Chris​Hubbs​.com

Really appreciate Brian Zahnd’s foray into political theology today.

It’s not our job to change the world. Jesus is the Savior of the world, not us. (The buoyant hope that sustains me in dark days is my conviction that the world really will be saved because Jesus really is the Savior of the world. Apokatastasis, baby!) Changing (or saving) the world is a task belonging to the Son of God. Our task is far more modest: To simply be that part of the world already changed by Christ. As Yves Congar said, “The church is the world as believing in Christ.”

Clarifying our task is important. When we think it is the task of the church to directly change the world, we find the lure of political power impossible to resist. When we assume we are the ones to change the world, we reach for what we imagine to be the most immediate means of effecting change—political power. We’re the good guys, so we should control the sword of Caesar, right? We’re the ethical ones, so we should control legislation, right? We’re the trustworthy ones, so we should be entrusted with coercive political power, right? Wrong! When the church (as an institution) sets out to change the world by political power, it does not change the world, it becomes the world.

Stanley Hauerwas has said it a million times: “The first task of the church is to make the world the world.” To be a faithful church we must be something other than the world. We must be fundamentally different from the world. But there is nothing more worldly than coveting political power. A church prioritizing political power becomes just another religious iteration of the world as it is. Nothing really changes.

(I also really appreciate his caveat that “in the present moment there is no moral equivalency between” the Christian Left and the Christian Right, though he applies his critique to them both.)

The kingdom of Christ, says Zahnd, will never neatly align with any political party in this world, since a political party’s imperative is winning, whereas a Christian’s imperative is love.

Believe me, I have opinions about political parties right now. But sign me up for love - the part of the world already changed by Christ. Amen.