Why Does Piper Avoid Politics and What’s Trending?

00:00:00.000 | Well, on social media, why is it that John Piper mostly avoids talking about politics

00:00:09.820 | and breaking news and hot trends?

00:00:12.000 | It's a great question today from an alert podcast listener named Blake.

00:00:16.320 | Hello Pastor John and thank you for the podcast and for all the many answers you have provided

00:00:20.760 | over the years.

00:00:22.840 | As I look back through all those episodes, they seem to be primarily life application

00:00:27.820 | and theology and clarity on Bible passages.

00:00:31.640 | For the most part, you seem to avoid addressing current events and political hot button issues

00:00:36.880 | here on the podcast.

00:00:38.620 | And I think this is true of most of your ministry in general.

00:00:43.280 | I'm just curious why not?

00:00:45.140 | Why do you avoid saying much about current events and politics?

00:00:48.920 | Yeah, I've given a lot of thought to that, not just when I heard this question, but other

00:00:53.800 | people have made that observation and I make that observation and wonder why it is.

00:00:58.200 | Why am I the way I am?

00:00:59.680 | It is a generalization, let's be clear.

00:01:02.120 | It's a generalization because I wrote a whole book on racism for goodness sakes and it has

00:01:08.640 | political ramifications everywhere and lots of storms and articles on abortion, marriage,

00:01:14.160 | homosexuality.

00:01:15.160 | You know, I've looked Obama right in the face and spoken stuff on YouTube.

00:01:21.080 | But Blake is right.

00:01:22.080 | And in general, that is the impression you would get, I think, of my life's work of sermons

00:01:28.200 | and messages and articles and APJs and look at the books.

00:01:33.680 | Piper doesn't come at current events very often.

00:01:39.080 | In other words, when the Twitter is ablaze with some new controversy, where is Piper?

00:01:45.600 | Where's Piper?

00:01:46.600 | He's over there quoting Bible verses like he doesn't even know what's going on.

00:01:55.160 | Don't you know we're about to lose the Supreme Court nominee?

00:01:58.760 | Come on, do something.

00:02:01.760 | Okay, here's my six observations about why this is the case.

00:02:06.600 | I was raised in an atmosphere where the spiritual condition of a person's soul, soul, or a people's

00:02:16.880 | soul is infinitely, get this, infinitely more important than any political transaction on

00:02:25.720 | the face of the earth.

00:02:27.800 | Like C.S. Lewis saying, "The salvation of a single soul is worth more than the preservation

00:02:35.440 | of all the literary masterpieces in the world."

00:02:38.880 | That is an amazing and true sentence.

00:02:43.280 | It's not clear what the implications of it are for people who make their lives writing

00:02:48.880 | and studying masterpieces like Lewis himself, but it's true.

00:02:53.240 | So I still live in that atmosphere.

00:02:55.680 | That's who I am.

00:02:56.960 | I believe that is the atmosphere of the New Testament.

00:03:01.120 | Okay, that's number one.

00:03:03.380 | Number two, I feel today that most of the macro in international political economic

00:03:11.880 | issues are too complicated for me to figure out, and that therefore I don't have anything

00:03:22.000 | authoritative to say from the Bible about particular strategies for how to solve various

00:03:31.600 | political or economic issues.

00:03:35.120 | I just can't get to the level of expertise that makes me feel warranted to get up and

00:03:40.320 | say, "Listen to me, folks.

00:03:42.280 | I feel that way about the Bible.

00:03:43.840 | I want people to listen to me.

00:03:45.360 | I want them to hear my perspective on the Bible, but seldom do I come to the point where

00:03:52.880 | I feel like some complex issue out there.

00:03:57.080 | I have risen to the level of knowledge that would warrant my voice to be authoritative."

00:04:05.920 | And besides that, I have a deep skepticism in our day about whether we can know the facts

00:04:12.720 | of most situations well enough to make pronouncements about them, especially from a distance.

00:04:19.680 | Good night.

00:04:20.960 | Here's an immediate example of the kind of thing I feel.

