Was Jesus a Politician?
By | May 27, 2008
Of course not. But he had a vision of the Kingdom of God, which was spiritual,
personal, relational, social, economic, and yes, political
because it talked about allegiances and loyalties and authority,
and if Jesus was Lord, Caesar was not.
His confrontation that he provoked in Jerusalem
was with the religious and political leaders.
They saw him as a political threat.
If they saw him just as a private pietist, why would they worry?
[If he was] helping people get their lives together,
helping their marriages, making them better parents
and make them go to less Roman orgies and drunken parties,
why would that have been a threat to the ruling powers?
They regarded him as a threat.
I remember I was at Wheaton College once and I asked this class,
“Why was Jesus killed?” and they had no idea.
They just couldn’t comprehend the question.
And then one young student said, “Well, to save us from our sins.”
And I said, “So you think Pontius Pilate was sitting there thinking,
‘How am I going to save these American evangelicals from their sins?
I’m gonna kill this guy and that will do it.’”
Albeit that our theological understanding of the cross and our redemption
– I’m orthodox on all those questions, but he was killed
because he was seen as a threat to the rulers both religious and political.
In the book (The Great Awakening:
Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America)
I talk about how Jesus confronted the major political options of his day,
All four of them were there, they’re always there:
One was a collaborationist, one was a pietist,
one was withdrawn – you know, the kind of counter culture –
and one was political insurrection, or revolutionary violence.
He confronted them all, he rejected them all.
There was a fifth option called the Kingdom of God, and that’s our option.
By Jim Wallis, President and Executive Director, Sojourners
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“Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets.” Num. 11:29
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