God Is Not a Mascot

Dear First Pres SLO Family.

Grace and peace to you in the name of Jesus, the one who was, and is, and is still to come.

I keep trying to limit my comments on our current political scene, but as David Bowie and others have said, it ain’t easy. 

As I’ve been saying for more than a year now, partisan politics aren’t really my business. I’m not here to tell you to vote for anyone, or that political power is in itself something that we Christians should strive for. What certainly is my business is making sure that we (and others) talk about Jesus in a way that honestly reflects the way we see him in the gospels. 

This week the president of the United States posted a computer-generated image of himself as Jesus healing someone. This after his famous Easter post, a profanity-laced threat to wipe out another civilization. The denials and deflections this week (“I thought I looked like a doctor”) just aren’t passing the smell test, and so here we are again.

I don’t do politics, but when people in the wider culture—politicians included—step on my territory, I won’t let it slide.

There are a handful of biblical ideas that address nonsense like this. Idolatry seems to fit pretty well. Any of what we refer to as the Seven Deadly Sins will fit here nicely (pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth). But what keeps coming to mind for me is the second of the Ten Commandments (or the third in some lists):

You will not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.

We learned as kids that taking God’s name in vain was to swear using the name of the Deity. I remember a sermon in my youth with the title: “God’s Last Name Isn’t Damn.” You get the idea.

But the commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain is much more serious than that. Benjamin Cremer, a pastor who shares this discomfort, wrote this about taking God’s name in vain:

Now I think it looks like a politician and political party using God as a mascot for their own pursuit of power.

Now I think it looks like an entire Christian movement treating a presidential candidate as “God’s chosen one” for the sake of its own pursuit of power.

Now I think it looks like Christians clamoring to use God’s word to sanctify and justify every action of their preferred presidential candidate.

Let me make this clear. I will be critical and resistant to any politician in any party who sends out messages like the ones we’ve seen recently. And I will speak out loudly against any followers who enable or promote these messages, especially when they demean our Savior and the lives of discipleship we’re called to live.

I enjoy the rough and tumble of secular politics. I think that in healthier times the back and forth of our two-party system keeps us all sharp as we look for the best way to serve our citizens and participate in the world.

But that’s not what is happening now.

The America we grew up with is being threatened and dismantled by people who are using the Christian faith as cover. Eventually we have to say enough, and in the words of another favorite singer, Jackson Browne, “I passed that point long ago.”

So what do we do?

In this last Sunday’s message I suggested three habits and practices to develop in order to be better reflections of the real Jesus. Here they are:

Get to know the words of Jesus.

Pay attention to the actions of Jesus.

Let yourself be led and limited by the life of Jesus.

When we commit ourselves to developing all three of these as a lifestyle, we keep ourselves from falling into the trap of using our faith to do things that our faith was never meant to do.

This is what it means to be faithful disciples.

This is what it means to be confident and effective in the ways we engage the world around us.

May we all strive to follow the teachings and example of Jesus in everything we do.

Blessings to you this Eastertide,

Pastor John