My Visit to the "Between the Ditches" Podcast
...and four clarifications I'd like to offer
Photo by C D-X on Unsplash
I was fortunate enough to recently join my friend Jimmy on his podcast to discuss a Christian perspective on the present political moment. Jimmy serves overseas as a missionary who shepherds indigenous pastors and mobilizes frontier men and women to unreached areas of the world. His podcast aims to equip church leaders wrestling through different issues from a global theology perspective.
On this particular episode, Jimmy invited me to discuss politics with him.
Even though most of us will filter “politics” through the lens of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, that’s certainly not the only application of that term. We would all benefit from zooming out of our present environment to consider the weighing of axioms when tested in other cultures and circumstances.
I’d recommend you give it a listen when you can:
I really enjoyed our conversation, but I realized after we stopped recording that I jumbled my thoughts a few times or spoke too hastily.
Let the reader understand…that happens very frequently in my life. Most of the time, I notch my misspeaks up to “oh well” or “I’m sure they know what I meant.” But there was at least one idea that I’d like to have back, so I thought it would be most prudent to bring clarity.
Before I begin, it’s probably worth noting that I feel resolved about the views I shared regarding actual political matters. However, as I hoped to communicate with Jimmy, I don’t want to be the victim of the moment either, and I certainly don’t consider myself an expert on the Christian political perspective.
2024 is set to be a feisty election year in America with long-term impact. We should all tread lightly and speak with humility. I hope I have.
All the same, no matter the political “opportunity” before us, King Jesus is reigning supreme. I will cling to that.
Okay, let’s dive in.
1. Power and Authority
At one point, I referenced the moment when Jesus endowed his disciples with power for the missionary task in Matthew 28. The problem is that Acts 1:8 records Jesus giving this power, not Matthew 28. In Matthew’s account of the commissioning, Jesus promises the disciples will have authority.
Similar, yes, but not the same.
On the one hand, this may feel unnecessarily nitpicky—the two versions of the Great Commission are *basically* the same.
On the other hand, the details and particularities of the text matter. The Bible doesn’t merely present summarized accounts of Jesus’ life and events.
Each gospel writer has curated a precise message (where every word selected was selected for a purpose), so we shouldn’t simply compress all the material together as some sort of composite account of events.
Unfortunately, this is all to common when we reflect on the message of the Bible. It’s the opposite of the phrase, “losing the forest for the trees.” We actually forget that trees comprise the forest. We become vulnerable to holding an image of the woods in our heads that is simply re-shaped over time by memories of trees rather than actually going back to refresh our vision.
Reader, join me in going back to spend times staring at trees.
2. The Greats
We’ll stay in the Bible for this next one. There was a moment in the conversation when I referenced the importance of Christians promoting human flourishing through everyday culture building as something additional to overt gospel proclamation.
I think I said something to the effect of “That’s not Great Commission stuff; that’s Great Commandment stuff.”
Here’s the clarification.
We find the Great Commandment in Matthew 22:34-40. The Pharisees are trying to trap Jesus with various lines of questioning. Here, they ask Jesus which of the Ten Commandments is the greatest. Jesus responds in verse 37 by saying the first, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind,” is the greatest.
Then, in verse 39, he says, “And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
In my eyes, verse 37 is *technically* the great(est) commandment—because that’s the plain reading of the text.
But I’ve come to understand that Jesus is not intending to be technical. In other words, he seems to intentionally combo Commandments One and Two as a unit.
By loving others, we love God.
Conversely, we can’t say we love God if we are not also loving people.
So, I’ve come to fuse the two in my mind and regularly describe them as a unit, and therefore, refer to the Great Commandment as shorthand for pursuing the betterment of humans as worship unto God. I’ve found that to be pretty common with others as well.
In the podcast, I pointed out that our broad calling is to pursue the Great Commandment. For Christians, we’ve got to understand that it’s from within the expectation of the Great Commandment that we experience the specific job assignment of the Great Commission.
In other words, by proclaiming Christ, we love people and glorify God.
3. Politics and Postmils
This is a quick one.
Jimmy and I spent a few minutes discussing how one’s understanding of the end times (i.e., eschatology) can impact one’s political approach.
In particular, we touched on the postmillennial viewpoint of Revelation 20.
Postmillennialism is a stance that understands that at some point after the New Testament era, a 1,000-year era will begin, and this world will increase in moral quality as Christians transform the broader culture until Christ’s return, when he will commence the everlasting state. For many postmillennialists, these 1,000 years should be taken figuratively.
To be fair to classic postmillennialism, I think Jimmy and I quickly drifted to discussing a subcategory within the postmil family called “theonomic postmillennialism” but I failed to clarify that on air.
Where theonomic postmillennialism differs from the mothership is that theonomic postmils believe that things will get better through Christians successfully infiltrating/steering human institutions, usually government—ergo, politics take on an increased importance for Christians.
If you’ve never heard of postmillennialism or the concept of theonomy, I recommend you read this article by 9Marks.
As I stated with Jimmy, I don’t recommend you pursue the theonomic approach to advancing Christ’s kingdom. No matter how you slice it, we just don’t see this in the New Testament.
4. Things Eternal
This is the final note I’ll point out, and it’s the reason I decided to write this post.
At one point in our discussion, I used language to suggest the world is eternal. That’s a fairly heretical thing to say, so I’d like to clarify.
In our conversation, I spoke about the perspective shift and the need to think beyond the here-and-now political situation.
I intended to convey two concepts at once:
1. This world will outlast us all—it has an eternal future.
2. What we experience is not the whole picture of reality since true reality is supernatural.
I should have said “heavenly” or “spiritual,” but instead, I accidentally chose to resurrect an ancient heresy.
Let me set the record straight.
First, this world is not eternal. It has not always existed alongside and has not eternally originated from God.
God is the only eternal entity—existing outside of time itself. However, while the world has a definite starting point, it has no end date.
It has an eternal future in so far as God will renew all that exists when He ushers in the new heaven and the new earth—what I understand to be a transformative work of this present world.
His glory won’t run out, and it will be “seated” right here.
Second, while the world is not eternal, there is a sense in which reality is.
We should understand reality as a category of God’s state, and our inclusion into reality by God’s prerogative brings us into His domain, which we observe as “eternal-like.” In other words, as soon as God decided to create us, we took on an eternal function.
We are not eternal but have been inserted into an eternal flowing stream. As the Scriptures plead to remind us, we won’t see an end—whether in paradise or torment. The gospel, therefore, is all the more significant.
Let’s steward it well.