Christians & Democracy

Discerning Christians in a democratic world!

Acts 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”
Romans 13:1 Let every soul be subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
1 Peter 2:17 Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.

The empirical realities of our Western culture are enormously diverse. Inevitably, the kinds of pressures they generate push Christians, and everybody else, in many different directions. In the Western world, these various directions are frequently responses to four huge cultural forces: the influence of secularization, the mystique of democracy, freedom worship and the lust for power.

Secularization is Alluring

“Secularism” is usually understood to be the social reality that fosters nonreligious or even anti-religious consciousness. Secularization is the process that progressively removes religion from the public arena and reduces it to the private realm. It proposes that the Christian faith must not only be private in the sense that it is not permitted to have a voice in direction, priorities, literary theory, science, or anything else, but it must also be so private so that it becomes invisible: Secularism has become a religion: it strongly advocates its own view of the ultimate good, it articulates its own belief system, and it establishes its own code of ethics.

Two Cultures at Odds

The culture of those who thoughtfully embrace secularism and the culture of those who thoughtfully espouse biblically informed Christianity are at serious odds.

To the secularist, ethics is finally grounded in the will of legislatures, in international law, or in contemporary political agendas that promise liberation of various kinds.

To the Christian, ethics must finally be grounded in God’s gracious revelation, His Word, or it proves
to be unstable and massively destructive.

Authentic Christians are not those who are merely very sincere and who call themselves Christians.
Instead, the “authentic Christian” is the one who is most shaped in thought, word, and deed by Christianity’s foundational documents, the Scripture, and the Lord Jesus.

The Mystique of Democracy

Most people (most of us!) in the West would say, unhesitatingly, that “democracy is a good thing.” However, no one brought up under a democratic form of government can remain ignorant of its many inconsistencies, its fumbling inefficiencies, and corruptions. No one should be unaware of how thin may be the line between democracy and demagoguery, a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.

More challenging yet are the “democracies” that preserve almost none of the freedoms and values that most in the West traditionally associate with democracy.

Majority rule means there is also a minority. With the rapid self-distancing of most Western countries from their Judeo-Christian heritage, the distance between the democratic majority view and the Christian minority view grows larger by the moment. In theory, democracy tries to protect the rights of minorities. In reality, it is a very tricky thing. Sometimes legislators and judges have been so concerned to protect the minority that the views of the majority are ignored. A democracy also needs its source of true truth.

It Appears Everyone is a Freedom Worshiper

Democracy is directly tied to notions of freedom. Yet freedom is far more than a political category. Christians want to embrace freedom, but it is also easy to see ways in which the worship of freedom may actually displace the worship of God.

One may be “free” from the constraints of the state, but one may also be “free” from traditions, free from God, free from morality, free from inhibitions, free from oppressive or wise parents, free from assignments of various kinds, free from sin, and much more.

The Lust for Power

The exercise of power is not always a bad thing. Within the family, a complete absence of discipline, regularly results in disoriented and rebellious children. When violence erupts in the streets, when a bank is being robbed, when drug-fuelled gangs go wild, most of us are pretty glad if the police show up in strength, and exercise a little power. Yet every form of power can be abused.

The more power we exercise over others, and the less power others have over us, the more we judge ourselves to be “free.”

When we allow secularism to delude our thinking, it moves us toward thinking that God exists to bless our personally designed and self-defined mode of spirituality. We remain unconcerned about how we live, and it enhances our sense of personal power.

We cannot embrace unrestrained secularism. Democracy may be a better vehicle than almost any other for fulfilling biblical teachings. But democracy is not God. Take caution, freedom can be another word for rebellion.

1 Peter 2:17 Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.