Andy Stanley - Talking Points Part 3 : What Is The Role of the Church in Politics

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Question, are you familiar with this, the fundamental attribution error?
Anybody just arranging? Anybody heard of the fundamental attribution error? Yes, virtually, nobody. Good.
I'd like to know things you don't know because it
makes me look smart. So anyway, the fundamental attribution error
is actually a cognitive bias that we have all been
sucked into, especially during a political season, and it goes

(00:22):
like this. This cognitive bias causes us to attribute people's
behavior to their character. The reason he acts that way
is because that's what he really is, and that's who
he really is. The reason she behaves that way, and
the reason she believes that way is because that's an
indication of who she really is on the inside. But
we don't do that when it comes to our behavior.

(00:43):
When it comes to us, we attribute our behavior to
circumstances and environmental factors. I'm gonna give you an illustration.
So he's late, that guy, you know, he's late, that
guy at work, he's late. You know why he's late
because he's lazy and he's irresponsible and he's just disorganized.
That's why he's late. And then you're late, and you've
never once looked in the mirror so you know what
the problem is. I'm lazy and I'm irresponsible and I'm

(01:05):
just disorganized. No, just the opposite for you. You've decided.
The reason I'm late is because i was helping my
kids get ready for school. The reason I'm late, i
was on the phone with a friend. I'm actually very
organized and very responsible. In fact, I'm so organized and
responsible i'm late. Right. This is how it works. The
fundamental attribution bias happens when we assume that a person's
actions reflect what kind of person they really is, what

(01:28):
kind of person she is, rather than social and environmental factors.
And we talked a lot about this last week. So
when it comes to the political scene, this is what
it sounds like. The corrupt Democrats, they're just corrupt. You
know why they act that way. They're corrupt, that's their character.
They're all corrupt. The heartless Republicans. You know why they
vote that way? You know why they believe that way,
because I've met all of them, I've done research. I

(01:49):
know every single Republican is heartless. They're heartless. No you're corrupt.
No you're heartless. No you're corrupt. No you're heartless. No,
you've all been sucked into this cognitive bias. Well, clearly
something's wrong with the people, right, something's wrong deep on
the inside. Right, the Democrats are all socialists, I mean
we know they are. Well, the probably Republicans are all racist.
They won't admit it, right, you're not gonna admit they're racist,

(02:11):
but we know they're racists. We can see their hearts,
every single one of them. Now, I hate to burst
your bubble, and you're gonna hate me for this, So
you hate me now. But then over lunch, you know,
kind of think about this. Mature, emotionally intelligent, curious, empathetic people,
they don't fall for that, but political rhetoric feeds this,

(02:35):
and political rhetoric grabs us by the nose and leads
us into saying all kinds of silly things and believe
in all kinds of silly things that just aren't true.
And you're better than that, and I'm better than that,
so let's just not do that anymore. In fact, you
can call people out when they start doing that and
say you know, you're suffering from a cognitive bias. They'll

(02:58):
just look at you like what, say, yeah, you're just
from a cognitive bias. I am emotionally, and I'm emotionally
you know, intelligent, and I'm empathetic, and so I don't
suffer from that. I used to, but then I heard
this fabulous sermon that helped me understand what was going on. Right,
when we choose to carry someone's burden in Galatian six
to two. We talked about this last week. Right when

(03:19):
we choose, we have to choose to carry someone's burden.
You know what we do. We listen, we learn, and
we lean in. When we choose to carry somebody's burden.
What divides us diminishes, and what unites us surfaces. We
fear less, we understand more. And what we're going to

(03:39):
discover today is this is how the church began and
this is how the world changed. So if he haven't
been with us, we're in part three of this series
talking points the perfect blend of politics and religion. And yes,
I came up with the subtitle myself you can decide
how perfect it is. And we've said throughout this series
that the church should be the safest place in the
world to talk about anything, and the church's sface certainly

(04:02):
be the safest place to talk about politics. We rarely
talk about politics. Some of you grew up in churches
where you talked about politics all the time. But isn't
it true if you grew up in a church that
talked about politics all the time, you only talked about
politics from one side of the argument, right, And so
churches get known for being super left or super right,
or more Republican or more Democrat. And we have hopefully
avoided that with all of our churches. But in this season,

(04:24):
with what's going on in our nation and with what's
going on on television, we decided we're going to talk
about politics. And we've said that the issue that Christians
need to wrestle to the ground is not which party
to be a part of the issue that every single
Jesus follower has to wrestle to the ground is this,
are we willing to put our faith filter ahead of
our political filter? And this is very difficult to do.

