Thinking Christian after the Election: Our Task Doesn't Change

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everyone, welcome to this special episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and today what I wanted to do was talk a little bit about the presidential election. We have the election results, by and large, out. The Senate races are finishing up, I think, so are the House of Representatives races. But we know who our new president is, and so do we just want to say congratulations, Donald Trump, for winning re-election? I think that what I'd like to do in this episode is not so much celebrate, but to offer a reminder and a perspective to Christians about how this is important, why this is important, and how Christians should be responding regardless of who gets elected. My conviction is this. There are going to be positive and negative consequences to having Donald Trump back in office, just as there would have been positive and negative consequences to having Kamala Harris in office. I think that we could argue and think about how that sort of weighs itself out. Are there more positives or negatives one way or the other? Obviously, the American people voted and they felt that Donald Trump, it would be more positive to have him in office than to have Kamala Harris in office. And so we can argue those various points. I think from a Christian perspective, though, what I want to say is that, A, it's not trivial who ends up in office. It has real implications for real people, and so we want to make sure that as we look at who's been elected, we also want to be thinking through what are the downsides for certain people in this re-election? What does that look like and how might the church fill a gap to go in and really try to love in concrete ways those who are frustrated or disappointed about who got elected? I think that's an important aspect of what we need to be thinking about. But I would also just say that we need to recognize and celebrate the good things that are likely to come or that have been promised to come from Donald Trump getting re-elected. So there's a certain sense in which I think we need to approach this with an appropriate degree of discretion and just refinement and nuance, understanding that, as Christians, we've always known that Christ is king no matter who the president is. And so there's a sense in which we're continually trying to live under the authority of Christ, and living under that authority means certain things. It certainly means, for instance, trying to live according to the picture given in, let's say, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. It means living in accordance with the kenosis, this humiliation of Christ where he sets aside being equal with God in order not to serve himself, but to serve others. I think these are ideas, and Scripture is full of those sorts of ideas and pictures that should remind us that we're not here to celebrate or gloat, that we are here to be humble, we are here to love other people, we are here to serve other people, and ultimately, our role is to bring glory to God, and we do that in part by being all things to all people that we might save some. And so we just need to keep that in mind. Our heart as the church is not to win politically. Our heart as the church is to draw people underneath Christ's authority. And having a Republican or a Democrat in the White House doesn't necessarily accomplish that. So it's not trivial, but it's not ultimate either. It is sort of connected in part to the mission of the church in so much as we do want to be pulling society toward the good, and so certain candidates may make our country sicker or healthier depending. But ultimately, as we think about this as Christians, what we want to realize is that a change in regime does not change the underlying dynamics that we're dealing with. And I'd like to illustrate that through the book of Samuel. In 1 Samuel, what we see is Israel coming out of the period of judges. They're ultimately going to be transitioning to a monarchy. They ask in the book of 1 Samuel for a king. But as we go, what we see is we see Eli, Hophni, and Phinehas. Eli is the father, Hophni and Phinehas are the sons, and these are the priests of the Lord. And they are, for all intents and purposes, sort of running things in Israel. 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Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. They're going to the temple. There are still the elders about, but Israel is still very much without a centralized leader at this point. And so the difficulty that we see in the book of 1 Samuel is that, number one, Eli was doing okay, but Hophni and Phinehas aren't. They are taking advantage of people during sacrifices. They're keeping large chunks of the meat brought to sacrifice for themselves. And the real problem with that is instead of allowing the meat to be boiled and then sticking a fork in and kind of taking whatever they got, which would have symbolized that they are dependent on the Lord and sort of taking whatever they get, taking whatever God gives them in this moment, they're not determining it, in other words, in and of themselves. They're just sticking the fork in and whatever comes out, that's the portion of the priest. What they were doing was they were going to worshipers and telling them that they needed to take a portion of the meat raw, which allowed them to determine how much meat they would actually take. And they were doing so in part by force. So Hophni and Phinehas are degrading the sacrifices. They're not great priests. They're taking advantage of the Israelite people. They don't know the Lord. And so the Israelite people have this tension now. You know, even if they wanted to worship well, you've got these corrupt priests that they're having to deal with. And Samuel takes over. Samuel does a good job. We see that later on that he actually the people actually affirm