Where Does Our Hope Come From?
What concerns me is the degree to which American Christians have become involved in politics and in so doing are compromising their faith to back the “lesser of two evils.” In the NT, we see no mention of politics whatsoever except the command to “obey the governing authorities.” When the Pharisees tried to trap Jesus into either supporting Rome or disobeying Rome, He turned their question back on them telling them to “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” Israel, at the time of Jesus and the Apostles, was a Roman province under the rule of a Roman governor and the Roman army. Israel’s laws were pre-empted by Roman law. Despite Roman injustice, neither Jesus nor the Apostles spoke out against Roman rule. While Paul made many missionary journeys and even spent time under house arrest in Rome, his message never turned political. The focus of Jesus and the Apostles was to spread the Good News. Physical freedom meant nothing if one were in slavery to sin.
Yet in our time American Christians have become obsessed with politics. We put more time and energy into politics than we do into evangelism. We think that by involving ourselves in politics we can slow the decay of society and maybe even bring about revival rather than realizing this world is not our home and our job is to preach the Gospel no matter the times in which we live. Surely, we know we can’t legislate morality or salvation. We have become mired in America’s two-party system equating Republicanism with Christianity and the Democratic Party with secular humanism. The reality is that secular humanism has infected both parties and there is no such thing as a Christian party. While the Republican Party is pro-life in its platform, many other policies of the party put financial gain as the highest good despite the Bible’s teaching that money is the root of all sorts of evil. We bend over backwards to excuse the many sins of President Trump believing he is a “baby Christian” and thus we must not expect him to be perfect. Yet the free pass we give to his behavior and lying is making Christians look hypocritical to the world. When we fail to exhort and admonish the President we fail to live up to what the Scriptures teach us. We are not going to our brother in sin and calling him to repentance. We assume his spiritual advisors are taking care of such things despite the lack of evidence of change. We think because Trump is pro-life and pro-Christian everything else, he does can be excused.
No president will ever be perfect. We can’t expect Trump to be. That is not a fair standard but remaining silent on his sins is also not acceptable for those sins committed in the public realm as he executes his office. His private sins are another matter. If as president, he lies, he breaks the law, he is a poor witness, then an unqualified endorsement does not seem proper to me even if the alternative is an even worse candidate. Our witness demands we be consistent. If we are going to attack another candidate for unchristian views, we cannot turn a blind eye to president Trump.
When I discuss president Trump with fellow Christians, I often encounter a lot of white-washing of his conduct. Rather than truly analyzing his actions, I too often hear back the press briefing talking points. I’m not encountering much critical thinking.
I know to some Christians, questioning Trump is near heresy. I’m treated as if questioning Trump is “going over to the enemy.” It’s back to the binary politics we’ve accepted in this country. I feel we have to be consistent. We need to fight corruption and lying and not give free passes to public officials even if they are Christians. Otherwise we are perceived by the world as being just as corrupt.
The government is not our savior. We need to reach individual hearts not political parties. A Christian president is not going to fix this broken land. It is well and good to promote Christian values and vote for good candidates but our hope is in Christ, not politicians.
Our God is Too Big 
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