Politics And Pandering To The Faithful
January 9th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. – Matthew 6:1 ESV
I don’t like being patronized. Yet it seems like every political candidate of every stripe goes out of their way to “practice their faith” before men. This election season has been particularly bad in regards to this. At least one candidate started his campaign with a tent revival like prayer meeting complete with preachers. Others have signed a pledge to live out Biblical values in their marriage even though it’s arguable whether they have ever lived that way as demonstrated by their string of marriages wrecked by adultery.
Some of these folks may actually have a real faith practice that drives their life. However, when they trot it out at every opportunity and use it to try and win over voters it loses it’s legitimacy and becomes more of a shtick. The sad part is that when they do this they are in effect communicating that they think we are stupid enough to fall for it. And when we fall for it we confirm our stupidity to them.
What does it say about our faith that we let ourselves be used for crass political purposes? Are we really so desperate to have our faith validated by politics that we’ll think this kind of pandering is acceptable?