(04:46):
It's so difficult to do that most of you think
you've already done it. It's so difficult to do that.
Most American Christians think they've already done it. It's so
difficult to do they can't even see that it's something
that needs to be done. And many of us aren't
willing to do this. Some of you, I'm not sure
can do this. But if you're a Jesus follower, you
have to put your faith filter ahead of your political

(05:07):
filter to be a christ Follower first and a Republican, Democrat,
libertarian or independent second. And what I hope to convince
you of today, what I hope to convince you of
today is this that when we do things change in
culture and society, we do the world a huge disfavor

(05:29):
when we wrap our political ideologies with the teaching of Jesus.
And everybody tries to do this, so you don't hear
anything else I say. Hear this. Jesus did not come
to be a footnote to a political platform. He did
not come to support an existing structure. As we said
last week, he didn't come to take sides. He came

(05:49):
to take what over. Thank you, that's right, Tony Evansai.
He didn't come to take sides. He came to take over.
He came to replace everything that was in place. Jesus
is the king who came to reverse the order of things.
And when we edit and when we parse, and when
we filter Jesus to fit a party platform, we rob

(06:09):
the world, not just our communities in our nation. We
rob the world. Listen, we rob the world of the
message that changed the world. We cannot be first and
foremost party people. And I'm not talking about your freshman
year in college. Okay, we must be kingdom people. Must
be kingdom people who are willing to influence our parties

(06:31):
when forced to choose, come on, let's get real. When
forced to choose between you know, the lesser of two evils,
you still have to call out the evil. When forced
to choose between two imperfect candidates, two imperfect platforms, and
imperfect planks within the platform, we have to call out
those imperfections. And not for our sake, and not even
for a party's sake, for the world's sake. Now is

(06:55):
this a big deal? This is a really big deal.
Early Christians lost their lives over this, and early Christians
began to reshape the world because of this. They refused
unconditional loyalty to the emperors, even the good ones, and
in doing so, they moved the ethical and the moral

(07:17):
needle for the empire. And do you know how they
did it. They did it through culturally disruptive unity. In
a world that honored and was organized around citizenship and
wealth and power, where people purchased their way up the
ladder and purchased their way to social standing. The ecclacy
of Jesus, the gathering of Jesus, the assembly, the congregation

(07:40):
of Jesus that would later be called the church. It
stood in direct opposition to all of that. It was disturbing,
it was unsettling. It was actually dangerous to the empire.
This is why the Empire decided to strike back. It's kidding,
This is why the Empire decided to impose sanctions on
Christians and force Christians to declared that Caesar was lord.

(08:01):
They realized that this was a threat to the empire.
And here's why. And there's no way to exaggerate this,
and there's no way to describe it adequately, and there's
no way to elicit in us the emotion that those
first centuries second century Christians felt. Classes of people, classes
of people whose circles rarely overlapped and only when it

(08:23):
was unavoidable, came together voluntarily, came together voluntarily and regularly
to worship the crucified God. And this was baffling. This
was baffling to people of the empire, and why did
people who never had anything to do with it. I mean,
the structure, social structure was so stratified and so separated.

(08:46):
And why did they overcome social norms? And why did
they overcome prejudices? And why did they come overcome their racism?
And why did they overcome you know, their class separation
and their class distinctives. Why would they come together to
worship the crucifier God Because the message of Jesus was
so clear. I've come to establish a new kind of
kingdom and everyone is invited to participate in it. In

(09:12):
this disruptive kingdom, we can't imagine how countercultural, how disturbing,
how dangerous the Apostle Paul's words were. We read them like, oh, yeah, whatever,
because what is self we talked about this, what is
self evident to us was not self evident in the
first and second century. But because of the message of
Jesus and the power of the Church and the power

(09:33):
of the Cross, what was just disgusting has become self
evident to us because of Christianity. The apostle Paul writes
these words, we read write over, I'm like he will due, yeah,
but this was these were showstoppers. This was like what
there is neither Jew nor gentile. Wait wait wait wait, wait, no,

(09:54):
that's not how it works. We got yahweh, Yes we do,
we got yahweh. How about you? He's our god? Wait
wait wait we were sharing yahweh. Wait wait wait we're
all worshiping the same god. Wait. Okay, I got to
invite gentiles into my home and get gentile cooties. Wait,
I gotta do stuff with Jews. The Jews have ignored
us our whole life. We have nothing in common. They
won't let us date their daughters. I mean there's and Paulses.

