State and Church and the State of the Church [2016] (original) (raw)

Before every election, we hear promises of would-be messiahs who want to and know how to save our nation from its current state. Faced with the two parties, as in every election, many silently want to echo Mercutio’s dying words in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as he curses both the Montagues and Capulets: “A plague o’ both your houses!” Yet we know that division and sibling rivalry are the default human condition from the very first family in Genesis. We also know that it is into this flawed humanity that God spoke grace and within it that God elected Israel. If the Bible teaches us anything, it is that God works providentially with actual human history and broken human beings. If we think any candidate or president will rescue us from what ails the universe, then a review of history or a simple glance at Augustine’s City of God might suggest a more sobering wisdom. At the least, we might learn humility.