testboner
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- Oct 10, 2010
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TG,When Jesus was asked, "what is the greatest commandment?" He replied, "love God with all your heart, soul and mind. And the second is, love your neighbor as yourself."
From that, I take the following. God commands us to: (1) love God, and (2) love people. Policy is effectuated in the U.S. through politics. Policy affects people, either for good or for bad. Thus, being active politically permits me to have a role in promoting policies that are good for people. So being politically active is one way that I can love people.
Being politically active, AND doing it constructively. That is my responsibility.
That is a respectable stance / bar to set for yourself. Voting however is neither a responsibility, mandate nor commandment for believers. All such responsibilities, mandates and commandments that do apply, are things we’re to live by (apply) for our self. We have no rightful control over others, and so….. Love God, love our neighbor as ourself (including our enemies), and do to others as we’d like done to us is our role. Over and over we’re told to love one another, it’s even stated the entire law is fulfilled by this alone: Love your neighbor as yourself (Gal 5:14). Nowhere, NOWHERE are we instructed to control one another — just to love one another.
And if taken at face value (I have a theological contention however in overall context), Roman’s 13 states that God, not us in any way chooses authorities: “….there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.”
By God, not us.
Anywho…….. Jesus kingdom is not of this world, nor is ours supposed to be. And our citizenship is in heaven, not America nor any other nation. Paired with instruction, Rom 12:2, to not be conformed to this world (its beliefs, customs, behaviors, spirit and so on) but rather transformed by the renewing of our mind, is quite a strong position to not be carried away with this worldly system. “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” So much more.
I always express to my “Christian” friends, family members and others in general when on this topic, that if they can show me clear and concise, contextually accurate scriptural instruction to participate in politics / voting, then I’ll reconsider my personal convictions that I’ve arrived at primarily from scripture.