(10:14):
Oh those days are over now, No, they can't possibly over.
They eat weird stuff and you know they wear strange stuff,
and they have Paulsy. Those days are over. There's a
new king in town. There's a new kingdom. And what
has been a source of you know, of conflict and
a source of tension, that's all gone away because all
have sind and fallen short and all find salvation the

(10:37):
same way. And what used to divide you has the
potential to unite you. There is no Jew, there is
no gentile. Wow. This next one again, we're like dub
but I'm telling you this was disruptive to the to
the to the economy. It was disruptive to everything they knew.
It was not self evident. There is neither slave nor

(11:00):
free in this brand new, upside down kingdom. Anyway, you're
telling me that God views me with the same esteem
and dignity that he views my master. You're telling me
that God sees my slaves the same way he sees me.

(11:22):
I mean, everybody knows some people are born to rule
and some people were born to be ruled over. I mean,
this is just common sense. That's the way the world works.
It's self evident. Some people are born to be ruled,
some people are born to be ruled over. I've heard
this my whole life. And now you're saying, there's this
new system where slaves and freedomen and masters and rich
and poor, and citizens and non citizens, they all come together.

(11:44):
And when they're together in this context, this ecclesia were equal.
What kind of kingdom is that? So disruptive? Seeds of
revolution had been sown with the words of Jesus and
the apostle Paul, then it got worse. Nor is there

(12:04):
male female now here's something we can't just even begin
to get our minds around slavery in the ancient world
wasn't like slavery when we think about slavery in the
United States of America. Slavery the United States of America
was driven by racism, by color of skin. In the
ancient world, hard for us to imagine everybody was a

(12:25):
potential slave to somebody. You miss your house payment, they
come for your house and your daughter. You miss your
horse payment, they come for your horse and your son. Everybody,
just about everybody is somebody's potential slave. And in a
culture where everybody just about is someone's potential slave, the
dignity of women drops off the table to a degree

(12:48):
that we can't even begin to imagine. Women would have
no dignity, no standing, and a culture that was driven
by slave trading, that everybody could possibly be somebody else's property.
Women just again, the dignitive women, there was virtually none
except in a few pockets where there was wealth and
you were related to the right people. And Paul comes

(13:10):
along and says, let me just tell you something. And
this new kingdom, with this new value system, with this
new king men and women have the same dignity, the
same standing, of course the men are hearing this. Going
if the women find out about this man, fortunately most
of them can't read right. The later the apostle Paul

(13:34):
and his letter to the church in Colossity and that
we call the Book of Colossians. He says this, this
is amazing. He talks about men and women. He says,
actually it is Peter. I'm sorry, not Paul. Peter says this.
He says, hey, men, you need to be careful how
you treat your wives. They are joint heirs with you
in the kingdom. They are joint heirs with you in
terms of what's to come. That you have the same master,

(13:57):
that you are accountable to your heavenly father on how
you treat your heavenly father's daughter. She's your wife, she
is his daughter. And suddenly, the dignity of this is
why I say, and I know it sounds crazy with
ladies and women, Please don't be offended. I don't know
why every woman wouldn't at least consider following Jesus for
no other reason. What he did for the status of

(14:17):
women and the seeds that he sowed in terms of
the status of women, it's extraordinary. It is absolutely extraordinary.
It's common sense to us. It was not common sense
in the first, second, or third even the centuries that followed.
And he says, yeah, four, you are all one in Christ. Jesus, wait,

(14:38):
I'm one with women, and women are one with slaves
and slaves or one with masters. Yeah, it's a new
way of thinking. It's a new world order. One is
in no distinction, equal value, equal dignity. This was so disruptive.
I'm telling you, if this caught on, if this caught on,
the fabric of the empire would unravel. And it caught on,

