Spiritual Breathing and Christian Politics: A Path to National Healing
Conservative and progressive believers alike claim to be pulling America back to the heart of the gospel with their political stances. And yet, Christians in both parties often miss a critical element of gospel mechanics.
We advocate for laws that defend the truth of God. We advocate for programs that promote the mercy of God. But we chase both goals without walking in regular confession—opposing the fundamental dynamic of a healthy spiritual existence.
When I was on staff with a campus ministry years ago, one of our leaders often talked about the concept of “spiritual breathing.” For a Christian to be healthy, there should be a constant, breathlike pulse in our walk with Christ. We should run to him with an honest admission of our shortcomings—the exhalation—alongside the application of lavish grace for our weaknesses. The inhalation of the Holy Spirit provides power for moving forward.
Over and again, the New Testament shows us that there’s room for our failures in the love of God. However, we must be honest about those shortcomings—and also willing to connect with a Savior who not only forgives us but also enables the power of the Creator to flow through us so that we aren’t trying to operate as branches severed from the Vine. (John 15). God tells us that if we try to go solo here, we will not bear any fruit.
But we never seem to actually believe that, do we? We sidestep the indwelling and run straight to the performance. We’ve got this, God. Hold our beers.
This is a grave error, for the Christian life was not intended to be a solitary labor but a life of union. Our time on earth is not a set of performative hoops through which we jump—but an initial restoration of the broken connection between God and man, leading to a lifetime of connectivity that leads us deeper and deeper into reliance upon and enjoyment of our Savior. Our individuality is like a beautiful vessel that fills with the might and creativity of the Livng God.
The Christian life is a dynamic in which the Lord provides safety and welcome for our weakness alongside strength for our labors in Him. Any other system called “Christian” is not.
How strange, therefore, that we see so little of this essential dynamic in Christians on either political side claiming to implement Christ’s values in American culture.
Confession and admission of need are non-existent, as far as I can tell. Everyone is boasting about his or her team. Everyone is claiming to stand for Christ. Everyone is defending his or her own earthly allegiance.
I see so many people using the name of God in politics but almost no one speaking about or demonstrating how Christianity actually works.
Take a principle so fundamental to the gospel as confession.
Imagine how the New Testament commission to deal with the log in our own eye before picking at the splinter in another’s would change the entire landscape of political discourse. If Christians on the right and Christians on the left would begin to evaluate our own parties and platforms with the scrutiny we apply to our opponents, we could each help lead our parties out of the toxicity in which our nation now seethes.
Instead, I see chest beating and bravado all around.
A powerful leader on the right has waved a Bible about in public while boasting about never having confessed his own sins. He just decides to do better. (Anti-gospel. Anti-Christianity.)
The Christian GOP spends every single day pointing fingers, shouting, claiming holiness while manifesting so many traits the Bible defines as darkness. Pride. Contention. Strife. Slander. Hate. A lack of mercy.
Could it be more possible for the GOP to align more closely with the posture of the Pharisee in Luke 18:11– the man who prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector.”
Leaders on the left tend to spread a gospel of “I’m okay, you’re okay,” instead of getting down into the nitty gritty of (1) the grave severity of being born autonomous, (2) our deep need to be reconnected to a holy and loving God, (3) the singular importance of Christ’s reparative sacrifice for us, (4) and what it truly looks like to take up the cross of discipleship while walking in the indwelling of a holy God.
The Left welcomes the social justice elements of Christianity that humanists in our culture embrace; however, the idea of God’s holiness and our natural lack thereof often seems to be missing. This beginning is going to make it difficult for deep, subsequent confessions to occur. If we’re not okay with being not okay at the onset of our Christian journey—if we don’t have a plan that’s far bigger than us for our brokenness—we can’t invite God the healer into the heart of our problems.
While the American evangelical Right has lost the plot by abandoning all nuance, the American Christian Left seems to be drowning itself in it. If the Christian Right proclaims, “God wants us to be powerful,” the Christian Left seems to proclaim, “God wants us to be affirmed.”
In terms of personal confession, I tend to gravitate between both extremes. Although I am more politically conservative, my irritation with the dishonesty and immorality of the current GOP drives me to fight in my own strength. And, because I am a nuanced (tormented) thinker, I tend to feel hostility toward God’s moral authority. I’m definitely the pot shouting to heaven, “Why did you make me/us like this if you didn’t want us to operate accordingly?”
I can see both weaknesses because I have both weakness. You may have the standard sins of a Republican or a Democrat. I have the standard sins of both.
Imagine how much would change in our nation if Christians on the Right and the Left simply began to do what was taught in campus ministry so long ago.
1. Ask God to reveal the sins of our own political party. (Yes, the sins. If you knee-jerk at that archaic word, you must not spend as much time on Twitter as I do.)
2. Admit those sins both to God and to the public. Express remorse and regret that our own team has fallen short of goodness. Admit publicly when our own leaders make horrible mistakes. Call them to change. Be more broken-hearted and sorrowful about the wrongs our people have done than those done by others.
3. Remember that Christian goodness works like the Jewish Passover—not in one’s ability to beat his or her chest and proclaim righteousness—but justification through the blood of Christ marking us. If the blood of that lamb isn’t on the door, we aren’t saved from destruction. Are these archaic terms? Yes. They are also absolutely critical for making it out of this mess we are in.
Awareness of the prime importance of the blood of Christ should completely change our posture toward our own political party. If a party is more “Christian,” that means it is admitting that it is broken, justified by the blood of Christ—not that it has a right to flaunt its own self-righteousness.
The “culture war” mentality has confused us by equating the Judeo-Christian ethic with true Christianity. Yes, ethics are involved in Christianity. But these result from an indwelling God—they aren’t implemented from an external framework.
Those working to implement the framework without the indwelling are branches separated from the Vine. They will bear no real fruit.
4. Walk in the power of an indwelling God who has forgiven and is forgiving us—not taking refuge in the power of wealthy and powerful men—not in the snarling possession of districts—not in the boastful sauntering of our own goodness or in the abusive slander of our political opponents— not by claiming to be protectors of the Christian ethic but protected by a God far more powerful than any political movement will ever become.
Our power must result from the inhalation of the resources of God—not from earthly leverage. To fail in this regard is to embrace idolatry. It removes Christianity from our political activity and commandeers the name of Jesus while rejecting Union with him.
I see so much talk about what it means to be a Christian nation, but almost all of this occurs without actually digging into a God who is alive and offering to empower us.
I have no problem saying the words “one nation under God” when I repeat the pledge, but I don’t think that phrase captures how the faith actually works. Christians are not simply “under God,” they are “filled with God.”
To be an American Christian is to be engaged in the regular work of spiritual breathing—exhaling sin, inhaling his power. Right or left, it must begin here or it’s not Christian.
The stances our parties hold may be moral in some regard, but if they are separated from the Vine—if they are merely humanistic goals with a Christian label slapped on them—they are going to be distorted and fly off in harmful directions.
Photo credit: hotblack at Morguefile