that Samuel didn't do anything horrible to them. But we also see that his sons are not great. His sons take bribes. You know, as he tries to put them over Israel, they end up taking bribes. They end up perverting justice. And that's when the people come to Samuel and say, you know, You are great, but your son's not so much. As you're getting older, what we want is we want you to put a king over us like the rest of the nations. Now, God allows this to go on, even though, as he says to Samuel, they're not rejecting you. They are rejecting me as king over them. This request for a king is ultimately a request that there be some sort of a more consistent, stable figurehead that Israel can look to and almost live through. And the impression I get is that they're trying to set this up so that there's no more or there's far less ambiguity about who is ruling them. And so they don't like this sort of mysterious way that God works. They don't want to be patient with God. They don't want to wait on God. They don't want to depend on God. What they want is a stable procession of leaders so they know what to expect. So God goes ahead and grants them this request. But in the midst of granting that request, God also tells Samuel that he needs to tell the people that there are going to be some implications for having a king over them. And we really see those worked out in the life of Solomon. To some extent, we see them in David as well, but mostly in the life of Solomon where there is this propensity for the king to take the best of the land, the best of the people, the best of the cattle and herds. Because within that centralized leadership structure, there needs to be a sense in which all the tribes are contributing to the maintenance of the entire nation. And so there's implications, is the point. We don't need to dive into the intricacies of Israelite kingship. But what I find interesting is in Samuel's farewell address in

Samuel chapter 12, and this is, it would be found around verse 14. Samuel says, you know, that the Israelites, he rightly recognized the Israelites saw the enemy coming. They saw the Ammonites coming against them. This is verse 12. And he says, you know, you all saw that Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, came against you and you said to me, no, but a king shall rule over us when the Lord your God was your king. And so that's what happened. And in verse 13, And if both you and the king who reigns over you will follow the Lord your God, it will be well. In verse 14, or in verse 15, sorry, he says, but if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord, then the hand of the Lord will be against you and your king. This is the underlying dynamic that never changes. And so for Christians to live with understanding, with appropriate hope as we move from one leader, President Joe Biden, to another, President Donald Trump, what we need to recognize is that our role within society is always to keep our attention on the Lord. The fear of the Lord is fundamentally, we often talk about it in terms of reverence and there's a case to be made for that. I don't think reverence is completely disconnected from the concept of the fear of the Lord. What I do think though is that attention has been underplayed in the concept. And so I would say that the fear of the Lord is about attending to God. And when we attend to God, when we fear the Lord, what we're doing is we're recognizing God is infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor we may face. And so attention becomes a theological act. We want to make sure that we're recognizing what should be our focus, fearing the Lord, keeping his commandments, obeying all that he said. And then we leave some of these other things in the periphery of our vision. And as we leave them in the periphery of our vision, what we're really saying is not that they're unimportant, but that our gaze is constantly on the Lord and that our focus is, let's do what the Lord has told us to do. Let's obey, let's be faithful. And some of these other peripheral issues, they may not turn out the way we want, but at the end of the day, our best move, our strategy as Christians for living in the world is not to figure out how to fix the world, but to be faithful in the world, to follow God in the world, because God is a God who can do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think. Okay, so how does all that relate to the presidential election that just occurred? Number one, I think it's just important to remember that our task doesn't change. We have a consistent life that we are living. Yes, the conditions in which we live that life can change. There are many Christians around the world who are doing the same thing we are, seeking to fear the Lord, to love God with all we are and have, to love our neighbor as ourselves, however we want to phrase that and say it, whatever Bible verse we want to look at. Christians around the world are always trying to keep God at the forefront as opposed to pushing him into the background. It's what we do. We point to and glorify the triune God. That's our task. The conditions under which we do that may be very different, but as we see in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, I believe it's 2 Corinthians 7, but I have to look that up. He talks about remaining as you were called. And in that passage, he talks about, you know, if you're married, remain married. If you're single, remain single. If you're a slave, remain a slave. Although if you can gain your freedom, go ahead and do so. What he's advocating here is not just, hey, you're stuck where you are. Only serve the Lord. If you're, you know, if you're in a job right now that you hate and you become a Christian, too bad, you can't move. That's not what he's advocating for. What he's saying is that we don't have to change our circumstances in order to be faithful. That's what he's saying. We don't have to change our