Happy election day!

 

In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.[i]

 

As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views. We are fed an informational diet that reinforces our convictions. Our world catechizes us in our political identity: it is dripped out to us in hundreds of ways over the course of every day.

 

Increasingly, our identity is tied to our political allegiance.

 

What is your emotional response when you see a MAGA hat at church? Or a pride shirt?

 

The Bible speaks a better word for our true identity. You were not made to have your identity wrapped around political ideology, but the transformative work of Christ. Consider that Christ invited three men with radically different political ideologies to be his disciples. Simon the Zealot had the conviction that It was a Jew’s responsibility to overthrow the Roman government by force. Matthew the tax collector served the Roman government, funding the very state that oppressed Jews. Andrew the Essene would have believed that the faithful response for the Jew was to withdraw from society and politics.

 

This group of disparately politically-minded Jews were transformed by their calling from Jesus. He calls his friends to “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). He creates a community of deep friendship even with differences. Consider how Peter and Paul had to work out their radically different views on how Gentiles were included in this new kingdom (Acts 15). Near the end of his ministry, John felt so strongly about this, he urged the church, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn. 4:20).

 

How do we begin to form these kinds of friendships? How can our churches be places of deep love… and difference? I believe this starts with transferring the anchor of our identity from the world’s political anchors to Christ’s true anchors. Here are four identities for us to hold to as true anchors for our hearts:

 

1.       Friend

Jesus’ words to the disciples apply to us as well. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15). Our friendships are not formed by shared ideology, but by our relationship to Jesus Christ!

2.       Exile

Peter begins his first letter, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion…” (1 Pet. 1:1). He explains that further, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul” (1 Pet. 2:11). In other words, it is easy for us to mistake this for our home. When we live as though this is our home, we let our guard down and expect to find our comfort here. But we are not citizens of this world and should not expect to find our satisfaction here.

3.       Citizen

Paul explains where our citizenship lies: heaven. “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Phil. 3:20). We are made to find our rest in our true homeland: the new heavens and the new earth, where our King will reign for all eternity!

4.       Ambassador

Until then, we are called as ambassadors in the foreign land in which we live. Paul explains, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Cor. 5:20).

 

We are not defined by our allegiance to the elephant or donkey, but rather to the Lamb of God, the Lion of Judah! Recently I listened to a sermon from a local pastor. His message broke my heart. He urged his congregation to courageously stand up against culture by throwing their efforts into mobilizing politically around his narrow version of the core political issues. I listened as he hammered against anyone who might disagree and wondered if there was anyone in his congregation dissented. If there were those whose consciences led them to a different perspective, he certainly didn’t make room for them in that sermon. This is not what the Kingdom of God looks like. Neither party represents Christ, and if we cannot see the manner in which Christ’s words might chasten “our” own party, then some self-reflection is in order.

 

We are called to something so much greater than the fleeting political affiliations of this world. I encourage us to vote and to steward the responsibility we have been afforded by God’s grace, but our true identity is anchored in a different kingdom, and it is there that our hope and joy spring forth.

 

If you’re interested in exploring our identities in Christ and the false identities the world lures us with, this is the topic of our book Trading Faces.

[i] This is quoted in our book Trading Faces—this post is similar to our chapter on “Ideology v. Friend.”

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