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Saturday Thoughts on Politicians

By Dan | October 4, 2008

As I was looking through some devotional material the other day I ran across this entry in the Augsburg Confession, “On the other hand, other necessary good works were considered secular and unspiritual: the works which everybody is obliged to do according ot his calling- for example . . . . that a prince and magistrates should govern land and people, etc. Such works, commanded by God . . . .”

God does indeed mandate that we have politicians. Of course, he would prefer that the politicians be people who are listening with an ear to his leading. So how do we make that happen? How do we encourage more of our people to take civil service seriously, as a calling from God when in general, the Lutherna tradition has avoided politics, and even in today’s atmosphere where we discuss politics openly (though often as the quote above says, regarded it as unspiritual or crooked), we don’t seem to be getting our people actually involved in the decision making beyond the voting booth.

Don’t get me wrong. The voting booth is important, but it seems to me that we need to be pushing even beyond that level. We need people whose character has been formed in the crucible of the Christian life and who understand how God’s graciousness as well as his rightousness, his law and Gospel, can flow over into the left hand and secular kingdom as well.

We hear a lot about the intertwining of faith and politics today, but I’m not sure I hear this kind of a posture from our candidates very often. It would be nice, but it also means more Christians are going to have to dive into the civic realm in an even deeper way. Tough stuff, and I’ll be the first to say, I don’t want to volunteer. Maybe we need to be looking at our youth more and encouraging this calling as well.