The Benedict Option and American Politics
00:00:00.000 | Hysteria, cynicism, scandal, and tweet storms.
00:00:06.840 | American politics right now is a hot mess.
00:00:10.400 | Political clashes are public, polarized, and prolonged.
00:00:15.120 | But if it feels like we're living through an ideological civil war, this experience
00:00:19.600 | is not unique to our time or to this country.
00:00:23.000 | But many younger Christians have been spared this cultural experience until now.
00:00:27.940 | So what does it mean for the church?
00:00:30.260 | How do we walk careful not to fan the flames of political animosity?
00:00:34.680 | If we get embroiled in heated political debates online or even in face-to-face conversations
00:00:38.280 | with others, what is the cost on our evangelistic priorities and our culture?
00:00:43.840 | More generally, perhaps we should ask, are Christians too deeply embedded in American
00:00:48.400 | culture already, as some have recently suggested?
00:00:51.320 | I pose these questions to Dr. Don Carson, co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition,
00:00:57.600 | from his home office.
00:00:58.600 | He shared with me his thoughts.
00:00:59.600 | Here's what he said.
00:01:00.600 | Well, that's a good but complex question.
00:01:06.280 | You're right, first of all, to point out that this has happened before.
00:01:10.640 | This is a particularly intense one.
00:01:12.780 | For example, during the first year and a half or so of the Second World War, before America
00:01:17.440 | was involved, after Pearl Harbor, there was huge division in this country between those
00:01:23.200 | who thought that we should get into the war and those who thought we should not.
00:01:27.240 | And if Pearl Harbor hadn't happened, it's hard to imagine how America would easily have
00:01:32.920 | got into the war.
00:01:33.920 | And there have been other times that have been equally polarized, with no restraint
00:01:39.320 | whatsoever on the name-calling and so on.
00:01:41.480 | So from a historical perspective, this is not unknown, but it is particularly intense
00:01:47.800 | now partly because of some of the personalities involved and partly because the diverse political
00:01:54.600 | opinions are so convinced that each is right.
00:02:00.440 | There is very little sort of even-handed weighing of things and tradition now of polarization
00:02:05.800 | in Congress that means there are only winners and losers.
00:02:10.200 | Whereas when Reagan was in power, for example, although he was pretty much on the conservative
00:02:16.320 | side, he knew how to work with people from the opposite party.
00:02:21.840 | And that sometimes assured that he was considered a compromiser by people on the right.
00:02:26.920 | But in fact, he got many things done and steered a whole country precisely because he knew
00:02:31.440 | how to win people.
00:02:33.320 | Whereas as long as both sides are thinking almost exclusively in terms of winning and
00:02:37.920 | losing, then what you generate is self-righteousness, fear, hatred, a conquest mentality, and not
00:02:45.880 | the kind of political compromise that actually gets things through both houses of Congress.
00:02:53.640 | So you combine that with any sort of narcissistic attitude and it's really hard to find leaders
00:03:03.300 | who are simultaneously strong and humble.
00:03:07.040 | That's part of the background in which we find ourselves.
00:03:11.320 | So what would I say then to Christians?
00:03:16.320 | First, it really is very important to remember constantly that Christians don't live here
00:03:24.780 | or we live here but don't belong here.
00:03:26.980 | This world is not my home.
00:03:28.240 | I'm just passing through.
00:03:30.560 | And the old Negro spiritual, I'm just crossing over Jordan.
00:03:38.720 | Some people have charged those spirituals with a kind of escapism.
00:03:42.880 | I don't think it's escapism.
00:03:44.120 | I think that that view of the eternal realities that await us position us to relativize the
00:03:52.080 | absolutes of our day and position us to endure and grow strong.
00:03:57.680 | If all you have to live for, if all that is valuable takes place in the political world
00:04:03.680 | right now, then you understand why it becomes absolute.
00:04:07.120 | But if political issues are important because people are important and you want to do what's
00:04:11.800 | right and what's good and what's best for the country and for the world, for the people
00:04:15.800 | that you govern and so on, yes, that's right.
