(Jonathan Bukiewicz) – This past summer I had the opportunity to head out to a few different Christian festivals with my wife and our kids. We loaded up the car with sleeping bags, a tent and a camping stove and made the trek to both PAPA Fest and Cornerstone Festival in different parts of Illinois. Both of these festivals hosted a speaking tour which featured a few guys traveling in a bus running on used vegetable oil, promoting a book they’d just written. This book, and their presentation, gained a bit of attention in the wake of an upcoming presidential election. It attracted media from CNN to Relevant Magazine, gained supporters and opponents, encompassed 21 cities over the summer and took them over 10,000 miles.
Who were they supporting? For which candidate were they campaigning?
Well, in a nutshell, they were all about Jesus.
Throughout the course of their book and their speaking tour, Shane and Chris – the book’s authors – set out to awaken the “Christian political imagination” of believers throughout the nation. They, like many of us, found themselves in disbelief over the state of politics, greed and consumerism rampantly finding its way into every aspect of our society, and wanted to begin a dialogue about it. What better way to do this than to write a book and travel the country having conversations with people?
Needless to say, there are many conversations that need to be had about the state of politics, the state of the economy, the state of the nation and the state of injustice throughout the world. Undoubtedly, you’ve been bombarded with messages from every direction in an attempt to persuade you towards one candidate or another. And undoubtedly, this will only increase until November 4th, when one of the candidates is elected and the other half of the country calls into work sick the next day.
The point I’ve come to personally is in knowing that, whoever is elected, there are aspects of our culture, government and our world that need changing. Will this happen with whomever is elected, be it McCain or Obama? Do I really believe that one of the candidates is going to sweep in on a chariot and make the wrong things right? That if “my” candidate is elected, he’ll do a better job than “your” candidate?
Honestly, no.
Obama or McCain, Democratic or Republican parties, I can take them or leave them.
Call me cynical, but I’ve gotten past putting trust in a government system that continues to favor class divisions, military conflict and corrupt economic growth while meticulously squeezing out space for accountability, both in the US and around the world. There is too great a history of cover-ups, broken promises and economic and environmental destruction throughout the world at the hands of government systems like our own, for my faith to rest in a political party. For this reason, I found the book “Jesus for President” so appealing. It calls us, as believers, to rely less on a system of government to inform our economic choices, our view of the future, our view on the “key” issues. It paints imaginative ways to move about as we’ve been called – as a church that transcends media messages and presidential promises to truly follow the Way of Jesus. This is the Way that got the early believers killed in the midst of a Roman empire that comes dangerously close to resembling our own in America. They moved past the system of the pursuit of money and power in adoration of the life of Jesus, and the love of God, which seeks to find a different way than what is commonly held as the norm.
In our culture, abounding grace and forgiveness is not the norm. Turning the cheek when struck is not the norm. Favoring the poor, or uneducated, or those who don’t contribute to society as we’re taught we should, is not the norm. Loving above all else, even if it costs your life is not the norm. Selling your possessions and giving to the poor, this is not the norm. Instead it is the Way that speaks of nonviolence, living with less, sharing what we’ve got, and seeing to find imaginative and creative ways to make change. So in light of a message of Jesus that transcended the ways of society, including the government systems of his day, aren’t we called to something greater than casting a vote and putting the change in the hands of politicians?
I want to be apart of a movement in the Church that seeks creative ways to look at the “key” issues in light of Christ’s message and find ways to subversively infect the areas of greatest concern with love. How do we start? Get on our knees.
For further reading:
–The Myth of a Christian Nation (How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church)
–Jesus for President (Politics for Ordinary Radicals)
–Everything Must Change (Jesus, Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope)