I’ve wondered long, hard, and deep about a Christian’s role and responsibility within the political realm. I’ve felt the waters as if with my pinkie finger, wanting so badly to bathe in the stream of that answer. This morning the answer hit me like a flood.
A friend pointed out that Judaism is the only world religion in which faith seeks to inform power instead of grasping at it. I understand now that a modern Christian’s responsibility is to do the same. My friend put the Old Testament prophetic tradition into an entirely new context for me. What is a prophet? According to Abraham Heschel, a Jewish scholar, “The prophet is not only a prophet. He is also poet, preacher, patriot, statesman, social critic, moralist.”
As American Christians, we are called to speak God’s Word. We are called to speak prophetically. We are called to start with the message of salvation and redemption, but we’re not to stop before addressing systemic oppression and the dirtier threads of the fabric of our society.
The answer for me came along with another set of questions. My previous question (What should Christians be doing about politics?) became: What should I be doing to speak prophetically to our culture? How can I best be a voice to the nations? And what’s the weight of that task?