Should Christians Stop Discussing Politics So We Don’t Offend People?

The following article, Should Christians Stop Discussing Politics So We Don’t Offend People?, was first published on The American Vision.

A new Barna study claims, “Just 30% of Americans Have a Positive View of Evangelicals.” Digging deeper in the study, one finds this: “Though there are some very polarized opinions about evangelicals and their politics, many Americans don’t know what to think about the demographic. According to the study, 46 percent remain neutral about the evangelicals.”

As a result of this study, someone posted the following:

The politically driven church has caused a great chasm between the church and those we are called to serve.

Our ineffectiveness with this gospel is not sin, the devil, or the world. It isn’t secular humanism, post-modernism, or socialism. It is the abandoning of the gospel Jesus brought for the desire of power, control and legislative morality. Us vs. them. It is the leaven of Herod and the leaven of the Pharisees.

May we wholly return to our first LOVE and remember our ministry is the ministry of reconciliation not division.

The following is the first comment I posted:

This is a false narrative. Jesus was a great wedding guest by turning water into very good wine (John 2:1-11). He fed thousands of people (Matt. 14:13-21) and healed the sick (8:14-17). He raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11:1-44), the son of the widow of Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and the daughter of Jairus (Luke 8:43-48). Jesus didn’t say much about politics. Even so, there was a group of people who conspired to kill Him, and when given the chance to release Jesus from a horrible fate, declared that Caesar was their king (John 19:15).

The same is true in the book of Acts. Just preaching the gospel turned many people against the Christian message. Peter and others were arrested for preaching the gospel. Stephen (Acts 7:54-60) and James, the brother of John, were murdered (12:1-3). Some were imprisoned (e.g., 12:3-5). Paul gives a list of the hardships he endured (2 Cor. 11:23-27).

The gospel itself brings division. Jesus said so:

“I have come to cast fire upon the earth; and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is accomplished! Do you suppose that I came to grant peace on earth? I tell you, no, but rather division; for from now on five members in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (Luke 12:49-53).

The apostle Paul wrote that “the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18). The gospel itself divides people because it has implications far beyond what many people think “believing in God” should be like. We would fill churches with this type of message:

Come to Jesus and everything will be OK, and when you die, you’ll go to heaven. In the meantime, you can ignore what’s taking place in the broader world because this world is not our home.

There’s almost no direct preaching about politics in the New Testament, and yet those who preached the gospel of redemption were often beaten, imprisoned, and even martyred. The gospel brings with it a moral message. The “good news” is good because we are sinners and need reconciliation. Some people like their sin and are offended when someone points out their need for redemption. The gospel requires a change in lifestyle. Is it any wonder that people kick against the pricks of the gospel when Christians say abortion is murder and homosexuality is an abomination?

One of the reasons Israel was living under the heel of Rome was because it neglected the moral application of God’s law. The civil government of Israel had become corrupt at every level. The reign of Ahab and Jezebel are a microcosm of what happens when a comprehensive biblical worldview is abandoned:

In the episode of Naboth’s vineyard alone (1 Kings 21), several points of the Mosaic law are clarified, including: the inviolability of inheritance, the lawfulness of the right to private property, the existence of certain limits on the legal power of the state, the fact that the various powers of the state (executive, legislative and judicial) are all accountable to God (coram Deo), the gravity of giving false testimony and the penalties that follow, the need for the intervention of the prophetic ministry before the civil government, and, in 1 Kings 22, the dreadful nature of God’s judgment that, with more or less long-term effects, falls on very state that oversteps and scoffs at its legal limits.1

Politics is the extension of the personal as was the case of King David and his sins of adultery and murder. His personal sins affected the nation. Here is Nathan the prophet confronting him:

Those in places of political authority and power use their positions to implement laws that are immoral. Jesus Christ is the Lord over all of life. He gave the command to disciple the nations, not simply “preach the gospel” (Matt. 28:18-20).

Politicians and those who support them know the broader implications of what the “word of the cross” demands. In biblical terms, politics is not immune to its message or out of bounds to criticism.

We see this when Paul travels to Thessalonica. Notice the reaction of some of the Jews when Paul was “explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead” and “this Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ” (Acts 17:3). Paul’s message brought division. While many believed, there were others who did not:

But the Jews, becoming jealous and taking along some wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob and set the city in an uproar; and attacking the house of Jason, they were seeking to bring them out to the people.  When they did not find them, they began dragging Jason and some brethren before the city authorities, shouting, “These men who have upset the world have come here also; and Jason has welcomed them, and they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.” They stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things. And when they had received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them (17:5-9).

Nothing was said about politics, abortion, homosexuality, oppressive taxation, or anything that many Christians discuss today. The offense was the gospel itself. If the gospel is true, as its critics understood, then it was inevitable that it would “upset the world.” The word translated “world” in Acts 17:6 is the Greek word oikoumenē that refers to the political world of the Roman Empire (e.g., Luke 2:1). This meant that Caesar was not a god to be worshipped. Jesus was the true King. That’s the biblical message, and the people in the Roman oikoumenē understand its message: “they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus.”

They were right. There is only one King, and that King is Jesus. Preaching anything less than this is unbiblical and is not “the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27). The new birth is the first step, not the final act.

If the gospel does not bring about personal and societal transformation (reformation), then it’s not the gospel.

1. Pierre Courthial, The New Day of Small Beginnings, trans. Matthew S. Miller (Tallahassee, FL: Zurich Publishing, 2018), 285.

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