Dear Ray,
I have read this letter again, and I think I was still standing too far from the thing I wanted to say. I described what politics does to a community. Those consequences are real, but they are downstream. The greater injury happens before anyone speaks, before a disagreement forms, before anyone feels excluded. It happens when a believer leaves the place where he is abiding in Christ and begins to live again from the old creation.
That is why I call politics poison.
We have been brought into something astonishing. If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation. I do not understand that as a description of a future improvement in our behavior. Christ has brought us into His death and resurrection. We have been joined to Him. His life is within us. We are being invited to remain where He has placed us, to live from a source we could never produce.
The branch has no separate life. It can do nothing from itself. That sounds severe until we begin to see what has been given to us in the vine. We do not have to generate light, wisdom, love, or spiritual strength. We remain in Him. His life moves where our own efforts could never reach.
This is the mystery I mean when I speak of walking in another realm. The new creation is hidden from the eyes that measure power. Yet it is present. Christ is in us, and we are in Him. We may be walking down a street, sitting with another person, or carrying out the work of an ordinary day, and still be living there. Our outward surroundings have not changed. Our source has.
Politics calls us out of that life. It gives the mind a world it can grasp and an endless task within it. There are people to judge, threats to anticipate, victories to secure, and explanations to defend. The separate “I” finds its work again. I know what must happen. I know who must be stopped. I know which side understands the danger. I can spend hours in that movement and call it concern, conviction, or discernment.
But where am I living while I do it?
I am serious when I say politics is not even in the outer court. It is outside the gates. It does not bring us near the mystery by a slower route. Its energy, its categories, and its demand for allegiance belong to the old creation. We cannot carry them inward and expect them to become spiritual because we attach the name of Christ.
I can already hear the objection. Surely some political positions are right. Surely some dangers must be recognized. Surely a believer should care about what happens in the world.
Of course people matter. Their suffering is real. We can tell the truth, protect someone in danger, give what is needed, and bear a cost for love. But I am asking where that action comes from. A branch can be full of activity while receiving nothing from the vine. It can appear engaged and responsible while its life has gone dry. The correctness of a judgment cannot give it the life of Christ.
And this is where I must name what has happened among Christians. Trump. Republicans. The GOP. Even the word conservative. These names have been carried into Christian fellowship as though they tell us something about the life of a believer. They do not. When we begin to assume that Christians are Republicans, we have accepted a name from outside the gates and brought it into the place where Christ alone is our identity. I call that evil because it substitutes a belonging we can recognize and defend for the union God has actually given us.
It is a knife cutting us off from the vine. The cut begins inwardly. A person begins to draw confidence from being right, from recognizing allies, from understanding the struggle. He may still speak constantly about Christ as life. He may be able to explain abiding better than I can. But what is supplying him at that moment? What is governing his attention? What life is moving through his words?
Abortion is often offered as the exception that settles the argument. Someone says that surely a believer must take a political stand there. Ray, even there we have returned to the wrong tree. We have taken something grave and made it a question by which the mind can establish its righteousness. We may become utterly certain of our opinion. That certainty still cannot make us abide. It cannot carry us into the new creation.
I am not measuring the importance of a human life by whether the subject belongs in political debate. I am questioning the life from which we approach it. Christ may bring us close enough to another person to care in ways that cost us something. The political argument can occupy us completely while we remain at a distance, full of certainty and empty of His present supply.
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil offers a position from which we can know and judge. It lets the “I” remain intact. Politics lives easily there, including politics dressed in Christian language. We can make a correct-sounding judgment and feel that we have done the work of God. Meanwhile the tree of life stands before us, asking that we receive. We may neglect it precisely because receiving gives our independent selves so little to do.
This is the danger of becoming a surface believer. A man can be sure of every public question and know very little of his immediate union with Christ. His certainty may conceal that loss even from himself. He can move through the day reacting, arguing, and explaining while the inward turning has almost ceased. Then he meets with the saints, and he brings that same source into the room.
I know this danger in myself. My mind can run ahead so quickly. I can be drawn into a question, feel the force of it, and begin arranging my answer. Sometimes I notice only afterward that I have been away. I have spoken and thought from myself. I have touched none of the depth I claim is my life. I need the Lord to bring me back, often without words.
We have spent years speaking of Christ as life. If that is true, it must reach this far. We cannot reserve a portion of ourselves in which fear, political urgency, or moral certainty supplies our living. There is no such independent portion of the new creation. Christ is our life there, or we have stepped back into the old one.
Ray, I want to walk in the deep mystery with you. I want us to discover what it is to remain in Him while the visible world presses upon us. I do not think we have exhausted even the beginning of it. The Lord has opened a realm far deeper than our opinions, our judgments, or our ability to manage events. He is present within us now.
Let politics remain outside the gates. Let us leave Trump, the GOP, and every political identity there. Let us leave even our most fiercely defended opinions when they draw us back to the wrong tree. And let us turn again to the living Christ, receiving Him as the source of our sight, our speech, and our care.
We have been made part of a new creation. I want to live there.
Brent