circumstances in order to be faithful, which suggests that Christians are always being faithful. That's what we're supposed to be doing always. We're supposed to be being faithful in whatever circumstances we find ourselves. And so as we look at this shift in America that will likely have some pretty serious and important changes, I think we're all hoping the economy will get better. I think we're all hoping that international relations will get better. I think we're all hoping that we can move a little bit more toward, you know, sane policies in various different areas. I think we're all hopeful that these this change that is occurring will result in our nation moving closer to the good, as I would call it. But I don't think that we can really pin our hopes on that because no regime lasts forever and no amount of commitment to the good can overcome the propensity of the human heart to sin. And if we think back and we look at when God gives Israel the law, this is not when Israel was constituted, you know, God brings Israel out of Egypt. They're coming out from. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. From under slavery and one of the first things he does in Exodus 20 is he gives the Ten Commandments. He starts to give Israel laws to govern their collective lives together. And yet, even having gotten that law, we see that that law is incapable of overcoming human weakness. It's incapable of overcoming the hardness of the human heart. That's the law from God. That's stuff that we didn't think up. That's stuff that he gave us. And it's not capable of overcoming the hardness of the human heart. We should not fool ourselves into thinking, as important as it is, that any governance, any laws, any sort of moral framework that we come up with is going to be capable of overcoming the human heart long term. That does not mean that it's unimportant. It just means that it's transient. It's provisional. It means it's always going to need work. And that's partly why I think God has given the world the church. There's a very real sense in which as we build ourselves up as the body of Christ through evangelism and through discipleship, by adding new members who are committed to learning to live under Christ's authority and by learning to live under Christ's authority ourselves. I think as we build up the body of Christ, we're doing that in part for the sake of the world because we have the revelation.

We have the clarity on what can overcome the human heart. We understand what it means to move from a heart of stone to a heart of flesh, and that doesn't occur through law or behavior or anything like that. It comes through the transformation that is wrought within us as we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, and so the church needs to be about proclaiming that. The church needs to be about living that out. It's not that we shouldn't be involved in politics going forward, but we constantly need to be pushing our theological message. Our theological message is that, hey, look, being better, getting better, moving closer to the good is great. We should always do that. But at the end of the day, getting closer to the good is not being in relationship with Christ, and so there's always a remainder between shooting for the good and being in a relationship with Christ, between shooting for the good and pointing to and glorifying the triune God, and we have to bridge that gap. We have the missing piece between, you know, people who are lost may recognize good things and they may move toward good things, but they're not going to get all the way to God. They still need the message of the gospel, and so this is part of what the church has to keep in mind. I think the second thing that I would just encourage is, as we read in 1 Samuel here, you know, the king is part of the people. The king doesn't have different rules, right? So the king is supposed to be exercising his authority under God's authority. Now, this is where it can get a little complicated because Israel is structured in a very different way than the United States. I would argue that as God apportions the nations out and takes Israel as his own inheritance, what we have in America is not like what Israel had with God. Israel was a special inheritance for God. The other nations are governed by different sort of governing authorities, and depending on who you read, my tendency is to see it this way, is that God appoints sort of angelic beings over each of these nations and they are trying to shepherd and move and push, and they have some level of responsibility and ownership over these nations. But the point is that America is not Israel. Israel was a special possession of God. America is one amongst the nations. And so while all of the nations, Old or New Testament, like whichever way you look at it, they all sit under God's authority and have a delegated authority, the governing authorities have a delegated authority from God. Oftentimes, the nations, right, the non-Israelite nations, are lacking revelation from God to specify how exactly that authority should be exercised. And so there's no reason for us to expect that someone who isn't, for a nation that isn't Israel, that A, we have some sort of a covenant relationship with God, or that we are God's special possession. No, we're a nation like any other, and we sort of move about with a relatively ambiguous understanding of what we're doing in the world and trying to, you know, be, as, you know, I think the United States has been trying to be a force for good within the world, but really not fully having a comprehensive understanding of how it is that we're connected to God. And so as we look at this... