'God is still on the throne' has become a Christian cop-out

The midterm elections came and went on Tuesday, and the results surprised few who had been paying attention. As with any election, some rejoiced while others shuddered.

As many will already know, Democrats took control of both the House and the Senate, flipping seven Senate seats, several of them in states long considered safely red. Washington will spend the next two years debating what the new majority means — though for a Congress already plagued by inertia, it may change less than the headlines suggest.

The more sobering story played out at the state level.

In Texas, Democrats won a U.S. Senate seat for the first time since 1988, unseated Governor Greg Abbott, and took control of the state House. Legislatures in Wisconsin, North Carolina and Pennsylvania shifted as well. For years, many of us have warned friends that powerful progressive voices were gaining ground in Texas and across the country. On Tuesday, those warnings once dismissed as alarmist were painted in living color across the electoral map.

As I scrolled through social media in the hours that followed, I saw the same message shared again and again by friends and acquaintances: God is still on the throne.

Of course He is. He always has been. “God reigns over the nations; God sits on His holy throne” (Psalm 47:8). The verse has long comforted believers in trying times, and I don't doubt the sincerity of anyone who posted it. But behind it, I find a philosophy that ought to be challenged.

Too often, this same manner of thought becomes a cop out — out of Christian responsibility, out of civic duty, sometimes out of even the smallest tasks.

Consider what the phrase is actually answering. No one on election night was seriously questioning whether Jesus still reigns. If His sovereignty were truly in doubt, perhaps we could be forgiven for throwing up our hands. But it isn't, and that makes the reassurance telling. It wasn't answering a theological question. It was answering a personal one: Did any of this depend on me?

Christ's sovereignty has never been the issue. Our stewardship is.

I believe this points to a deeper problem. The American church has an unmistakable tendency to avoid stewardship. We are quick to affirm God's authority and slow to act on the responsibility He has handed us. 

Notice who did not choose to sit out of the election. Texas's new senator-elect, James Talarico, is a Presbyterian seminarian. In Kansas, a state that had not sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932, voters elected Adam Hamilton, the founding pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country. I disagree with both men on moral questions that matter deeply to me. But neither regarded his faith as a reason to stay out of politics. They stepped into the public square, and they won.

Meanwhile, many of us posted a reminder that God reigns and called it a night. 

Consider, by way of biblical illustration, Jesus’ parable of the talents. In Matthew 25, a master entrusts his servants with talents before leaving on a journey. Two invest and multiply what they were given. The third shies away from duty, burying his in the ground. When the master returns, that servant doesn't deny his master's authority. “I knew you to be a hard man,” he says, “so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” His confidence in the master's power became his excuse for doing nothing. The master responds by calling him lazy and wicked.

The servant's problem wasn’t his understanding of the master’s authority. It was his reluctance to recognize his responsibility to act and the subsequent choice of doing nothing.

Some Christian critics will argue that Jesus' Kingdom applies only to the life to come. It is true that our ultimate hope is not in Washington or Austin. But if the Kingdom were only about the afterlife, why would Christ charge us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the prisoner? Why would He teach us to pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven”?

If our moral compass is meant to guide only our private lives, and never the standards of the society we share, why do anything at all?

In a constitutional republic, stewardship includes the ballot. We are not subjects waiting on a royal decree. We are citizens entrusted with a voice — and a voice left unused is a talent buried.

Christians ought to vote in every election, not only the presidential ones. We ought to be the most informed voices in the public square. We ought to be bold.

Some will say that love calls us to stay quiet. Perhaps there is a time for that. But isn't it striking when Christ chose silence? He stood silent before His accusers on the road to the cross. That was not His posture toward the moral authorities of His day. He overturned tables in the temple. He called the religious leaders whitewashed tombs. He spoke with conviction and compassion, and He did not mistake one for the absence of the other.

Over the next decade, American voters will change their minds many times about which party best represents the issue that matters most to them — often an issue they decided was important only moments ago. That is the nature of postmodern politics. It shifts with every cycle.

The question for our time is whether Christians will build an identity on Christ's throne, steady no matter who holds the power in Washington, or keep using that throne as a crutch to excuse ourselves from stewardship.