Salt, Light, and the Public Square: Engaging Politics Biblically

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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

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Here we are once again in the political silly season. And you know, it’s a hard time for Christians to keep our hats on straight. And there’s no time when it’s more important that we do keep our hats on straight because ours is a government of the people and by the people. And since we Christians fall in that broad category called the people, we are responsible before God for what this government does. But what do I mean when I say it’s hard to keep our hats on straight? Well, there are two broad categories of Christians at large in the world. Listen to this carefully now. There are Christians who read the Bible regularly, and there are Christians who don’t. Now, I can throw the numbers at you, but you know I’m right on that. About a third of Christians read something from the Bible at least once a week. About a third read something from the Bible once a year or less. The other third, well, they’re somewhere in between. Now, I don’t have any statistics, but my reading suggests that in the 18th century, those numbers were very different from what they are today. For one thing, in the 1700s, books were a lot more scarce than they are now. They were expensive. Many families may have only had one book in the house, and it was, guess what? The Bible. Many people learned to read from the Bible. Books were expensive. Books were rare. And while the founders of our country were careful not to establish any religion, for very good reasons, they were all biblically literate, and they governed a people who were biblically literate. So when Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he didn’t speak of this or that god. He spoke of the Creator. That was a good thing. What our founders and presidents personally believed was not important. That they publicly acknowledged the Creator as the guarantee of the rights of man, now that was very important. So, where did the idea germinate that this is, or was back then, a Christian nation? Well, it was because people read the Bible and their lifestyle and their human relations were influenced by the Bible, if not governed by it. Now, mind you, I’m not talking about reading the Bible and then trying to preach it to your neighbor. I’m talking about living a life influenced by the Bible, which in turn influences the people with whom you come into contact. the influence of the Bible on early American society was indirect but pervasive and the influence of Christian conduct on society was powerful not in any authoritative structure no Christian wants a theocracy but in the structure of example persuasion and influence whether we like it or not the strongest influence on the moral fiber of this young nation was the Bible. Jesus said it this way, Matthew 13, verse 33. He told them still another parable. The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour and worked it until it worked all through the dough. Actually, it’s a lot like sourdough, not so much like a clump of yeast. One takes a lump of starter dough left over from the last batch and kept cool, and you work it into flour. You set it off to one side, let it sit there, and slowly but surely, the entire ball of dough swells as the yeast permeates it. Now, most of us are not old enough to remember or know what our country used to be like. A few years ago, I had the chance to talk to an older couple. We were having a cup of coffee together, and I said, what did people do, old people do, to survive in the days before Social Security? Because if you listen to politicians today, you would think that, boy, until we brought Social Security in, old seniors were just starving to death out there around the country. Well, I didn’t really have any real concept, and I thought I’d like to know. And their answer should have come as no surprise. I should have known this, but I hadn’t thought about it. They said, families took care of their parents. When necessary, the community helped. It was that simple. Now, it may come as a surprise to some folks in our world, but in the USA, before Social Security, old people weren’t starving. Yes, many were poor. They still are. Yes, many were sick. They still are. But they were cared for back then. And this underlines the importance of family, of personal planning, of community and relationships. I grew up in Boone County, Arkansas. I never saw homeless people lying around the streets. Beggars were rare indeed. The churches were involved in helping people all over the place, and there was a county nursing home, a county old folks home, we used to call it, where people went when they