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a Gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a Gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. After the election, as we think about how these things have come about, we just need to recognize that our authority, the authority that has been now delegated to Donald Trump from God, needs to be exercised under the authority of God. And that oftentimes what we're going to end up seeing, as with any leader, is that they are going to deviate from that authority that is given from God. And so our role, again, as the church, is to constantly point them back and remind them that God, the triune God, not this generic God, but the triune God, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have authority over our nation. This is the church's prophetic role. It's sort of the theological task that we perform in public spaces, is to remind the people that, look, we can, we can come to some approximation of what's good. We can definitely do that. But there's more there. There's a remainder that everybody seems to miss. And the church cannot settle for wholesomeness when we know what holiness is. We can't settle for wholesomeness when only holiness will do. So as we move into this new era in our country, these next four years under a new president, my encouragement is to remember that our task hasn't changed. We are to fear the Lord our God. We are to observe his commands. We are to live under the authority of Christ. That's our job. That's our task. And while we may celebrate what's going on right now, and many of us probably, you know, are pleased with the change that has happened, and that's okay. But we just need to remember that our hope is not in the White House. Our hope is not in the American government. Our hope is not in any particular leader. Our hope comes from the triune God. Our hope comes from what he has told us in his word is going to happen, which is he is going to eventually restore all of creation. He's going to have, there's going to be a new heavens and a new earth where there is no more pain and suffering and all of those things are gone. He's going to overcome sin and death in a final way, consummative way. And so that's our hope. That's what we look forward to. And as we read in in 1 Peter and in various other places, holy living, a demeanor that suggests that we do fear the Lord and that we see him as more infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor, is to be our response to that hope. We act in such a way that we are demonstrating that we understand where all this is going, and we act in such a way that we demonstrate that we know who is actually in charge. We are responsible to, or we have a claim on us by the ultimate authority. Because we understand who that ultimate authority is, we live differently in the world. So to end this out, all I would say is my, my perspective on politics has always been a little bit, I've tried to be fairly even. I don't get too upset and I don't get too excited. I try to take a fairly sober view of it. And while I know that there are going to be good things that come out of any given president's term, I also know there will be bad things. And as Christians, I think our role and responsibility is to view the president as an authority that often needs guidance, that needs not only support, but also correction. And we need to be that prophetic voice in the ear of our leaders. Pray for our leaders, certainly, but ultimately proclaim the gospel in the midst of an America that too often settles for the good, too often elevates itself beyond where it should, and too often forgets that it sits under the authority of God, in part because it simply does not know the triune God. And so that's my encouragement of a little post-election thoughts and reflection, um, is that our basic task never changes. And so we should find comfort in that, I think, peace in that, but also a call to be responsible to enact that task regardless of who's in the White House and to be thinking in a nuanced and complex fashion about what it means for us now to fear the Lord in a slightly different context. So hopefully that's a helpful perspective for all of you. Um, I don't anticipate everybody would agree with that, and I'm sure that, you know, speaking off...

like this, oftentimes I miss a little bit of nuance myself. And so my encouragement would be, if you want a more well-thought-out perspective on this, check out my book, Serpents and Doves. You can also read a lot of the things that I've written on Christianity.com. There are several posts there that address these issues, and I'll link a few of those in the show notes. But, you know, there's nothing to, this is not intended to be a dampening spirit for those of you who voted for Donald Trump. You know, your candidate won, and it's okay to celebrate. For those of you who didn't vote for Donald Trump, your candidate's lost, and it's okay to mourn a bit. But I think the reality here is that our task hasn't changed. So we need to get past the celebration and past the mourning and back to what it is that the church does, which is proclaim the gospel in word and deed to a world that really needs to hear it. Thanks, everybody. We'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hey friends, Nicole Yunus here from the How to Study the Bible podcast. I want to invite you to experience a fresh look at the story of Joseph and what it means for you today. Life can totally throw us for a loop, whether it's your family or your marriage, work, church, or something else entirely. Maybe you have found yourself in a season that you never would have expected and that you certainly wouldn't have signed up for. In this six-week Bible study together, we're going to talk about the biblical story of Joseph, a man who lived an unexpected life and trusted God through it all. We'll talk about the blessings he experienced, the promises God keeps, the way that tests of our character can actually refine our faith. We'll talk about patience. We'll talk about loss. Absolutely talk about redemption. So come join us for this six-week series over on the How to Study the Bible podcast. Can't wait to dive in with you.