The power of faith and government

Gust was the only admitted Democrat in our church of about 350 Republicans.

At our weekly Wednesday evening prayer meetings in the fall of 1948 we never failed to pray that "the Lord's will" would be done in the presidential election. When the pastor asked for prayer requests, that was one of the first offered. While we wouldn't presume to tell the Lord what that "will" might be, we were smart enough and spiritual enough to know who His candidate was.

In the election on that first Tuesday of November Democrat underdog Harry Truman won decisively over Republican Tom Dewey. The next evening, when our pastor asked for prayer requests, Gust was the first to pop up. In his rough Swedish accent he said, "I think ve ought to tank the Lord that His vill vas done in the election." The room was silent.

Today a lot of Christian conservatives know how those other church members felt. After being so certain you know what the Lord's will is, how do you face the fact that life has gone spinning off in a completely different direction?

I see only two options. The first is to say God doesn't have the power to accomplish what He wants to accomplish; in other words, we worship a God who is less than. The alternative is to admit we don't know God's will nearly as well as we think we do.

Cal Thomas has commented on the situation much better than anyone I've read recently. He said that for some time now Christian conservatives "have put too much faith in the power of government to transform culture ... Too many conservative Evangelicals mistake political power for influence."

According to Thomas, Christian conservatives need to take a lesson from their leader, Jesus, who admonished them to "'love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison and care for widows and orphans,' not as ends - but as a means of demonstrating God's love for the whole person in order that people might seek Him."

Political power can make some changes, but lasting changes come through transforming the human heart. That's something conservative Christians preached for a long time before they became enamored of the power they saw other, more liberal groups exercising in government.

Back in the 1960s a liberal pastor friend of mine said, "If we can just get control of the government, then they [the rest of society] will have to listen to us." Conservatives saw that power out there and lusted after it, too.

Jesus said if we do what he told us to do, without seeking the limelight, others will "see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." In failing to follow this, says Thomas, Christian conservatives have gone wrong. "If conservative Evangelicals choose obscurity and seek to glorify God, they will get much of what they hope for, but can never achieve, in and through politics."

The power politics haven't worked, because power doesn't change the ethics and moral fiber of a society. Love and compassion do.