Monday, August 17, 2009

Broadly Speaking

In broad strokes, the Christian who is a political conservative would say, “We are commanded to care for the poor, especially our own poor, but Jesus in no way specifies the government as the agent. There is no gospel command that Christians should be making their governments do anything.”

The Christian who is a political liberal would counter “But we weren’t in any position of power then. In our culture, the individual Christian and the institutional churches have some influence. We are responsible for influencing our society be as just and generous as possible.”

To which I reply, “It’s a trap. See with what easy invisibility influencing our society becomes government, plus some spare change”. To use the questioning style from the chapter summaries of textbooks “What has happened to the church in the countries which have done this? Why do you think this is?”

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