![]() Our little church, the East Side Church of Christ, was about forty people at the time, of which my family-little brother, parents, grandparents, great-aunt and great-uncle, constituted about a fifth. They took turns preaching during the midweek service, so I figured I should, too. There were no boys older than I was, and I had no model for what was expected of me other than the adult men. On a Wednesday night in 1983 I preached my first sermon. ![]() Having set my sights on a pastoral vocation, I committed to that path with single-minded determination. I wanted more than anything to be kind someday-I knew very well the damage that unkind men could cause. But fundamentally, my experience of ministers is that they were kind men. I think I liked the idea of delivering sermons, of being an expert in holy stories and wise advice. I was somewhere around five years old when I first said I wanted to be a preacher. We might, by the power of Holy Christ our Savior, find our tongues loosened enough and our hearts brave enough to call this out for what it is: utter, utter, blasphemy. We might witness him stride across the street to a church he’s never worshiped in, pick up a Bible he’s never read, and hold the pages of our sacred scriptures aloft for a photo op. We might open our eyes and see the president of the United States of America unleash tear gas upon his own peacefully petitioning citizens. We might find it within ourselves to point to the place where the crowds gathered in Washington and cried out that justice finally roll down like mighty waters in this parched and arid land. ![]() By rejecting obeisance to any earthly ruler and claiming God the Father alone as our King, we might have, at long last, the wherewithal to pick up the dusty mantle of the prophets. The point of avoiding secular power-grabbing is that we may speak and act from the power of the Holy Spirit within us. We must relearn that the actual value of an apolitical stance is that, free from partisan blinders, we open up the possibility of learning to see the world around us through the eyes of Christ. The demands of the age require a painful shift. Best not to entangle oneself with the mechanisms of earthly government at all. A politician who pledges peace may resort to arms as circumstances change. And there’s no escaping things by casting only votes you think will prevent war, because you have no way of knowing what the future will hold. “What I lead or influence another to do, I do through that other,” wrote Lipscomb. Christ called us to lay down our lives for others, not to take lives! But if going to war is a grievous sin, it is no better to cast the vote that would send someone else to war. Lipscomb’s reasoning was straightforward: going to war to kill other Christians is a moral atrocity. ![]() Leaders like David Lipscomb, watching as the conflicts of the day drove families and churches apart, decided that the higher ground was to be above it all. We’re going to focus on Jesus.” This posture was, I think, an unconscious remnant of a theology that emerged during the strife of the Civil War. “If you want to talk politics, the coffee shop is available tomorrow, but this is the Lord’s Day. While other conservative sects were cozying up to their favored politicians, our congregations usually felt it was best to keep that outside the walls of our assembly. One of the things I most appreciate about my heritage in Churches of Christ is their generally apolitical stance.
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