00:04:18.600 | But if you also have this larger perspective that you want to get people ready to meet
00:04:22.560 | God and that this life is not all there is, then that relativizes the intensity with which
00:04:30.480 | you have any right to invest your energy into the political process.
00:04:35.120 | I think that one of the good things that could come out of this is that some Christians,
00:04:42.280 | both on the left and on the right, have identified their Christianity with a particular political
00:04:47.960 | party.
00:04:49.160 | On the right, often in terms of freedom, in terms of a certain vision of prosperity, in
00:04:55.840 | terms of the primacy of God-centered fear and so on.
00:05:01.720 | On the left, in terms of concern for the poor, in terms of concern for social justice.
00:05:06.720 | Again, on each side, as each side understands those terms.
00:05:11.600 | If you identify your whole being with those ideals and then produce policies that you
00:05:19.640 | think will bring them about, then the political voice that is heard from both sides is, "Follow
00:05:25.440 | my policies and we'll bring you to the promised land.
00:05:28.400 | Follow my policies and we'll have at last peace and justice and accord and maturity
00:05:32.680 | and so on."
00:05:33.680 | And when each side talks of learning to cooperate with me, what they mean is, "Capsize your
00:05:40.400 | own views and just follow me."
00:05:43.240 | And it's much more mature in a two-party democratic system to recognize that for the devout Christian
00:05:50.360 | whose ethical and moral cues are taken from Holy Scripture, no matter which party you
00:05:56.160 | align with, there are going to be some things you like and some things you don't like.
00:06:00.200 | Even in the best of times, you sort of hold your nose a bit at this particular element
00:06:03.880 | of the party versus that particular element of the party.
00:06:07.120 | And if you don't hold your nose, then probably your cue is being taken from the party rather
00:06:11.920 | than from Scripture.
00:06:14.040 | Scripture stands over against all parties.
00:06:18.880 | And now because of the shape of the argument today, it's probably easier to see that Christians
00:06:27.440 | to participate in the political system means that there is a little bit of holding your
00:06:32.880 | nose while you try to pursue the stance of the party that you think is going to do most
00:06:38.080 | good and least harm and try to nudge the party toward a position that is more honorable and
00:06:44.560 | more God-fearing and so forth.
00:06:48.760 | The next thing that needs to be said is that as the culture itself becomes more distanced
00:06:55.720 | from any sort of Judeo-Christian heritage in the past, I mean, when I was a boy, everybody
00:07:01.000 | knew the Ten Commandments.
00:07:03.240 | When I was a boy, Bible teaching at school was not uncommon.
00:07:06.000 | That was in Canada, which is now more secular than most of the U.S.
00:07:12.440 | And today, the notion that your subdivision had a lot of Christian values in it, it seems
00:07:19.960 | quaint, archaic, out of touch.
00:07:23.040 | And as a result, people have been advocating something that is increasingly called the
00:07:27.120 | Benedict Option.
00:07:28.580 | It's named after Benedict, who started an order, a monastery, and so on, a kind of withdrawal
00:07:34.600 | from society to live differently.
00:07:37.700 | And there is a sense in which every local church that is trying to square with Scripture
00:07:43.100 | is pursuing the Benedict Option, although it's not named that particularly.
00:07:47.960 | That is to constitute a culture that is a bit different.
00:07:51.060 | So we shouldn't be thinking exactly the same thing as the world around us about iPhones
00:07:55.300 | or Oscars or economics or almost anything.
00:07:59.460 | Social, sexual mores, what you do with your money, what advancement looks like, what success
00:08:04.780 | looks like, what human flourishing looks like, what kind of jokes you listen to.
00:08:09.380 | There is a sense in which instead of having a Judeo-Christian heritage all around us in
00:08:14.220 | which we're playing a slightly more righteous part and preaching the gospel, we're increasingly
00:08:21.560 | dealing with, especially in the most secular parts of the country, an essentially alien
00:08:26.260 | society.
00:08:27.260 | And then it's important for not just the individual Christian, but for the Christian church, the
00:08:32.180 | Christian community to live differently.