weren’t able to take care of themselves, and they had no family to take care of them. And it was all local. When we had to do it, when there was nobody else to do it for us, when there wasn’t this all-loving, all-caring, all-compassionate government looking after us, We know how to take care of our own, and we did. Now, why did we do that? Well, because our conscience was informed and educated by the Bible. That’s why. I don’t think many people realized it, but the culture was shaped by the Bible, and we lived in it like fish swimming water. We didn’t have to think about it. We just did what had to be done. And if we have lost touch with our humanity, as some politicians want to suggest we have, it’s not because we’re less human, but it may be because we are influenced less by God than we used to be. Not long ago, Oz Guinness spoke of what he called a moral landslide in our country. He pointed out that you can’t stop a moral landslide with laws, observing that all you’ll accomplish that way is just add to the laws, add to the laws, add to the laws, and every law you add takes away some freedom. You want to see it in action, just watch your legislature at work. There’s an old saw, when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Think about it. What can Congress assembled do about a problem except pass a law? That’s all they’ve got. And it won’t do the job. So thinking about how Christians can keep our hats on straight in an election year, I am moved to ask, how did we come to the pass in which we now find ourselves? Why is it that Christian influence in this country has so waned that we find ourselves in what Oz Guinness called a moral landslide? You may not think it is, but I want you to think about something. You go walking down your local mall and you see a gaggle of about 20 teenage girls giggling in the hallway. The odds are that at least 10 of those girls are engaging in oral sex with this or that boyfriend. Now, it’s hard to imagine, and you see these cute little things, and you think about what they’re doing in the dark. It boggles the mind. But Dr. Bernadine Healy, writing in U.S. News and World Report, recently shocked me. She said that health surveys indicate that over half of America’s teens now engage in oral sex. Girls think they are preserving their technical virginity and that oral sex is safer than the other way, the old-fashioned way. Turns out, it’s not safer. STDs, that sexually transmitted disease, what we used to call venereal disease, are transmitted orally as well. And we’ve got diseases now that none of us had even heard of back when I was a kid. They got herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, and the human papillomavirus, try to pronounce that real quick, called HPV. It can take hold in the mouth and throat. Did you know that? The last virus, that HPV virus, is now a known cause of cancer. In normal sex, it turns out to be cervical cancer. But it’s the same thing when it shows up in the mouth and the throat. Well, it seems that between 1973 and 2004, there has been a doubling of HPV-related oral cancers among people in their 40s. Guess how they got it? Now, there are indicators all around us this kind of dangerous behavior is common. In my opinion, I think there is a clear correlation between the moral landslide which we are facing and a waning of Christian influence in society. And I think Christian influence has waned because we are no longer, we Christians are no longer plugged into the source of our moral authority. Authority, well, that’s a word we understand well enough. Authority is defined as the power to enforce rules or give orders, right? Moral authority is different. Moral authority is defined as the quality or characteristic of being respected for having good character or knowledge, especially as a source of guidance or an exemplar of proper conduct. Moral authority is what Christians bring to the world, but when we’re not plugged into the source of our moral authority, we haven’t got a leg to stand on. The last thing in the world a Christian should seek is authority. In fact, Jesus told his disciples to avoid it. In Matthew 20, 25, he said this, You know, guys, that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. It shall not be so among you. Whoever will be great among you, let him be your servant. You know, the fact is the secular society is scared to death of Christians with authority, probably with very good reason. So know this, if we have no moral authority, we have nothing. And without a source for our moral authority higher than ourselves, we are as lost as the rest of the world. Now I’ve told you all that to tell you what we need to do to keep our hats on straight in an election year. We’ll talk about that right after this important message.

