Sermon Tone Analysis

Whenever you get together with extended family for holidays, there is an unwritten rule that certain topics of discussion are off limits.

When trying to make pleasant conversation within a larger group, you don’t talk about religion, and you stay away from politics.

I must be crazy, because today I’m bringing up both of those subjects together.

But let me tell you why.

Over the past few months there have been several people have commented to me about how challenging and confusing it is to understand how Christians are supposed to be a part of the current political climate in this nation.

We need help to understand how our faith should make a difference in the way we approach politics.

And we won’t figure that out if we never talk about it.

This church is part of a denomination—the Christian Reformed Church.

Our history, our theology, and our doctrine all affirm that we believe it is part of our creation mandate from God to be actively engaged and involved in God’s created world.

This is the reason why our denomination has a long and developed history of establishing and supporting Christian schools around the world.

We believe and teach that our faith intersects with every part of this world and our society.

It’s not off limits for us to consider a Christian perspective on politics.

But before this goes any further, or anyone gets up to stomp out of here, please let me lay down a few ground rules for how I am going to present this subject today.

In today’s message I will not be partisan, there will be no endorsing or criticizing any specific candidates, there will be no preferences toward individual issues or referendums that may be on the ballet.

Our denomination—the Christian Reformed Church—does in fact have official positions on many issues that cross over into the political arena.

But today it is not my intention today to argue any of those things.

I am not here today to tell you how to vote or who to vote for.

What am I going to talk about then?

Here is what I believe.

I believe that the Word of God contains truth for our lives that is absolutely helpful in guiding our approach to how we live in this world, how we interact with this world, how we engage with society in this world.

And that means our faith ought to help provide some kind of foundation for how we think about and involve ourselves in politics in general—not in specifics.

We have a term for that: it’s called a Christian worldview.

and it is this Christian worldview that I really want to talk about today—with an intentional eye towards applying our Christian worldview to the arena of politics and government.

About fifteen years ago NBC aired a popular television show called Fear Factor.

It was a show in which contestants competed against each other through a series of crazy stunts that were meant to face and overcome fears.

Sometimes they would have to bungee jump from tall heights.

Sometimes they would have to sit in a tank filled with snakes, or something gross like that.

But the premise of the show was to see the drama of people facing and conquering various fears.

It was a show built on the condition that we all have fears of some kind.

I don’t know how it works in your home, but in my house, I seem to be the designated spider killer.

There’s a tiny bug smaller than my fingertip; somebody call dad.

Dad, I’m so glad you’re here; will you come take care of a spider?

Laura asks me to periodically treat the house by putting down a bug spray around the foundation of the house and around the windows.

But I have to admit, I don’t keep up with that.

If I take away the need to kill spiders in the house, then I dramatically reduce the need for them to have me around in the first place.

It’s job security.

It’s funny, but sadly the principle behind it is true in other places of our world.

If we can keep people afraid, then we can maintain power and control of them by creating and instilling fear.

We stockpile military arms, not because we necessarily intend to use them, but because the show of force itself can be enough to keep enemies too scared to pick a fight.

Our political world right now is absolutely toxic with the way in which we prey upon people’s fears to advance political power.

And it’s not confined to any one side of the political spectrum.

There are so many campaign commercials on TV right now.

I am struck by how many of these commercials don’t actually try to support a candidate based on their ideals and agenda, but rather try to make us afraid of what will happen if the other candidate is elected.

I’m not picking a side here, because you see it on all sides of our current political climate.

All candidates and all parties use fear to motivate their base and vilify their political opponents.

Surveys back this up.

A survey of voters who participated in the 2016 election found that more than half of all voters cast their ballot not because they fully liked or endorsed the candidate they chose, but because they were voting against the other candidate.

And the survey was evenly split down both sides of the political spectrum.

More than half of the people who voted did not vote for a candidate they liked, they voted against a candidate they didn’t like.

Our political culture endlessly tries to make us afraid of what will happen if the other candidate is elected.

Here’s the deal.

Our world wants to convince us that our approach to politics, our foundation of what it means for us as Christians to be engaged and involved with politics should be based upon fear.

It’s toxic.

Fear is toxic (poisonous) to the Christian life.

What fear does in me

Let’s talk a little bit more about fear and what fear does to us.

Fear creates paralysis

Sometimes fear creates paralysis.

Our fears can create situations in which we feel completely stuck and cannot do anything.

I get up front here week after week and talk to all of you.

I work to prepare messages for Sunday morning.

But I never sit here at 9:25am on a Sunday morning having to work up the nerve to actually stand up in front of all of you and speak.

However, I’m told that for more than half of the population, standing up in front of others and having to speak creates fear.

In fact, for some people, public speaking is such a great fear that they simply cannot do it.

They are paralyzed by it.

Some people are afraid of social interactions and crowds of people.

There are people who turn off all the lights and hide whenever the doorbell rings, pretending that there’s nobody home.

Some of you have done that, right?

It is a fear that paralyzes some people.

Instead of taking action, we stand by and do nothing because of our fears.

But look at this, politicians don’t want that to happen.

They don’t want you to be paralyzed by fear—then you won’t show up and vote at all.

And so they need to keep pushing that fear further and further until those fears convince us we need to act upon them.

Fear creates anger and hatred

This is where fear turns into anger and hatred.

Wars begin this way.

Because we are afraid of terrorism, we go beyond developing protection, but we also develop a hatred.

We let fear of things that are different or unknown lead to anger and hatred.

This is the kind of fear that turns into racism.

Because we are afraid of people who may be different from us, it can become anger and hatred for other people.

We see examples of this.

We see people fanning the flames of fear; fear of Muslims, fear of immigrants, fear of minorities, fear of police and law enforcement.

And how quickly those fears turn into anger.

How quickly that anger turns into hatred.

Fear creates isolation and distance

Sometimes our fear leads to isolation and distance.

I used to live in Highlands Ranch Colorado.

There are no HUD housing or section eight housing allowed in that part of Douglas County outside of Denver.

I lived in a place that did not allow any housing options for low income people.

I lived in a place that isolated and distanced me from poverty.

We do not want poor people around us or near us.

Because we are afraid of everything that goes along with poverty, because we are afraid of people who are not like us, because of that we have created barriers of distance and separation.

And then we take it even a step further.

Even in a segregated and affluent suburb like Highlands Ranch Colorado there are gated communities.

We create divisions because there are certain people that we just want to keep out.

It is evident all over in our society that our experience of difference with other groups of people lead us to separate and isolate from one another.

We see an example of this early on in the Bible.

In Genesis 11 we see the story of Babel.

Humanities efforts to set themselves up as their own gods ultimately fails because their differences in language divide them, and separate them, and eventually scatter them across the earth.

Our experience of the unknown, our experience of difference creates a fear that pushes us away from one another.