesar's.
Well, give to Caesar's, what is Caesar's?
And then he said, give to God, what is God's?
(35:11):
Why was it Caesar's?
Because it bore his image.
The implication is, if you're going to give God,
what is God's, you're going to give him
what bears his image and who bears the image of God.
We do.
That gets exactly to the heart of the issue.
Jesus took that and said, this is not political,
but this is public.
It's about people.
(35:32):
And that's what God cares about.
So I want to encourage you guys to go,
whether on Tuesday is going to be a good day
or a bad day for you, let that not matter.
Let what matters is you showing your people,
if you're a pastor, how to be Christ,
regardless of the situation.
And then if you are a church goer, a Christian,
(35:52):
a congregant, and you just had this really bad news
and you might be experiencing dread
because your person didn't win or whatever,
remember that God is still calling you to be on mission.
The mission might change a little bit,
but you are still called.
That's the main thing to think about.
And that would be keeping, you know,
following the lamb instead of the elephant
(36:12):
or the donkey, I think.
Well, that's it for season three.
We did it.
How about it?
How about it?
A good last mic drop episode
before we leave you all for the next couple of months.
We'll be back.
I think last time we came back in March,
so probably around there again.
March, 2025, somewhere on there.
2025, that sounds.
Maybe February, I don't know.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like so far away.
(36:35):
Shiver my timbers.
2025.
All right.
Well, we'll see you guys next year.
Yeah, we will.
This episode, just like the other ones,
was brought to you by the School of Theology and Ministry
at Life Pacific University.
We'll see you next time.
See ya.
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