Three Implications of Following Jesus in Polarizing Times

Photo by Peter Vanosdall on Unsplash

When I taught the course on current social problems at Dayton Christian High School, I would tell my students that anyone who wants to follow Jesus in responding to social problems will find himself on a narrow, slippery path flanked by deep ditches on both sides. It requires great focus to stay on the path, it’s easy to fall into one ditch or the other, and it’s hard to get out of the ditch once you’ve fallen in.

What’s worse, when you do follow the narrow path of Jesus, you find yourself taking shots from people in both ditches. You simply won’t fit into any of the ready-made moral categories that dominate our national conversations about the issues.

Why is this so? Because our civil discourse has become alarmingly uncivil, and our national conversation about social issues has become more polarized than at any other time I can remember. If you’re anything like me, you’ve found yourself asking how Christ-followers can respond to social justice issues without being swept up into the self-righteousness (on the Left and the Right) that is filling the air with rage and vitriol.

There are Christians on both the Left and the Right who will declare in no uncertain terms what it means to follow Jesus in these troubled times. They have it all figured out. It’s so obvious, in fact, that if you don’t see the Christian agenda precisely as they do, it’s clear that you’ve been corrupted by the Other Side. 

But this is nothing new. Jesus also lived in polarizing times.

The narrow way of Jesus in first century Judaism

Think of the many sects and factions that contended for dominance in the first century Jewish world. 

The Pharisees believed that Messiah could not come while the people were lax about keeping the Law, so they led the way in Law-keeping as performance art. They were popular but not politically potent.

The Sadducees were the liberal elite of that day: wealthy, aristocratic families associated with the Temple and the priesthood. They controlled the national political conversation, as they sought to maintain the precarious status quo, balancing Jewish restiveness with Roman oppression.

The Zealots were the freedom fighters of their day. In their view, only armed insurrection would oust the hated Romans from the Holy Land.

The Essenes were fed up with the moral laxness of the population and the corruption in Israel’s leaders, so they withdrew to the desert to live in isolated communities.

Which group embraced Jesus as their own? Which group said that Jesus’ message of the arrival of the Kingdom resonated with their agenda?

None of them.

Both the person and the agenda of Jesus were far outside the expectations and hopes of the interest groups in first century Judaism. 

The narrow way of Jesus didn’t fit into any of the well-known categories of his day.

The narrow way of Jesus in current social problems

Just as in first century Judaism, the way of Jesus avoids the kind of either/or reductionism that our two major ideologies provide:

For instance, if we prioritized love of neighbor (Jesus’ second greatest commandment) over self-protection, how would our attitude about issues like immigration, health care, and gun control change?

And how would our compassion for the vulnerable in our society (the unborn, people of color, the poor) be different if we mimicked Jesus’ practice of noticing and befriending outsiders?

And if we were modeling our outlook on the narrow way of Jesus, could we find a way to reject the either-or thinking that dominates our discussion of issues like the relationship between law enforcement and minorities (either you believe that “black lives matter” or you “back the blue,” but you can’t have it both ways)?

Because ours is a fallen world, a society composed of corrupt and ruined persons (including us), because things are not yet made right (including us), Christians will always experience a genuine tension in our approach to social problems. 

We will ask, for instance, why our two major ideologies should force us to choose between opposing oppression of people of color and opposing the slaughter of unborn lives. We recognize that both the unborn and the dark-skinned are image bearers and ought to be protected by the law and treated with respect, but there is no place in American politics for that biblically-informed perspective. 

It’s easier, of course, to embrace either of the ready-made orthodoxies that dominate our national conversations. Their vocabulary and moral priorities are well known and widely accepted.

But the narrow way of following Jesus doesn’t fit neatly into either ideology. 

What the narrow way of Jesus requires: three implications

The way of Jesus requires us to ally ourselves with an other-worldly political reality, one that owes more to Scripture and the gospel than it does to contemporary ideologies. There are three overlapping implications for Christ-followers who want to contribute to our national conversation on the issues that divide our nation:

1. We must argue for ideas that will work for the common good, even if those ideas come from the other camp. If our primary allegiance is to our party, we will have difficulty embracing good ideas that are generated by the opposing party. But if we are following the narrow way of Jesus, we will be eager to embrace good ideas that will help our neighbors, regardless of who benefits politically.

2. We must be willing to criticize our own tribe when we see that it is veering away from the common good. This follows from the first point: we must be willing to go against the grain within our own group when we see they are wrong. Party loyalty cannot assume idolatrous, all-or-nothing proportions in our thinking.

3. We must be willing to be misunderstood. So long as Jesus and his message could be understood in popular terms (the king who will deliver God’s people from the hated Romans), He and His agenda were popular. But Jesus knew that His Kingdom message would be rejected, even by His own countrymen, and misunderstood, even by His own disciples. He knew that the mission chosen for Him by his Father would be lonely. 

Like Him, we must be willing to be misunderstood if we are to follow the narrow way of Jesus in our response to the controversies that are convulsing our nation right now. We might sometimes have to go against the grain of the thinking of those closest to us if we are to follow Jesus in our response to social issues.

Following Jesus has always required both discernment and courage.

Now more than ever.