We blogged about this over the weekend. Sean is still at it. This time he is in Austin (the second video is from Feucht’s Tulsa comments, the one we wrote about over the weekend).
In Christian theology the “King” is not over any earthly Kingdom. In fact, the Kingdom is not carried out through earthly governments. It is carried out by Christians speaking truth to power (not trying to gain the reins of power) and modeling an alternative Kingdom defined by love, justice, peace, mercy, meekness, and humility. So yes Sean, in trying to advance God’s purposes in the world by seeking to gain control of state houses is a “weird belief.” Last time I checked Jesus did not want to sit on the throne of the Roman Empire. The last time I checked he came into Jerusalem on a donkey, much to the dismay of his followers who thought he would come as a powerful Messiah who would overthrow the empire.
Here is Jesus in John 18:36: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
I don’t think Christians are automatically any better at legislating than they are at carpentry or brain-surgery. In fact, their belief that they are generally makes them worse, because they don’t believe they need to know anything. Their attitude is the very opposite of a faithful humility. They’re also quite poorly informed even on the Bible these days. At least those politicians who aren’t braying about their divine mandate to rule won’t be dragging Christ’s name down by virtue of their incompetence.
Most times I prefer the honest pagan.