Not in It to Win It: Why Choosing Sides Sidelines The Church

by Andy Stanley

“Any admonition that declares that we must rule should be checked with the immediate reminder that Christ did not. It is the cross—not the boardroom, not the Oval Office, and not the box office—that is the absolute center of the Kingdom of God.”10

You can’t make disciples of people you demonize publicly and label as enemies of the faith or the state.

As Ed Stetzer asserts, “You can’t hate people and engage them with the gospel at the same time. You can’t war with people and show the love of Jesus. You can’t be both outraged and on mission.”16

Peter and Paul were executed for refusing to prioritize the state over their faith. Christians in the first, second, and third centuries were arrested, beheaded, fed to wild animals, and burned alive because they refused to prioritize allegiance to the state over allegiance to the commands of Christ. Let that sink in. Heroes of the faith, men who penned the Scripture, men and women responsible for collecting and protecting the documents of our faith—they were often violently executed for refusing to do the very thing politically aligned pastors and church leaders have done unapologetically in their churches, on national television, and on social media. Publicly aligning a local church behind a political party or candidate is betrayal, pure and simple. Jesus didn’t come to upgrade or fix something. He came to rule in our hearts and reign over our behavior. He claimed the role of master and commander-in-chief of those who would acknowledge his right to rule. He was not and is not a religious figure. He is a king.

By the way, we should fear being ignored more than we fear being persecuted.

Public alignment with a candidate or party is a betrayal of the church’s imperative, our mandate, to make disciples.

Reconciling is more productive than canceling, right?

Yet despite what should be obvious to anyone who has read even small portions of the Gospels, many Christians are energized by canceling individuals and groups.

are you willing to embrace the others-first kingdom ethic of Jesus when it requires you to keep your mouth shut and your opinions to yourself so as not to lose influence with outsiders?

our love for one another should be noticeable, notable, and distinct.

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders.

I love that. Let’s do that again. Let’s make Christianity contagious again. Our first-, second-, and third-century brothers and sisters captured the attention of their pagan neighbors through their character, morality, work ethic, and friendship.

The problem with Christians is that they love their Savior more than they love their country!

It will require us to love one another on both sides of the political aisle with our words and with our deeds, with our social media posts, our responses, our resources, and our sermons. It will require us to stop sizing people up and writing them off because of their political views. To do anything less is to declare through our actions that we are greater than our Master.

Fundamental attribution error describes our tendency to attribute people’s behavior to their character, while attributing our behavior to our circumstances.

We know it’s possible for Christians to disagree politically. But can we disagree politically without disrupting our unity?

Jesus never said, By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you believe correctly.

Reducing faith to a list of beliefs provides us with plenty of margin not to love, forgive, provide for, celebrate, and pray for people we disagree with. Reducing faith to a list of beliefs frees us to slander people we don’t align with politically. It gives us license to mock, jeer, and celebrate the failure of people whose views differ from ours. If your version of Christianity leaves the door open to those behaviors, you’re nothing like your Father in heaven. And you’re nothing like his Son. You are an instrument of disunity. You are working for the enemy. You are contributing to the very thing Jesus prayed we would avoid. If someone’s political views make their feet too dirty for you to wash, you can be sure your politics are informing and deforming your faith.

Unity doesn’t come naturally. Division comes naturally.

If you want to know what’s most important to you, look at your credit card statements and your calendar and listen to your prayers. If you want to know what was most important to Jesus, listen to his prayers. If what was most important to Jesus is not most important, or at least somewhat important, to us . . . we’re probably not followers. Users perhaps. But not followers.

Unity is not a “nice to have.” Unity is mission critical.

We cannot accomplish the will of God without unity because unity is the will of God.

The enemy of the church is not the other political party. The enemy of the church is division.

As mentioned earlier, we are not at war with the culture. Culture-war Christianity is not simply a waste of time, it is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Paul and the example of Jesus. As it relates to the influence of the church, our nation’s challenges do not stem from the church’s inability to convince unbelievers to behave like believers. Our challenges stem from the church’s inability to inspire believers to behave like believers.

Bad church experiences are almost always related to somebody taking a stand that leaves them standing on someone. Most bad church experiences are the result of somebody prioritizing a view over a you—something Jesus never did and instructed us not to do either.

In my experience, the justifications Christians use to mistreat people are often rooted in old-covenant pra...

If you want to fight for your rights as an American citizen, have at it. I’ll join you. But let’s not invite Jesus to the fight. It’s not his fight.

What Jesus commanded us to do is our business. We should mind our own business. We should get back to business. We should look for feet to wash, not a war to fight.

Five years from now, our “everybody needs to know” opinions will be all but irrelevant and forgotten. But the damage to the body will be done. And you will have contributed.

Unity will become the priority only if we are willing to acknowledge that a lack of unity signals an emergency.

Let’s love our enemies. Let’s go out of our way to serve those who have arrived at different conclusions and embrace different solutions.