This is my inaugural writing for the two kingdoms ministry blog/newsletter/devotional, but I hope it is not my last. I care deeply about such matters surrounding the integration of faith and life in the kingdom of God, and I have spent a lot of time studying and thinking about what is called public theology. So I will begin with a Bible verse that you probably aren’t anticipating for a devotional reading.

For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because John had been saying to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” —Matthew 14:3-4

A few questions come to mind:

1. Was John tactically unwise in making such a statement, for after all it cost him his head?
2. Was John addressing certain ungodly behavior, or was he making a political statement?
3. A diagnostic for question number two. If John were of a different political persuasion, would he have withheld his rebuke or even redefined that behavior as excellent rather than abhorrent?

Let’s consider these in order.

First, I have actually heard a preacher, thankfully, not from our Association, say that John overstepped or misspoke when he rebuked a leader with so much power over him. What good is it, after all, if you are right or godly, if you are also dead and out of the game? You do not have a responsibility to confront every observable sin every time. But accusing John of a tactical error replaces the true purpose of Christian rebuke – to lead an erring soul onto salvation – with a more calculated end – an attempt to gain influence over a certain person or situation. This reminds me of the 1988 Supreme Court nomination of Anthony Kennedy at the end of the Reagan administration, when the moral majority refused to confront his pro-choice record because, and I paraphrase, access to the president is more important than getting one particular decision right. I was not a Christian at the time, but such reasoning seemed off to me. His opinion in Casey, produced enduring harm beyond the sanctity of human life: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Second, it seems obvious that John was addressing certain ungodly behavior in the life of a powerful public leader. If he was making a political statement, then he was probably tactically unwise, see number one, above.

Third— and this is something that none of us will get wrong as long as we maintain a clinical separation from an isolated circumstance— of course, right is right and wrong is wrong no matter who behaves in such and such a way. This has come under scrutiny right now in our highly polarized, binarily divisive political climate in the United States. If a member of your preferred political party does something wrong, you are perhaps more responsible than others to call out that behavior as negative. You can certainly vote for that candidate, as none of us are voting for saints when we are in the ballot box. But think of the travesty of thinking we needed to baptize ungodly behavior in order to feel good about voting for a preferred, ungodly leader.

Such is the peril of political parties. George Washington warned of this in his famous farewell address. More modern examples exist, too. Andrew Roberts, in his brilliant biography of Winston Churchill, made the following observation: “To belong fully to a party often meant being expected to support it even when it was plainly wrong.” Such may be a political reality, but it is not the kind of position that John the Baptist would defend.

Realpolitik is not part of the Christian confession. While a variety of political expressions in different places and different times is certainly understandable from a Christian point of view, the underlying principle that our Christian confession should inform our vote and not vice versa must hold true. Without this prior commitment, what we are calling Christianity is only a thinly-veiled appeal to majority. And this is simply not the historic Christian faith.

Followers of Christ do well to understand the two kingdoms (heaven/earth), the three estates (family, congregation, society), and any number of key doctrinal concepts. However, all of these nuances are lost— our salt having lost its saltiness— if we are not clear on our first principles and primary commitments:

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son. —Phil 3:20