(14:59):
and this is predicted, it would looking into the future,
he makes this statement, it's so powerful. It's one of
my favorite verses in the New Testament's certainly one of
my favorite things that Jesus said. He said, the Law
and the prophets talking about being are what we would
call the Old Testament. The Law and the prophets were
proclaimed until John the Baptist. But after John the Baptist,

(15:21):
a new king stepped on to planet Earth, and everything
began to change. Since John the Babtist, since that time,
the good news of a brand new kingdom, the good
news of the Kingdom of God, is being preached and
look at this, and everyone is forcing their way into it.
Everyone and their eyes are being open. They're being beginning
to recognize the world in a different way. They're beginning

(15:43):
to see themselves in a different way. They're beginning to
see other people in a different way. This isn't a tweak,
this is a wholesale change. This is a new paradigm.
This is the upside down Kingdom of God, and Jesus
has introduced it to the world and we have been
invited to participate in it. And more importantly, we are

(16:04):
stewards of God's kingdom and our communities and our nation
and in our world. This is why it would be
so foolish, so foolish for any local church, or any
group of churches, or the church in general to ever
be divided over political issues or a political party, because

(16:24):
those parties will one day be over and Jesus will
still be the king. So work with me. Forty five
years after the Apostle Paul is executed in Nero's room,
forty five years after the Apostle Paul's executed, Neros Peter
has also been executed in Nero's room. Forty five years
go by, when the Apostle Paul dies and Peter dies.

(16:45):
It's like, oh, no, the two you know, the two
superheroes of the faith. I mean, these are the guys
with the superpowers literally of the faith. They're dead. So
does that mean Rome one? Does that mean the Temple one? No,
Christianity just continue to spread like crazy. So forty five
years after the Apostle Paul is executed in Nero's Rome Plenty,
the younger, who was the governor of an area or

(17:07):
region that was in our modern day Turkey, realizes that
as a governor, it's his responsibility to put down the
growth of the Church because the emperor has sitting out
an edict that we have to stop the spread of
Christianity because the gods are angry. It wasn't too long
after this that the edges of the Roman Empire began
to fray, and so the Romans were trying to figure

(17:27):
out what's wrong. What's wrong? Will the gods are angry?
What would make the gods angry? The gods aren't being
sacrificed to the way they used to be. And who's
the culprit behind the gods not being sacrificed to? It
must be these Christians. So there's an idiot that goes
out that you're too a round up and arrest Christians
and you're to force them to sacrifice to the Emperor.
They don't have to quit believing one thing, but they've
at least got to acknowledge that the Emperor is lord,

(17:48):
or the Emperor is their ultimate that just where their
ultimate allegiance to the Emperor. So Plenty the Younger just says, hey,
you know, I've got to do what the Emperor says.
But I'm not even sure why we're doing this. I mean,
I have noticed a disturbance, you know, in our community
because of these Christians. So he writes a letter to
Emperor Trajan asking the question, what should I do with
these Christians once I round them up? But before he

(18:10):
sent the letter, he did a little investigating because he
decided he needed to educate himself on what made these
Christians so dangerous, And he incorporated his findings in this
letter and it actually survived antiquity. And here's what Plenty
of the Younger discovered about the Christian community forty five
years after the Apostle Paul was executed by Rome. Here's

(18:33):
what he discovered. He includes this in the letter. Here's
what I found out, the sum and substance of their fault,
because clearly that it falter or we wouldn't be rounding
them up, or error had been that they were accustomed
to meet on a fixed day of the week before dawn.
So I set out my spies. I actually arrested a
few Christians, you know, kind of beat them up a
little bit, roughed them up a little bit to find

(18:54):
out what's going on, what do you believe, what are
you up to? Why is this a threat to the empire?
And one thing I just covered is they meet together
on a certain day of the week before dawn. Well,
they would meet on Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus.
But Sunday's a workday. There's no weekend, it's a workday.
So they would meet before dawn, before work to celebrate
and to worship together. Now, imagine if we moved our

(19:16):
church services to Monday morning at five point thirty am
and we'd worship for an hour together, how many of
you would show up? Yeah, these are our people. This
is how committed they were, This is how moved and
changed they were. And when they would get together early
in the morning before dawn. We found out that they sing,