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SPEAKER 01 : 12:32

People who read the Bible seriously. Now, let me make my point here. People who read the Bible seriously. Most Christian people don’t. I’m sorry. That’s the truth. Let’s just deal with it. Most people who read the Bible seriously tend to be personally liberal and politically conservative. And it’s just way too easy for us to confuse the two. The idea of a compassionate government is very appealing. But you might as well forget about it. Compassion is the business of human beings. And government is not a human. It is a system. It is a power structure. And power corrupts. Never forget that. Remember that statue of liberty, you know, of justice standing there holding a balance scale in her hands? See it every once in a while. Do you remember about her eyes? What’s she looking at? Well, you can’t tell because she’s blindfolded, right? She’s not supposed to be partial. She’s not supposed to be compassionate. She is supposed to be just, right? Now, in relation to justice, I want you to consider how the Bible, that book of compassion, looks at justice. Consider this principle of biblical law. It comes in the book of Exodus not long after the Ten Commandments. You’ll find it in the 23rd chapter of Exodus. Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd, and do not show favoritism to a poor man in his lawsuit. That can give you whiplash if you’re not careful. You can easily see why we come along. Don’t show favoritism to the rich man and his lawsuit. Not what the law says. That should be plain to anybody. We don’t do that. This one’s not so obvious. Now, I’ve always been fascinated by this passage. Every time I come to it, it stops me, because as a Christian, I might be tempted to do just that, to favor the poor man against the rich man in a lawsuit. Now, my wife Allie sat on a jury in a suit a few years ago that involved a traffic accident. What the jury wanted to do was to take money from someone who had done no wrong and give it to someone else for no better reason than the person who was suing in this case was poor. It never occurred to them that what they were really trying to do was to take money unjustly from one person who was not at fault and give it to another. But a person steeped in the Bible would have tumbled to that right away. Now here, what should a Christian do if you’re faced with that as a member of the jury? Well, here’s what you must do. You must render a just verdict, regardless of the circumstances of the litigators, and then maybe you can go out after the court’s over with and find a way to help that poor person outside the courtroom. With your own money, not someone else’s. Have you ever heard the parable of the Good Samaritan? I mean, that’s a good old standard. You’ll hear more sermons, especially beginning preachers love it. What happened is that someone came to Jesus asking about what the great commandment was, and he told him what it was. And the man finally wanted to justify himself after Jesus said, go and treat your neighbor like yourself. He said, well, who is my neighbor? Jesus said, ah, well, a certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among thieves. They stripped him of his clothes, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead in the ditch. And there came by chance a certain priest, and he saw him and passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he came there, saw him and passed by on the other side. They left him lying there. Now, understand this. And this is the part I don’t think you will necessarily hear. In this day and time, Judah was governed by the Romans, but they were allowed to administer their own law. In Judaism, the priest and the Levite were government figures. And just for the sake of argument, if you don’t even think that, just imagine that they are. This is the government that passes by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where that man was. He saw him there. He had compassion on him. And he went to him, he bound up his wounds, poured in oil and wine, put him on his own animal, took him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, when he departed, he took out some money, gave it to the host, and says, Take care of this man. If you spend more than that when I come back, I will repay you. Now, which of these three, Jesus asked, do you think was neighbor to him that fell among the thieves? He said, Well, the man that showed mercy to him. What did Jesus say? Go thou and do likewise. Now, apart from all the lessons that can be drawn about Israelite society and Samaritans, what lessons come home from this? Okay, here’s one. It was a man, not the government, who had compassion on the man. And he showed compassion with his own money, not someone else’s money. He was not what I call an OPM liberal, that is, other people’s money liberal. Now, you may be wondering where the Samaritan learned this. What was the influence on him that caused him to do this? After all, he wasn’t an Israelite. He didn’t have the law, did he? Well, you’d be half right. He wasn’t an Israelite. But the Samaritans had their own text of the five books of Moses. They had the law. They read it. And obviously, some of them lived it. It was sound principles in the law of Moses that educated the conscience of this Samaritan. And that’s something you may not have heard before. Now, I could outline some of these principles in the law of Moses that educated the conscience of the Samaritan, but I’ve already done that in a book titled Law and Covenant. Right now, I need to explain further what I meant when I said that a person who reads the Bible seriously tends to be personally liberal and politically conservative. In Matthew 25, there are three parables that any disciple of Jesus should know very well. They are part of the overall answer that Jesus gave to the disciples when they asked him about the signs of the end of the age. It’s the third of those three parables I want to call to your attention. Jesus said this, When the Son of Man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he shall sit upon the throne of his glory. And before him shall be gathered all the nations, and he’ll separate them like a shepherd divides sheep from goats. He’ll set the sheep over on the right hand, goats on the left, and then he will say to those on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For, now this is really interesting, because you want to inherit the kingdom? There is a because clause that comes in here. Inherit it, for I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty, you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you took me in. I was naked, you gave me some clothes. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. Aren’t these liberal characteristics? Aren’t these the things that liberals say they want to do for us? Sure they are. Well, then the people who did that, they said, well, Lord, when did we do that? We don’t remember that. And he answered them, I say unto you, inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brothers, you have done it to me. Now, this is really basic Christianity, isn’t it? Let me put a question to you. Would Jesus have commended these folks if they helped all these poor people with someone else’s money? If they coerced people, if they threatened people, if they extorted the money, and they used that money to help the poor people, would Jesus have thought that was a good thing for them to do? I don’t think so. We gain no credit for acting like Robin Hood and robbing the rich to give to the poor. Robin Hood was what I’d call an OPM liberal. Other people’s money. I’ve got a little more on this, but first, grab a pencil and a pad. I’m going to give you some information, then I will be right back.

