On the Agenda

As I write this, the big thing in the news seems to be the government shutdown.  I suspect you've heard about it, and you probably have an opinion on it.

That's fine.  We're all entitled to our opinions.  Yours is just as valid as mine, so I'm not going to give you mine here.  However, there's one aspect of the matter that I do want to comment on.

I have seen people, on both the left and the right, try to tell us what God's opinion about the government shutdown is.  Coincidentally, all of these people have come to the conclusion that God agrees with them.  And they will tell you so, in no uncertain terms.

It's one of the things we all have to guard against.  It is really easy for us to impose our own personal agendas on God.  Sometimes we do it with the best of intentions.  We're absolutely convinced that our beliefs are good and that they are right.  We cannot conceive how any logical, reasonable, intelligent person could possibly disagree with us.  And so, we assume that God must agree with us, too.  Sometimes we even look through the Bible, searching for verses we can quote that show how God agrees with us.

The trouble is that God rarely fits our agendas.  God tells us to do things that are illogical, unreasonable, and not intelligent at all, at least from a human perspective.  Jesus told us that we should love our enemies, rather than hate them.  Jesus told us that if someone slaps us on one cheek, we should turn the other one to them and let them slap that one, too.  Jesus told us that asks us for our coat, we should give them our shirt, too.  Jesus not only said we should love our enemies, he said we should lend to them without expecting to ever get anything back.

Does any of that sound logical to you?  Does it sound reasonable?  Does it even sound intelligent?

Of course, we're not the first people who've tried to use God as a prop to support our agendas, whether political or personal.  People tried to do that to Jesus all the time.  “Hey, Jesus, should we pay taxes or not?”  “Hey, Jesus, what are the circumstances where it's okay for us to get a divorce?”  “Hey, Jesus, who's my 'neighbor'?”  Yes, sometimes people asked questions because they genuinely wanted to know the answer, but a lot of the time, they were hoping he'd say something they could use to buttress their own beliefs, no matter what the subject was.

If you notice, when Jesus got asked these “agenda” questions, he never gave a direct answer to them.  He'd never take one side or the other.  Instead, he'd say “Here's how you, as a follower of God, should live.”  And the answer was never something that fit anyone's agenda.  Instead, the answer always had to do with love:  love of God and love of others.  And people would almost always go away ashamed, because they knew how far short they came from feeling the love God wants us to feel.

I suspect, if we could ask Jesus about the government shutdown or about any other hot-button issue, that's still what Jesus would do.  He wouldn't take one side or the other.  He'd say, “Here's how you, as a Christian, should live.”  And the answer would not fit anyone's agenda.  Instead, the answer would have to do with love:  love of God and love of others.  And we'd feel ashamed, because we'd know how far short we come from feeling the love God wants us to feel.

God is a lot bigger than our agenda.  God won't fit into the boxes we try to put God in, whether those are political boxes or other types of boxes.  So let's stop trying to use God to serve our agenda.  Instead, let's strive to serve God in everything we do.