(19:40):
how's the empire gonna survive? People singing? This is such
a threat. They sing responsively a hymn, and they sing
to Christ as if he's some kind of God. So
next time we're singing and you don't like the song,
or next time we're singing and you just don't like
to sing, I want you to think about this. People
two thousand years ago, the people that took this to

(20:02):
the next generation, after the Apostle, Paul and Peter would
gather and they would sing. And the reason they would
sing is because most people couldn't read. And not only
could they not read, they had nothing to read. There's
no Bible. I mean, they may have a fragment of
a Gospel, or they may have a fragment of one
of Paul's letters or Peter's letters. But in many of
these communities there was nothing to read and nobody could read.
And so they learned their theology through chance and through poems,

(20:26):
and primarily through songs. So they would sing a hymn.
This was their way of worshiping Christ as if he
was a god. And here's the other thing we found
out Emperor Trajan, and while they were together, they would
bind themselves by oath. Ah, this is where it's gonna
get dangerous. They bind themselves by not they take an oath.

(20:48):
And I'm sure this oath has something to do with
undermining the empire. This oath must have something to do
with creating some kind of insurrection. I mean, maybe this
is an oath that's going to create some kind of
slave revolt. We don't know. But what is this dangerous
oath that they take? Not to some crime. We were
surprised to find out. Oh, well, what were they taking

(21:10):
an oath for? Here's what they vowed together to do instead,
but not to commit fraud. They're not gonna steal from people,
or charge people too much, or treat people dishonestly when
it comes to finances they're trading. They they promised each
other they would not defraud people, and they promised they

(21:31):
wouldn't steal from anybody. And they promised out loud to
each other that they wouldn't commit adultery or falsify their trust.
That is not followed through on a promise, this sounds dangerous.
I mean, we can't have people like this in our
culture and our towns and our villages. I think when
plenty of the younger discovers all of us, he realizes, no,

(21:52):
wonder I haven't heard about this. These are some of
the finest people in the community, and I'm supposed to
arrest them. Let me tell you what's amazing about this again,
this is kind of a dud. Oh, this is kind
of a common sense, you know, self evident. Right in
the pagan religions, there was no morality or ethics related
to pagan worship. There was civil law, you know, to

(22:14):
keep people in line, but when it came to the gods,
the gods didn't care how you treated other people. The
gods didn't care how you treated your wife. The gods
didn't care how you treated your children. The gods didn't care.
They just wanted their blood sacrifice. They just wanted their
grain offerings. You're just trying to bribe the gods. And
suddenly here's this cult and they feel that somehow in

(22:36):
their worship of their god there is a moral component
and an ethical component, as if they feel accountable to God.
They feel accountable to God for how they treat each other,
and they feel accountable to God for how they treat
people in the community. Imagine, Imagine what would happen in

(22:59):
our community. Imagine what would happen in our country if
every week Christians gathered in circles and they made an
oath to each other. This week, I will not defraud
anyone financially. This week, I'm not gonna steal anything, any ideas,
or any credit. This week, I will be faithful once

(23:20):
again to my wife or to my husband. This week,
I'm not gonna let anybody down. I'm gonna follow through
on what I promised. Imagine such a world, nor if
this goes on, he says. The other part of the
oath was nor to refuse to return a trust. If
somebody's counting on me, they can count on me when
called upon to do so. You know, plenty of the

(23:43):
youngers like, that's it. That's all you got. That's all
we could find out. We tortured a few Christians and
sent some people in to be amongst them, and that's
all we got. So this is the group that's angering
the gods, this is the group that's undermining the empire.
This is the group we're to round up in a See,
this made no sense. This was so countercultural. And a

(24:05):
culture that worshiped strength, and a culture that worshiped warfare,
and a current culture that worshiped conquest and victory. The
ruling class found this pathetic pitiphil. I mean, this is ridiculous.
There they're worshiping a crucified you know, Rabbi, what is
with this? And from their perspective, the whole thing was

(24:27):
just kind of weird and appalling. But for many, many
people found the upside down Kingdom of Jesus appealing. Christians
refused to abandon the sick because they no longer feared death.
Christians no longer abandoned babies because everyone's made in the

