By John I. Snyder, Theology Mix.
In the United States, many people are praying fervently and trying with all their might to recover a “Christian America,” and they’re convinced it can happen with just the right political candidate. “With our person in the White House we can make America great again!”
But even if we could elect Jesus, St. Paul, or St. Augustine as our new president, what impact would that have on a very post-Christian population without some massive spiritual awakening taking place first? It’s been said that no leader can be better or worse than the people who elected him/her.
It’s one thing for Christians to be living in a post-modern, post-Christian society, but it’s quite another for our churches to be packed with “post-Christian Christians.” What I mean is that unless and until we as Christians commit ourselves to live as Jesus intended, it really won’t matter who occupies the White House or the seats of Congress, or sits in the Parliaments of any other nation.
Even if we can’t generate a predominantly Christian nation here in the USA, we can create a great number of Christian societies in the midst of it through our churches. But the church would have to be very different from what we see right now. By “different,” I don’t mean in terms of the usual religious externals—clothing, appearance, religious language, and all of that—but in the way we act, what we value, and particularly how we treat one another.
“How they love one another!” and “With what great joy they live!” were things the pagan world said of the earliest Christians. Who says that about the church today?