“…The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love”- Galatians 5:6

“We don’t have all the answers.”

If you’ve ever visited a service at Mariners, chances are high that you’ve heard someone mention that phrase before. The apostle, Paul, writes in his letter to a young pastor, named Timothy, that he’s to avoid people who have “an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions.” Timothy, like so many of us is left wondering about what kinds of things are substantive and which are merely a worthless distraction. No more is this apparent than during an election year. And, in the course of most of our lives, there has been no election like the one to which we are presently witnesses. We want answers. In many cases we deserve them. Both sides of the current political debate speak with absolute certainty about their opponents. They speak with a bit less clarity with regard to their own accused indiscretions. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been tuning into the debates — part politics and part reality show caricature.

Between the accusations and the mudslinging, the exposés and the unflattering uncovering, the shame and the name calling, the apologies and near-apologies, the vitriol and the contempt,  it feels like we’ve reached a new plateau of quasi-political discourse. But, as history frequently reminds us, we do have rather short memories. The names on the November ballot are merely the latest-arriving characters in a long history of behavior that ranges from outright vile to just plain bizarre.

These are serious times. The freedom to elect our leaders that Americans enjoy comes at a great cost. So, we ought to vote. As a church, our political agenda is clear: to continue to aim people at pursuing Jesus. To that end, we all ought to pray that it is Jesus and not party allegiances, nor knee-jerk emotionalism which influence how we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), in light of this election.

Whether or not we subscribe to a particular party platform: Democrat or Republican, Green party or Libertarian, Independent or decline-to-state, none of these are the lens through which we view our world. To state it as simply as I’ve ever heard it: “…the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6)… THE ONLY THING THAT COUNTS. For people who follow Jesus, we all have the same agenda — that our faith IS expressed in LOVE. In that sense, the only thing up for energetic debate is HOW that is best put into practice — regardless of which  side of the political spectrum on which we may fall. At the heart of all the controversy, the issues, and the political war of words, the burden we bear is to determine which candidate and which policies best puts into practice “the only thing that counts… faith expressing itself through love.” This is our on-going challenge — election year or not.

See you Sunday,

Jeff