(24:48):
image of God. And Christians no longer left children out
to die that they didn't think they could afford to
raise because they were made in the image of God.
And as we talked about, then they would go out
to the edge of the forest and the edge of
villages where babies were off and left, and they would
bring these children in and raise them. Who are these people?
They extended dignity to their slaves and their servants and

(25:11):
the people that weren't in their class. Who are these people?
There are people? Jordan Peterson sums it up perfectly, he says,
this Christianity achieved the well nigh impossible. This is the
part we cannot even begin to get our minds around.
The Christian doctrine elevated the individual soul. This was unheard of,

(25:34):
placing slave and master, and commoner and noblemen alike on
the same metaphysical footing, rendering them equal before God and
the law. The implicit so powerful, the implicit transcendent worth
of each and every soul, established itself against impossible odds.

(25:59):
The Kingdom of God, as described by Jesus, struck the
ancients as appalling, eventually appealing, and in time it became contagious,
and it swept the empire like an airborne disease, and
against all odds. A Nazarene cult, or as the Book

(26:21):
of Acts they refer to it as a Nazarene sect.
They're following a dead Nazarene, a Nazarene sect who worshiped
a crucified rabbi with no territory, no military, no authority,
no political power, no political standing, whose message was built
around these pathetic two ideas, love your enemy and love

(26:44):
each other not only survived and thrived, it shaped Western civilization,
and we every single Jesus follow we're here and listening
or watching is part of that movement, and we dare not.
This is why we dare not be divided over party lines,
knowing that one day those parties will be over. And

(27:09):
if those who came before us, who were so different
from us, if those who came before us that lived
in a world we can't even begin to imagine, if
somehow they were able to find common ground with each
other at the foot of the cross, we have no excuse.

(27:29):
Their culturally disruptive unity shocked the world, and eventually their
message would change the world. So come on, let's do that,
because come on, you know this. Let's be super honest
for a minute. We run the risk of being divided

(27:49):
over some very important issues. We run the risk of
being divided over some very important issues that you are
passionate about, passionate about. But again, let's be honest. It
may be impossible for you and I understand this, and
this is where I've gotten, you know, negative feedback for
this whole series. I get this. It may be impossible
for you to understand how a Jesus follower could possibly

(28:13):
have a different view on a specific issue than you
have it, just you may never get there. I can't
imagine you call yourself a Christian and you're still for this.
You call yourself a Christian and you're still against this.
You call yourself a Christian and you can't see that.
You call yourself a Christian and you don't understand that.
You may never ever understand why other Christians don't see
political issues and social issues the way that you do.

(28:35):
You may never understand how they can be for what
you're against and against what you're for. So when you
go to vote, you need to vote your law of
christ informed conscience. Absolutely, when you go to vote, you
don't vote based on trying to make a bunch of
people happy. You vote your conscience. But in the meantime,

(28:57):
let's do what the early Church did, and let's carry
each other's burdens. Because when you help me carry my burden,
you gain understanding about who I am, where I sit,
and consequently where I stand. And when you help me
carry my burden, I get a better understanding of where
you sit and consequently where you stand. And when we

(29:20):
carry each other's burdens, there's something that happens that can't
happen any other way, and we may never agree politically,
but we can love unconditionally because we'll gain a better
understanding of each other. And even if we never understand
each other, and even if we never agree, if we
carry one another's burdens, do you know what we do.

(29:43):
We do the most important thing. We fulfill the law
of Christ. Let me say a different way. You do
not have to understand me or agree with me to
love me, and I do not have to agree with
you or even understand why you view things the way
you do.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
To love.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
You. We can disagree politically, we can love unconditionally while
we pray and work for unity. So let's do this.
Let's come on. This is a unique opportunity, unique opportunity
for our communities, of our nation. Let's not miss the
opportunity of a lifetime, the invitation to follow the king
who turned everything upside down and reversed the order of things.

(30:29):
So let's listen, let's learn, let's love.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
And together we will make our towns better, we will
make our community better. We can make the nation better,
we can make the world better.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
And that's not hyperbole, because once upon a time, a
handful of Jesus' followers multiply to the point to where
the empire finally threw their hands up and embraced the
crucified God. And if we get this right, perhaps we

(31:10):
will leave our nation a little bit less divided. After all,
one is the wind.