Like many of you, I get up every day and go to work.  It is likely that I burn time in traffic, inhaling exhaust, stressing at other drivers, and generally not making the best use of my time.  But I have to get to work to provide for the simple life I maintain.

I get to work, and I love what I do.  It is flexible.  It pays well.  And it empowers me to fund things in life that are important to me, like going to grad school for a Master of Divinity so I can figure out how to better impact this amazing place we live in.

I work hard, and I have a lot to offer.  My value is high, and I get compensated accordingly.  But I am disturbed.

I am disturbed that I, like the average American, has to work for four months to pay my taxes.   I provide value to the company I work with, but the government extracts this value for its own ends, which are said to be in the best interest of we the people.  This does not sit well with me.  Why?

To give an example with round, easy numbers, if you make $12k a year, you will give $4000 of that to your government, not by your choice (ignore the low income and the wrong tax rate here).  This will leave you with $8000 to spend providing for you and/or your family, saving for the future, laying up funds for college, etc.

Sure, your money goes to fund some basics: law enforcement and infrastructure, like highways and the like.  We should all contribute to the things we use.  But are you fine contributing to things that are morally reprehensible to you?  Are you OK with the government confiscating your income to better the fortunes of other groups that have been arbitrarily deemed to be in need, like the poor, the elderly, women seeking abortions, corporations, college students etc.?

In perspective, you give four months of your earnings from your sweat, skills and brains to fund things you may not agree with, like war, abortion, pork subsidies, etc.  And if you have causes that mean a lot to you, you have $4000 less to spend giving to those causes and a vastly more limited ability to give of your time (because, if you give your time, you won’t earn the money to provide, save, etc.).  In essence, you and I have transferred the ability to promote justice, charity and change in our society to a government that knows far less how to meet its needs that you and I do.

For every dollar you “charitably” gave to your government — I am speaking ironically here since  failing to pay taxes will land you in jail eventually –  it spends $6-10 dollars depending on which data you look at.  That means, following our example,  they spend $24-40,ooo.  Just try spending like that for a couple of months.  You’ll end up in the poorhouse.  That aside, this out of control spending will go toward certain arenas that are morally reprehensible to you.  Are you OK with that?

So then, we have worked for  four months for our government for it to overspend the money it has required of us, funding things that may utterly fly in the face of our consciences.  I am pretty certain this is not the picture of freedom our forefathers had in mind.  And I am sure to the depths of my soul that God is grieved by this.

You see, we have failed as the Body of Christ (Not entirely though.  There are significant exceptions that are due credit for serving the world well).  We have relegated the work of God’s redemption in the world to our government.  What do I mean by this?

We were all created with the purpose of foreshadowing redemption to the world though acts of love, justice, grace and service (aren’t they all one in the same?).  The universal community of faith, built upon the vivid gifts given us by a God of Grace, is to be the expression of His love in the world.  And through us, and our love, Christ will become known.  But we have feebly failed.

Rather than living as a Body of Grace, we have remained content to focus on ourselves, to be fed and lifted up so we can become better disciples.  We have sought salvation for ourselves and others as the goal, rather than offering a banquet of succulent acts of Grace for the world to be fed and be changed by.  We have become internally focused on self-improvement, felt needs, and programs, and have forgotten the precious souls screaming outside to have peace, care, and healing from the horrible betrayals of the world.

And as we have all become doped up by the self-serving activity that is always buzzing around in every church, we have let the profound privilege of working with God on loving the lost and hopeless of this world get frittered away only to be co-opted by our government.  Worse yet, we now look to government to be our answer in caring for the poor, standing up for the rights of the oppressed, and living in justice in a corrupt world.  And we swoon when the candidates tell us of change as they falsely promise to transform a corrupt system that will only suck them in to itself.

We are frogs in the kettle.  The water is warm and soothing.  The temperature is going up, little by precious little.  And we won’t even feel the boiling point.  By that point, any option we have of giving of our time, selves and money will be little more than quaint memories.  And we can sit idly by while our politicians dole out our hard-earned money on our behalf to provide the human services they are not even meant to provide.  (I even heard one “thoughtful” Christian mention that if we don’t elect the right president, human services will be in jeopardy.  It is a travesty that we as followers of Christ can even think such a thought.)

Are you content with this?  What are you doing?  What is the church doing?  What am I doing?  Are we regularly serving those in need?  Are we giving our money and talents to causes WE choose, not ones our government chooses for us?  Are we relying far too deeply on a huge, impersonal and bumbling bureaucracy to meet the needs of our society, whether they be health care, help for the homeless, or whatever, when only we know the true needs of our neighbors?  If so, we are all guilty of sloth, apathy, and idolatry.  And if so, we have failed as the Body of Christ.

Are you enamored of Obama?  Of McCain?  If so, you are putting your trust and faith in the wrong thing.   This next regime will help our country, but our choices are between “not a lot of help”, and “a lot less help”.  Why do certain believers of Jesus care so much about who gets to be president, to the point of demonizing the other party?  McCain and Obama are both guilty of slamming each other (and those who would not vote correctly, like those who “hide behind guns and religion”) to the same extent, in different ways.  Will it make us feel better to elect the right president so we can avoid serving the world with Grace?  It’ll be fine, the government will take care of it.  Will it perpetuate us sitting on our asses, dissociating in front of the Idiot Box, being spoon fed where to spend our money, how to vote, and how to be socially conscious so we can have our ears tickled and our consciences appeased?  Are we content with this?  I pray to God we are not.

If you can’t seriously answer these questions, or understand how other countries have fared when their governments have gotten too large and have taken away the ability for people to live based on their consciences, it is probably better you don’t vote. Wouldn’t you rather keep more of your hard-earned money, and give it as you see fit (or use it to give your time as you see fit)?  Wouldn’t that be the more responsible and deeply fulfilling way to live?  I think the answers are clear.

Participating in our political process is important, I suppose.  But rather than voting for the “right” candidate, wouldn’t we accomplish more if we served, gave our time and loved this world as only we can through the love of Jesus?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 3:09 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.