Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The Church and politics

During the troubles in Wisconsin last month a Lutheran pastor, Todd A. Peperkorn, offered some wisdom about "How Christians Should Treat One Another in the Midst of Political Turmoil." It is applicable in all such times, and all the time for those of us obsessed with politics. He concluded:
So in summary, this is how I would commend you as fellow Christians to behave in our time of political turmoil:
  1. Don’t concern yourself with motivations, secret plots, conspiracies and the like. Human beings will always operate in these ways, and today is no different than a hundred years ago.
  2. Do concern yourself with what the issues actually are, and not the personalities involved.
  3. Remember that Christians of goodwill can disagree on how love is to be shown to the neighbor. This does not mean someone who disagrees with you isn’t a Christian. It means that they understand things differently that you do.
  4. Our unity in faith is immeasurably more important than our unity in politics. If you have found that political agreement is more important to you than who you will be spending eternity with (or where!), then I would suggest your priorities are out of whack and need serious examination. [emphasis added] [more]
Thanks to Molle Hemingway at GetReligion for the reference.

How Christians Should Treat One Another in the Midst of Political Turmoil - Lutheran Logomaniac

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. I will gladly approve any comment that responds directly and politely to what has been posted.