Missional Politics: What Tree Would You Be?

As Political Season kicks into its biennial peak, I'm going to re-post a series from 2016, with a few incidental edits.

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Barbara Walters once famously asked Katherine Hepburn, "What kind of tree are you?"

Take a look, if you would, at the picture accompanying this blog post, and consider the same question: What kind of tree are you?

Admit it. You're also asking yourself, what does this have to do with missional politics? That depends upon your answer about the tree.

I took this picture out the window of the building where my office is. Every Autumn this tree turns a brilliant red before any of the other trees have even begun to notice the days are getting shorter. As I wrote when I posted the picture on my Facebook timeline, "There's always that one tree that just has to be a show off and be the first with the fall fashions."

Maybe that's how you see yourself when you look at the picture. You're the kind of person who is a bit ahead of your time. You're an "early adopter" of new technology. You're a dedicated consumer of news and information, from both traditional and new media, so you often know what's trending and what's coming up next in culture and in politics.

Or maybe you may see yourself as the tree that dares to be different, standing up tall for what it believes. Whether it's religion or politics, you're not afraid to speak your mind and be seen as the different one.

Or perhaps the tree makes you think of how you're on fire for Jesus. You're always eager to represent Jesus' point of views about religion, culture, or politics, .

Actually, none of those metaphorical descriptions fit this picture.

This tree turns earlier than the neighboring trees every fall because it's not healthy.

I'm no tree expert, but I suspect there's something wrong with the roots, or with the soil around the roots. This tiny forest is wedged between a large industrial park and a four-lane divided highway in the middle of a mid-sized city. No telling what's in the ground and in the little creek that trickles next to the road bed.

I know that's why it turns early every year because the tree next to it used to be the one that was always early with its changes. As you can probably tell, it's now dead. Really most sincerely dead.

Which is where missional politics comes into the picture.

My definition of missional is that the Christian's priority should ALWAYS be to bring glory to God and to be planting seeds aimed at drawing others toward God. Whether you're having a cup of coffee with someone, watching a game with the guys, or discussing politics, you stay focused on God's mission.

I use the term "missional politics" to describe an approach that is driven by a strong commitment to pursue God's mission first, with politics kept subservient to that mission. Theology drives the mission and the mission drives everything else, including politics.

Over the past couple of decades I've watched the rapid growth of the Christian community losing perspective in regard to politics. The political tail is too often wagging the gospel dog. I see Christians - from national church leaders to personal friends - becoming so obsessed with their political point of view that whenever the subject du jour is politics, basic Christian virtues are forgotten.

Truth is spun, kindness is overwhelmed by insult, and peacemaking loses out to polarization.

I've spent a lot of time talking to people, researching, and just plain thinking hard to understand what is at the root of Christians taking an un-Christian approach to politics.

As it turns out, the root is exactly where the problem is.

Starting in the 1980's with the advent of cable news networks and talk radio, there has been an information glut in America. Easy access to the internet has multiplied that flood of input exponentially.

With that flood has come competition, and the best way to compete for the eyes and ears of the information consumers is by emphasizing the extreme and the radical, the loud and eye-popping.

Alongside that radicalization has grown an increasing compartmentalization of news sources.  If your ears are tickled by salacious celebrity gossip, there are channels and sites and apps for that. If your antennae are attuned to conservative ideas, or liberal ideas, or libertarian ideas, or alternative paranoid alarmist ideas, there's a whole constellation of sources to feed your preconceptions.

As a result, here we are in 2018 with more information at our fingertips than we ever dreamed possible, but most of us are choosing to limit our consumption to nibbling at only a few select dishes on the smorgasbord.

Like a tree being feed an uneven diet of toxic nutrition, the average Christian's powers of discernment are being slowly poisoned. We're consuming so much of a limited range of information, we can no longer recognize the validity or existence of alternative ideas.

Like the beautiful red tree in the picture, we're proud to be the oddball in the crowd, the one who is getting the good info and possesses all the right opinions about every topic.

Worst of all, with constant feedback from our favored sources, continually reinforcing our confidence in the rightness of our views and our cause, we begin to listen to those voices more than we listen to that other voice inside us. The Holy Spirit voice. The one that keeps trying to pull us back to the Bible, back to our purpose as Christians, back to the fruit of the Spirit and humility and mission.

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. (Psalm 1:1-4)

It's a radical idea, I know. It's a radical approach to politics, one that isn't always easy to stick with. I have plenty of personal opinions about politics and issues and politicians. But I work hard to keep from being a pundit, someone who always has to comment or tweet or blog about the latest news and my hot take on the proper political perspective.

It's losing perspective that has been the problem. People are more interested in being right than in being righteous.

The word "radical" comes from radix, the Latin term for "roots." Radical righteousness and truly radical politics comes from having the right roots.