00:04:24.720 | So just last night, or I guess maybe now it's the night before last, so just night before

00:04:30.080 | last, I watched an interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who won the Democratic primary

00:04:38.760 | in New York's 14th Congressional District.

00:04:41.640 | She is to the left of Bernie Sanders on socialism.

00:04:47.040 | She's a Democratic socialist, explicitly so.

00:04:51.560 | Now you might say this is a kind of test case of the sort of thing, should I write an article

00:04:59.160 | about, preach about, let's ask Pastor John about, what about the rising tide of socialism

00:05:07.440 | in America?

00:05:08.740 | Will I write and speak about this?

00:05:12.040 | Probably not, though I will be very, very glad that some do, and I'll probably read

00:05:19.460 | some of what they say.

00:05:21.060 | But here's the reasons.

00:05:22.060 | Number one, the time and focus it would take for me to do the research about Ms. Ocasio-Cortez

00:05:30.320 | and Bernie Sanders and the socialist experiments in Venezuela or Sweden and the historical

00:05:37.680 | examples of its failures or successes and the reasons a minimum wage law works or doesn't

00:05:44.480 | work or the pros and cons of rent control, whether they work or don't work to accomplish

00:05:50.120 | anything good long term for the poor, or the probabilities of corruption in a socialist

00:05:55.760 | government versus a capitalist government, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, would lead

00:06:00.640 | me into a wholly different life than the one that I am presently called to do, namely the

00:06:10.100 | enormous task of understanding the scriptures and preaching what they mean in their original

00:06:17.920 | context and insofar as I'm able to apply them to people's real lives.

00:06:24.360 | In other words, I deal with the Bible pretty far upstream from the flow down into the nitty-gritties

00:06:34.760 | of political realization.

00:06:37.700 | That's number one.

00:06:38.700 | Number two, I probably will not make myself a teacher about socialism or capitalism because

00:06:48.500 | I am a hundred – that's a generalization.

00:06:52.860 | It might be 200 or 190.

00:06:55.940 | I'm a hundred times more passionate about creating the kind of Christians and the kind

00:07:04.380 | of churches that stand unshaken, faithful, biblical, countercultural, spiritually minded

00:07:12.460 | in a socialist America than I am in preventing a socialist America.

00:07:19.820 | I am a hundred times more passionate about creating Christians and churches that will

00:07:25.460 | be faithful, biblical, countercultural, spiritually minded in a socialist America, in a Muslim

00:07:31.940 | America, in a communist America than I am in preventing a Muslim America, a communist

00:07:39.140 | America.

00:07:40.340 | That puts me in a very different ballpark than many public voices.

00:07:45.940 | My main calling is not to help America be anything but to help the church be the church,

00:07:56.340 | the radical outpost of the kingdom of Christ, no matter what kind of America it happens

00:08:02.820 | to be in or any other people, group, or country in the world.

00:08:07.060 | And I say that, again, glad, glad, glad, glad that there are Christians who are politically

00:08:15.580 | more active than I am in trying to shape laws that are just and wise.

00:08:22.900 | Third observation for why I am oriented this way.

00:08:27.420 | I've already hinted at it, simple limitations, not just that many issues are too complicated

00:08:33.460 | for me to be a teacher about them, but that my capacities for doing the necessary investigation

00:08:40.680 | and reflection are limited by how slowly I read and what my emotional and relational

00:08:48.960 | bandwidth is given the other commitments in my life.

00:08:54.820 | I operate with very significant limitations that anybody who knows me knows what they

00:09:02.220 | are.

00:09:03.220 | And I have to steward the little strengths inside these massive limitations so as to

00:09:10.140 | be as useful as I can be.

00:09:12.980 | That's the third observation.

00:09:13.980 | Here's number four.

00:09:15.740 | We're all wired differently by God, and that includes the kind of things we naturally incline

00:09:22.500 | to think about and find interesting and provocative.

00:09:25.460 | And my own bent is not towards social, cultural, political, macro issues.

00:09:32.140 | My bent, for whatever reason, it's just a personal bent, my bent is toward the way the

00:09:39.900 | individual soul works in relation to God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and faith and holiness

00:09:46.740 | and human relationships.

