Not in It to Win It by Andy Stanley

Author:Andy Stanley [Stanley, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2022-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

Are you willing to follow Jesus if doing so requires you to reject portions of your party’s platform?

To take it a step further, are you willing to speak up when following Jesus puts you at odds with the views, the tone, or the decisions of your party or your party’s candidate of choice? Locally or nationally?

We all know the correct answer. But now you’re suspicious. This feels like a setup. Feels like a gotcha is just a page or two away. But I already gotcha. I gotcha to read the first five chapters of this book.

Anyway.

The second question is more difficult to answer honestly because it’s potentially dangerous relationally. It may be professionally dangerous as well. It’s difficult and potentially dangerous because in the current political climate, disagreement is defection. There’s no middle ground. But if we’re unwilling to compromise politically, we will compromise our faith eventually.

We won’t compromise what we believe. We’ll compromise our faith in other, more subtle ways.

Since the fourth century, the church has gone to great lengths to create its own version of the pagan divide between sacred and secular. Animal sacrifice to appease the gods has been replaced with belief and doctrine. When we were children, we were encouraged to accept Jesus as our Savior, not our king. It was enough to believe. But you don’t find that in the Gospels or among the brave activists who turned the world upside down before the first Bible was assembled. The first Bible was assembled because the world had been turned upside down.

Reducing Christianity to a set of static belief statements provides believers on both sides of the aisle with an escape hatch. An excuse hatch. Reducing Christianity to beliefs makes syncing our faith with a political platform effortless. It’s why there are Christians on both sides of the political aisle. Believers believe pretty much the same things. But our political convictions come in all shapes, sizes, and colors.

But follow Jesus though the Gospels and you’ll discover that the kingdom he introduced and invited us to participate in is a kingdom characterized by public behavior, not private belief. What he never said is as instructive as what he did. Jesus never said,

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