Politics and the Gospel

Issues of politics, government, economics, business and money cannot be resolved from the message of Jesus in the gospel and the epistles. They gospels and the epistles do not contain enough material for a system of government or economics. The church is then forced back to nature to find solutions. It defaults to government as the source of justice, with the church trying to take political power to modify justice.

The thing that is missed by both the Anabaptists and Reformed of all types is that God gave his system of government and economic system in the Torah. His is a radically different approach, with no central government, where leaders and judges emerge out of local communities, where problems of poverty and inequality are dealt with in local communities, where defence is controlled by local communities no a centralised standing army.

Jesus pointed back to the Torah on many issues of economics and government. He confirmed the teaching of the Torah in the Sermon on the Mount after talking about being the light of the world (Matt 5:13-20). He rejected the teachings of the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law, because they undermined Torah teaching, so the people could wiggle out of it. His teaching about giving and lending was a challenge to his listeners to get back to the Torah economy that the Romans and the Sadducees were destroying. He was able to speak about unrighteous money, because it was clearly defined in the Torah.

Christians seemed to have missed this, because they cannot see the trees for the dead leaves of legalism. They are forced instead to either look in vain in the gospels, or go back to nature for teaching about political and economic systems.