00:09:48.980 | Why do individual people love or hate?

00:09:52.500 | Why are they afraid or have confidence?

00:09:55.060 | Why are they lazy or active?

00:09:58.640 | Why are they foolish?

00:10:00.020 | Why are they craving security or making sacrifices and taking risks?

00:10:06.740 | Why do they have joy?

00:10:07.880 | Why do some people have joy in pain and others get angry at God?

00:10:13.060 | These are the kinds of questions that stir my emotional engagement way more than whether

00:10:21.580 | rent controls are effective or not in helping people.

00:10:27.180 | Number five.

00:10:28.180 | I do feel that the greater long-term impact for the glory of Christ and for the good of

00:10:35.020 | the nations, for the purity and strengthening of the church will come not through the politicizing

00:10:43.660 | of my voice, but through a more penetrating, personal, eternal focus on the human soul

00:10:52.100 | and how it can be most effectively conformed to Christ.

00:10:57.180 | Proverbs 4.23 says, "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs

00:11:05.540 | of life."

00:11:07.580 | Everything flows downstream from this spring.

00:11:13.780 | So my bent is to focus there, on the spring, up in the mountain, on the heart, and then

00:11:21.820 | trust God that there will be this ongoing, widening, spreading, leavening effect for

00:11:29.980 | good in churches and families and cities.

00:11:34.100 | And last observation.

00:11:37.340 | The stream that flows from the spring of biblical faith will inevitably touch all the issues

00:11:44.980 | of life, including social, political issues.

00:11:49.180 | The people that live close to those issues, social, political realities, and who are Christian

00:11:57.340 | should, should speak and act in relation to those issues in ways that are distinctly Christian.

00:12:05.500 | But what those Christians, those public and more engaged Christians than I am, what those

00:12:11.180 | Christians need from their pastors week in and week out is probably not that those pastors

00:12:20.180 | become experts in every issue that faces the local, state, national legislature, but rather

00:12:27.900 | that these public Christians be fed, steadily, steadily fed on a stream of exposition of

00:12:37.940 | what biblical texts actually mean with whatever measure of application the pastors can bring.

00:12:45.020 | If a pastor is faithful to do consistent, rich, serious, careful, unflinching expositions

00:12:52.380 | of the whole counsel of God in Scripture, his messages will certainly touch on the ethical

00:12:58.940 | dimensions of social, political realities of the world where people live.

00:13:04.340 | And he will see when a biblical moral issue in Scripture has a clear and unavoidable connection

00:13:13.460 | to a current issue or prominent sin in the culture, and he'll draw that out and call

00:13:20.540 | for courage and righteousness and holiness in his people.

00:13:25.060 | But, last comment, he will never lose sight that the greatest issues are not temporal,

00:13:36.340 | but eternal.

00:13:37.680 | For what does it profit a man if he gained the whole world and forfeit his soul?

00:13:46.100 | Amen.

00:13:47.100 | As a sobering end to the matter, thank you, Pastor John, for pointing us to those eternal

00:13:52.420 | truths once again, and thanks for listening to the podcast over at our online home.

00:13:57.820 | You can explore about 1,300 of our episodes that we've released to date, and you can find

00:14:02.620 | a list of our most popular ones.

00:14:04.420 | You can read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own.

00:14:07.100 | Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:14:13.140 | Well on Wednesday and Friday, we finish the week out with two questions from two couples

00:14:17.260 | facing premarital pregnancies, one involving a believer and an unbeliever, and another

00:14:23.580 | scenario involving two professing believers.

00:14:27.460 | First up on Wednesday, Pastor John will answer whether or not a premarital pregnancy between

00:14:32.640 | a believer and an unbeliever, does that scenario nullify the unequally yoked principle?

00:14:39.380 | It's a really good question sent in from a pastor who's helping a couple walk through

00:14:44.540 | the decisions ahead.

00:14:46.380 | I'm your host Tony Renke, we'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:14:49.500 | Thanks for listening.

00:14:50.020 | [End of Audio]

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Why Does Piper Avoid Politics and What’s Trending?

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