The church above the world

“I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” (John 17:14)

The Church stands above the world. There are many fine institutions in the world, but the Church is not an institution like the others. It stands above and outside the world, and consequently stands in opposition to what many find reasonable or logical.

Opportunists from across the whole of politics will callously try to align with the Church and appeal to that alignment to preach virtue, “but all their works they do to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments” (Matthew 23:5).

Politicians who earnestly try to legislate and govern according to the precepts of the Church will find themselves out of politics. The Church is not attractive to the world, despite outside appearances. Adopting the Church as a platform will doom your politics, because “you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:19).

Any politician who claims to have a Christian programme is only Christian at a surface level. Most politicians claiming a Christian programme are in fact secular Nestorians, as @banterwithb once described it: they will agree to some degree of Christian pretense but claim a limit beyond which religion should no longer cross into politics. Therefore these politicians actually believe in a “religious me” and a “political me”, thereby admitting that their religion is conditional on circumstance.

And by that conditionality, they in turn admit their religious belief to be vapour, of no true substance, only propaganda. This is why many are shocked to find the Church opposing the whole of politics. The Church, of course, is composed of men, and these men will have political inclinations, and these inclinations will appear in the bishops and the priests. The Church will also insert itself in politics and speak with leaders because, as shepherd of the world and of the Caesars, it should rightly guide the world.

But the Church will be glad to accept and reject anything that the world offers, including all politics, left-wing and right-wing, because it doesn’t have to abide by any. These are forms of the world. They are artifacts, and they are not of God. The predisposition of an ideology to follow Godliness has nothing to do with God’s consideration of that ideology. Both Jew and Gentile converted. Nicodemus came to Christ, and so did Cornelius.