Theological Journal – January 16 As you vote (if you choose to vote) in 2020 . . .

(I will post the reflection promised yesterday on MLK’s “mid-night kitchen encounter” with God tomorrow.)

Democratic debates, Trump’s impeachment, the myriad of issues swirling around us have got me thinking about how Christians might approach all this in faithfulness.

-aligning one’s faith with partisan politics might achieve certain goals but does little to advance the faithfulness of Christian witness

-withdrawing or siloing one’s faith away from such matters does nothing for either bettering society or advancing faithfulness

-attempting to impose Christian faith on society is illegitimate

If these and other like approaches don’t yield faithfulness or effectively address the issues we face is there a baseline or criterion Christian faith gives us to guide our reflection and practice as we vote and act for change in our world? I think there is. It grows out of the unspeakable suffering, the failure of both politics and church, and the utter faithlessness of a proud “Christian” culture of the Germans under Hitler. Dietrich Bonhoeffer learned it in this crucible and articulated it succinctly in his Letters and Papers from Prison:

“We must learn to regard human beings less in terms of what they do and neglect to do and more in terms of what they suffer”                                                                                                                  (Letters and Papers from Prison [Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works] pp. 11-12. Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.)

What we see when we look out on our world, the people we see first and foremost, and the interests that ought to direct our seeing and doing, is human suffering. And that suffering, for Bonhoeffer (and for is!) is christologically determined (that is, aligned with God’s intent for his creatures and creation) – Jesus as the Man for Others – ecclesiologically shaped (that is, in a community aligned with God’s intent for his creatures and creation) – the Church for Others – and eschatologically driven (that is, treating the penultimate in light of the ultimate), the world created and redeemed in Christ.

Or as St. Paul put in Phil.2, all things Christian are grow out of our relationship to Jesus Christ who emptied himself in service to others, even going to the cross for us (2:6-8; christologically determined) that the community “in him” (v.5) may “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (vv.2-4; ecclesiologically shaped) and eschatologically driven by the ultimate lordship of Christ whose “god-ness” as the Crucified One is vindicated and validated by his resurrection and exaltation.

He is the measure of our politics, the quality of our community, and the character of our practice. We will “fit,” or make sense to our world as little as Jesus did. We will be guided by the suffering of those at the bottom of the social/political/economic/ heap and empowered by his paradoxical triumph through death. If we can internalize and come together around this “One for Others” in service to all the “others” inn our broken and tormented world we will learn how to see and practice, and vote (if we so choose to vote) too move our communities to a closer approximation of God’s intent for us in creation. We will, in Bonhoeffer’s words, see others in terms of what they suffer and share in the “sufferings of God in the world.”