Watch Your Heart in an Election Year
I’ve experienced it many times. A mundane conversation between two Christians begins innocently enough with typical pleasantries and comments about the weather or work or parenting or sports. Somewhere along the way, one of us mentions something happening in the news cycle—some current event that’s being reported on all the channels. At that moment, the conversation takes a sudden unexpected turn. Passions rise. Voice decibel levels go up. It becomes clear that we have entered the realm of religious zeal. We have accidentally stumbled upon the one topic that most stirs the heart’s affections—politics.
I should say at the outset that there’s nothing inherently wrong with having strong political opinions. In fact, Christian faith should demand strong political opinions. I’m glad, for example, that the British Evangelical William Wilberforce passionately believed that the slave trade should be abolished so much that he devoted his political career to that end. His efforts led to the passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. I could cite many other examples.
But there’s another kind of political passion that prevails in the United States. It doesn’t necessarily have liberty and justice for all as its goal, though it certainly uses that rhetoric. The passion in American politics typically arises from devotion to partisanship. Americans have a long tradition of picking a team, defending the members of that team no matter what they do, and villainizing every move the other team makes as a threat to democracy and life as we know it. In this zero-sum game, our team must win at any cost. Since we’re so committed to winning and making the other side lose, we gladly give up objective analysis, fair-minded critique, political compromise toward common policy goals, civility, honesty, and sometimes even contact with reality itself.
Truth and righteousness become elastic concepts that bend at the discretion of whoever stands behind the podium. When it comes to doing what’s right, it’s damned, if you do it; justified endlessly, if we do it. When it comes to truth-telling, the rules change based on who’s doing the talking. This all occurs within a financially lucrative media ecosystem that has mastered the art of keeping everyone perpetually outraged by focusing our attention on what’s wrong with them.
In 1801, a British Baptist pastor named Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) was perplexed by many of the same dynamics. In his short book called The Backslider, Fuller explored the causes behind a person who had “once appeared to be zealous, affectionate, and devoted to God” but who had now lost that former zeal. According to Fuller, one of the main culprits was “taking an eager and deep interest in political disputes.”
The problem, for Fuller, was not politics, for he certainly understood the God-ordained necessity of government in a sinful world. Fuller encouraged Christian citizens to participate in the political process. What mystified him was the way many Christians of his day became inordinately obsessed with politics—it becoming, in his words, “their meat and their drink.”
Following the work of American theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), Fuller located the very core of a person’s identity in the affections. Affections, according to Edwards, are the inclinations of the soul, informed by knowledge, that provoke a person either toward some object or away from it. Affections are what drive people to act in the ways they do.
Stronger and more permanent than emotions, a person’s affections will be manifested positively in love, desire, hope, joy, and gratitude toward certain objects, and negatively in hatred, fear, anger, and grief away from other objects. For Edwards and Fuller, these inclinations of the will reveal the true devotion of the soul—the object we find most valuable.
Having the core of one’s affections oriented toward God is the primary distinguishing mark of a Christian. A genuine Christian, in other words, will be driven by affections of love and desire toward God and the things of God. Someone who does not follow Christ will be driven in their affections either toward things that are forbidden by God or inordinately toward things allowed by God. In other words, affections are disordered, not only by being directed toward evil things, but also when they are directed toward good things out of proportion to those objects’ true value.
Late pastor and author, Tim Keller, in his book Counterfeit Gods, used the language of idolatry to describe the same phenomenon, defining an idol as “anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.” Keller’s description is helpful in describing how even a good gift can become a replacement for God. When we rely on something other than God to provide meaning, identity, purpose, and joy, we are relying on a counterfeit god.
Fuller believed that what was driving so many in his day toward coldness in their affections toward God was inordinate enthusiasm—even obsession—with political happenings. He saw in politics a distinctive power over the human imagination that uniquely competed for ultimate supremacy within the soul.
Listen to how he described the process: “When a man’s thoughts and affections are filled with such things as these [politics], the Scriptures become a kind of dead letter, while the speeches and writings of politicians are the lively oracles.” For many obsessed with politics, the glorious realities of Christ and his kingdom become uninteresting. The good news of the gospel loses its luster in the ever-changing spin cycle of Fox News and CNN. The political idolator yawns through the Sunday morning sermon but can’t wait to tune into the next presidential debate.
So how do we carry ourselves politically? Fuller spoke with characteristic wisdom on that issue as well: “If a wise man wishes to gain over a nation to any great and worthy object, he does not enter into their little differences, nor embroil himself in their party contentions; but, bearing good-will to all, seeks the general good: by these means he is respected by all, and all are ready to hear what he has to offer.” As Christian citizens, Fuller believed our devotion to the King of the universe should keep us above the fray of partisan squabbles.
As we participate, even passionately, in certain political causes, we never lose sight of our crucified and resurrected Lord. We never forget that the ultimate victory has already been won and that our greatest enemies are the spiritual forces conspiring to keep us from enjoying it. Keeping our affections centered on the glory of Christ prepares us to enter the world of politics without compromising the values and priorities of his Kingdom. That’s timely advice in an election year.
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