00:08:35.340 | And that needs to be thought through and worked out much more systematically than it has been.
00:08:42.060 | And then beyond all of that, the place of evangelism in all of this just cannot be lost.
00:08:48.700 | You cannot evangelize people you don't love, whether they're from the opposite party or
00:08:55.220 | from the opposite gender or from a different race or from a different religion, including
00:09:01.700 | Islam.
00:09:02.700 | We have to relearn the ability to disagree with people and still do it in such a way
00:09:08.500 | that we're not simply being rude and obstreperous and hate-mongering.
00:09:14.460 | And that which we learn in evangelism needs to be suffused through all of our human relationships,
00:09:22.420 | including our political relationships, so that we are honorable people.
00:09:26.260 | We are not merely name-calling people.
00:09:28.500 | People, when we disagree with them, need to be aware that the Jesus who can denounce some
00:09:34.980 | people, as in Matthew 23, because of the damage that they are doing, yet ends up at the end
00:09:41.940 | of the chapter weeping over the city.
00:09:43.980 | We must be known as people who weep over our Jerusalem.
00:09:48.660 | And that means a certain humility of mind, a certain compassion, a certain eternal view,
00:09:54.260 | absolutely convinced that the most good that we can ever do to anyone, any family, is to
00:10:00.460 | lead them to Christ Jesus.
00:10:02.380 | And even if we win all the political debates and lose that, all we're doing is guaranteeing
00:10:08.020 | a self-righteous community that is on the brink of hell in any case.
00:10:13.980 | So first things first, first things first, and still maintain clarity and commitment
00:10:18.540 | to the gospel and to the Christ of the gospel.
00:10:21.460 | Yeah, very good.
00:10:22.940 | We live here.
00:10:23.940 | We belong here.
00:10:24.940 | I love that.
00:10:25.940 | Amen.
00:10:26.940 | Briefly, I'd like to underline something that you said or seemed to imply in what you just
00:10:32.420 | said.
00:10:33.540 | We have a form of the Benedict Option in play for us already.
00:10:37.180 | It's called the local church.
00:10:38.700 | It's a place where Christians pull away from the world for a time to gather as a society
00:10:44.100 | of fellow believers, there to be recalibrated by God's Word and to be spiritually recharged
00:10:50.740 | in order that we might re-enter the world on mission.
00:10:55.180 | Is that essentially what you implied?
00:10:56.500 | That's exactly right.
00:10:57.500 | I mean, there's a sense in which the Benedict Option is being treated as something new,
00:11:02.220 | but it's not.
00:11:03.220 | Even at sort of the social level, quite apart from distinctively evangelical commitments,
00:11:09.420 | there's a sense in which the Benedict Option is precisely what the Amish did, but they
00:11:13.020 | did it in certain ways that look to most of us like escapism or so withdrawing from the
00:11:20.140 | world, that you're not doing the world any good.
00:11:22.780 | Whereas what we need are churches that are not following the dip-tat of the world and
00:11:29.940 | its agenda and culture and entertainment modes and how you use cell phones and whatever,
00:11:37.740 | but at the same time is engaged with the world.
00:11:40.760 | We need to be different from the world, but engaged with the world.
00:11:45.060 | And that's not comfortable, but it seems to me essentially Christian, and it's what Christians
00:11:49.940 | have to do in the first century, the second century, the third century.
00:11:52.340 | It's what Christians have done whenever the world has stood over against it, but the churches
00:11:57.700 | maintain the commitment of the gospel and to evangelism.
00:12:00.700 | Yeah, essentially Christian.
00:12:02.500 | Amen.
00:12:03.500 | Thank you, Dr. Carson, and thanks for listening to this special episode of the Ask Pastor
00:12:06.980 | John podcast with guest Don Carson.
00:12:09.980 | It was made possible through Desiring God's partnership with our dear friends over at
00:12:13.700 | The Gospel Coalition.
00:12:14.700 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:12:16.900 | Thanks for listening.
00:12:17.900 | John Piper will return tomorrow.
00:12:19.540 | We'll see you then.
00:12:20.140 | Bye.
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