What If The Next Four Years Were Different?

Zack —  January 21, 2013 — 7 Comments

inauguration2013_headline

Today officially marks the unofficial start to President Obama’s second term as President of the United States.

It goes without saying that there are just about as many people upset about today’s festivities as there are those chanting “four more years.”

We have a long standing tradition in the United States of being critical of the President. It’s been going on since the dawn of the country and probably won’t be ending any time soon.

But what if it did?

At least for Christians.

What if for these next four years we as Christians pulled back from all the rhetoric and instead invested that energy into proclaiming good news?

What if we took seriously our call to pray for the President and stopped pretending like he was the anti-Christ?

What if we stopped placing our hope for the future in the passage of legislation and instead lived as if we believed we really are citizens of a different kingdom?

What if instead of defending our right to violence, we found the courage to wage peace?

What if we allowed the person on the other side of the aisle to be a person instead of our soulless enemy?

What if helping others in need, regardless of their circumstances, was something we stopped arguing about and, instead, became something we started taking as seriously as Jesus did?

What if the alien among us became someone to defend and care for, rather than a economic threat?

What if for Christians social media became a place to share words of hope, rather than an arena for destroying our political adversaries?

What if the church was a place of hope, compassion, and unity for the nation, rather than a source of division?

What if we had the audacity to allow the the Gospel to take precedence over the Constitution?

What if we put to rest being “Democratic Christians” or “Republican Christians” and, instead, for the next four years we were simply “Christians.”

What would happen?

To be honest, I don’t know.

But I have to imagine that if we decided to put more energy into being authentic Christians rather than de facto politicians, then four years from now the world would be a much better place than it is today.

 

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

 

 

In Uncategorized
permalink

Zack

Posts

  • http://twitter.com/betsyhenning Betsy Henning

    I shared this on my blog via a link. Thank you for these thoughts and the encouragement to be simply… Christians.

    • ZackHunt

      Thanks for sharing!

  • Pingback: Brain Dump « Hello, My Name Is Doug

  • Pingback: What If… | Grace…And The Art Of Life Maintenance

  • http://www.facebook.com/martin.wornath Martin Wornath

    I think you made some interesting observations, and I agree Christians need to focus more on spreading the gospel. But I think you are creating a straw man about Christians involved in politics. You seem to think that almost all conservative evangelicals are involved in politics, but I think the Moral Majority types reached their peak in the late 1980s. The only moral issue that has affected elections in the past twenty years has been the Gay Marriage issue, and there is a lot more involved with that issue than morality. In case you haven’t heard, Jerry Falwell has passed away. I think it is wrong to paint the Tea Party with same brush as the Moral Majority, and I think lefties who do that are doing it on purpose – as a form of slander. It is like calling all liberals “hippies”. The Tea Party does not concern themselves too much with specific moral issues – their focus is on fiscal issues. If you were to take the time to listen to some Tea Party speeches on Youtube, you will see that while there may be some general references to “the moral decline of our country”, there is not much talk about things like school prayer, abortion, or pornography.

    • ZackHunt

      Who said anything about the Tea Party? Not me. I’m pretty sure you’ve got who’s making a straw man argument a bit backwards.

  • http://www.wormwoodsdoxy.blogspot.com/ Doxy

    I found you through a link at Sarah Bessey’s blog, and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed this post!

    The only thing you said that made me nervous was this:

    “What if we had the audacity to allow the the Gospel to take precedence over the Constitution?”

    As a progressive Christian, I find that the Constitution *protects* my right to live by the Gospel as I see and experience it. I’m afraid that–without the Constitution–those whose view of scripture and theology is very different than my own would force me to live by THEIR version of the Gospel. And, unfortunately, I find no “good news” in the gospel they preach. (Neither do the droves of young people who are leaving Christianity altogether, but that is a subject for a different day….)

    Thanks again for the thought-provoking list. I’m going to use it as a spiritual discipline guide for Lent!

    Pax,
    Doxy