It does. But the work of the Body takes place through the vocations of the members. And we can't ignore the parallel overarching conversation in our current culture which seeks to silence people and drive them away from civic engagement because it is such a "nasty business" or to frighten then from the new heresy of "Christian nationalism." At a time when more people should feel encouraged to engage in civic life they hear (and perhaps mishear) that this is not how God is working in the world today. But he most certainly is. Wherever we are trying and failing to create truth, beauty, healing, and safety - and failing - God's left handed power is evident.
You just miss it, Jason. When you say God has chosen to heal his creation through his people and not through politics you simply miss what politics is. Do you think it's some virus we caught from aliens? Do you think it's a pre-Christian dark art akin to idol worship? It's fine to disrespect the art of governance and the political arts and maybe that's easy to do when one works in a profession so deeply disrespected as "theologian and pastor." But politics is at it's root the most human of professions.
I tell people I know everything I learned about politics from watching my pastor father navigate his small Southern churches. Everything I know about how to write and interpret the law I learned from Sunday School teachers teaching me how to read the Bible.
God heals his world through his people doing ALL of the things people do. Art, research, building, service, specialized advice and counseling, making smoothies and lattes, paving roads, putting up dry wall, raising cattle, and, yes, politics.
You can hate what we do and how we do it but you cannot divorce politics from human effort. God puts this vocation in people's hearts just as surely as he calls them to ministry. Your library story with it's mysterious visitor is no more valid than my 6th grade bonfire story where I first felt called into this profession (much to everyone's chagrin).
We who follow Jesus - and those who don't - live out our faith in the decisions we make, the compromises we strike, the arguments we employ to persuade. We aren't perfect. But the secret is God is not healing his world through our perfection any more than he is healing his world through the Methodist Church's theological perfection. In our error, he succeeds.
This was not a critique or dismissal of individual Christian vocations merely pointing out the church's distinct vocation as a body. Barth's quote, from his emergency homiletics course, arouse from his conviction that when the church lacks a properly robust ecclesiology, Christians then lack the resources to interpret what left handed power is of God and what is of his Enemy. I hope that makes sense.
Well said and much wisdom in these words.
It does. But the work of the Body takes place through the vocations of the members. And we can't ignore the parallel overarching conversation in our current culture which seeks to silence people and drive them away from civic engagement because it is such a "nasty business" or to frighten then from the new heresy of "Christian nationalism." At a time when more people should feel encouraged to engage in civic life they hear (and perhaps mishear) that this is not how God is working in the world today. But he most certainly is. Wherever we are trying and failing to create truth, beauty, healing, and safety - and failing - God's left handed power is evident.
You just miss it, Jason. When you say God has chosen to heal his creation through his people and not through politics you simply miss what politics is. Do you think it's some virus we caught from aliens? Do you think it's a pre-Christian dark art akin to idol worship? It's fine to disrespect the art of governance and the political arts and maybe that's easy to do when one works in a profession so deeply disrespected as "theologian and pastor." But politics is at it's root the most human of professions.
I tell people I know everything I learned about politics from watching my pastor father navigate his small Southern churches. Everything I know about how to write and interpret the law I learned from Sunday School teachers teaching me how to read the Bible.
God heals his world through his people doing ALL of the things people do. Art, research, building, service, specialized advice and counseling, making smoothies and lattes, paving roads, putting up dry wall, raising cattle, and, yes, politics.
You can hate what we do and how we do it but you cannot divorce politics from human effort. God puts this vocation in people's hearts just as surely as he calls them to ministry. Your library story with it's mysterious visitor is no more valid than my 6th grade bonfire story where I first felt called into this profession (much to everyone's chagrin).
We who follow Jesus - and those who don't - live out our faith in the decisions we make, the compromises we strike, the arguments we employ to persuade. We aren't perfect. But the secret is God is not healing his world through our perfection any more than he is healing his world through the Methodist Church's theological perfection. In our error, he succeeds.
This was not a critique or dismissal of individual Christian vocations merely pointing out the church's distinct vocation as a body. Barth's quote, from his emergency homiletics course, arouse from his conviction that when the church lacks a properly robust ecclesiology, Christians then lack the resources to interpret what left handed power is of God and what is of his Enemy. I hope that makes sense.