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I gave a speech in Dallas sometime ago that I titled, The Katrina Effect. You remember Hurricane Katrina, don’t you? The Katrina Effect is the term I use to describe a situation where there is a catastrophic government failure and where the Christian churches step up and perform brilliantly, which was what happened after Hurricane Katrina. All I have to do is combine the word FEMA and Katrina, and I can say all I need to say about government failure to get your attention, right? You know exactly what I’m talking about when I say that. But if you were one of those who vacated New Orleans in your car and found shelter in a church in Baton Rouge, Jackson, Memphis, or even in my town, Tyler, Texas, you know what the church side of the Katrina effect looks like. Here in my town of Tyler, Texas, and we’re a long way from New Orleans, there were four or five shelters. All but one of them were in churches. And even the one that wasn’t, which was at the University of Texas in Tyler, was served by churches. They prepared the food. They brought the blankets. They helped people settle in. Now, why do you think churches do that when other civil institutions seem to just fumble and fail and never get it right? Well, I think there’s a reason for that. It’s because our faith demands it, because it’s a part of our culture, our worldview. It’s a part of who we are. And all of that is shaped and permeated by one book, the Bible. And because we are applying the aid, the assistance, the help to distressed people personally, we’re right there, we’re in the location, we’re not off in Washington, D.C., sending aid out to somebody. Because the aid is personal, it is more efficient, it is more fair, it’s more proper for the people, and it meets the needs. Now, what does all that have to do with keeping our hats on straight in an election year? Well, it can be very appealing when a politician tells us all the wonderful things he’s going to do for the poor, the weak, the sick, the unemployed. And as Christians, we think, well, that’s good. Now, these are the things that Christians know we should do because we are personally liberal, generous, compassionate people. What this politician is doing is promising to coerce other people to provide the resources for all this stuff he’s going to do. And coerce is precisely the correct word. Taxes are taken from us by law. And if you don’t think so, try not paying them. I encountered a friend some time ago I hadn’t seen in a long time, and she told me the story of what happened to them one day, that they had an income tax problem, dispute with the IRS, and they were working on it, thought they were working their way through it. One day, there’s a knock on the door, they open the door, and into their house come IRS agents with guns drawn. Guns drawn! With kids in the house. What for? Well, they were going to possess the property. They were going to take away their home and sell it on the market and so forth. That’s what was going to happen. That’s what the government can do. But when it comes to what Christians are supposed to do, well, we give contributions voluntarily. We pay tithes, perhaps, to a church. Or you give money to charities to show the Lord’s compassion for man. Not only that, but in taking all that money from us, the politician gains power. Now, is there anybody here listening to my voice that doesn’t understand that money is power? And isn’t it true that power corrupts? I offer two words, FEMA and Katrina. Power absolutely corrupts. And the politicians who are promising all these wonderful liberal things to us are looking for power over us so they can do the right thing for us. But any time the government gets involved in things like this, corruption dogs it. Should we really vote to take money involuntarily from others to provide health care for the poor? Or should we better organize charitable clinics to serve the poor, even to serve the immigrants among us? If I were running a health care charity, I’ll bet I could get free drugs from the pharmaceutical companies voluntarily. Why don’t we have those things? Why don’t we do them? Because our government, which is us, has been systematically taking these duties away from us and screwing up everything it touches. There’s a real danger, I think, in this election year that we may be blinded by promises of a compassionate government. It is utterly wrong for Christian folk to relinquish our duty to compassion to an all-powerful government. We are in danger of letting our government down.

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