FAITH: When faith forgets how to love

There is a temptation in every generation to make faith carry more than it was ever

meant to carry. Sometimes we ask it to immerse our preferences. Sometimes we ask it

to confirm our fears. And sometimes, if we are not careful, we ask it to serve our politics

more than our conscience.

That is dangerous ground.

Now, let me be clear: it is extremely appropriate to allow faith to shape how we live,

privately and publicly. It ought to influence how we think about justice, mercy, truth,

generosity, and the worth of our neighbors. A living faith does not stay tucked away in a

private corner of the heart. It walks around. It speaks. It serves. It shows up.

But there is a difference between being guided by faith and turning faith into a

hyper-political mascot.

Let us not kid ourselves; this is actively happening all around us.

When that line gets crossed, something sacred gets diminished, diluted. The language

of faith becomes a slogan. The sacraments become props. The teachings of Jesus get

squeezed down until they fit neatly inside whatever tribe we already belonged to, and

everyone else is wrong. And once that happens, we are no longer really following God.

We are asking God to follow us. Yikes.

That has never ended well.

Jesus was remarkably uninterested in becoming the mascot of anybody’s worldly

power. He did not come waving a flag. He did not come to crush enemies, flatter the

strong, or build a religious machine that confused dominance with discipleship, even

when this was a perceived expectation of who the Messiah was supposed to be. See,

this concept is much older than you and I. Jesus, instead, came preaching of hope, of

peace, of love, which is far more demanding than any party platform and far more

beautiful than any ideology. He spoke of loving enemies, blessing the poor, welcoming

the stranger, forgiving without keeping score, and refusing the easy satisfaction of

self-righteousness.

That sort of teaching does not fit comfortably inside political talking points, and maybe

that is the point.

Any version of faith that teaches us to sneer at people, dismiss people, mock people, or

fear people has drifted a long way from the carpenter from Nazareth.

And yes, I know we are living in contentious times. Everything now gets sorted into

camps. Every issue becomes a test of loyalty. Every disagreement becomes a moral

emergency. Some may read this article with a sense of politicized bias. It is exhausting.

In that kind of climate, it becomes very tempting to wrap our faith around our politics like

armor and call it conviction.

But if our faith makes us harsher, smaller, angrier, and less able to recognize the image

of God in another person, then something has gone wrong deeply in our wiring.

Scripture tells us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,

generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. It does not say the fruit of the Spirit

is outrage, contempt, and the constant need to win. It does not say holiness is proven

by how loudly we condemn people we do not understand. More often than not, true faith

has a steadiness to it. A humility. A capacity to stand firm without becoming cruel.

This does not mean Christians should have no convictions. Quite the opposite. It means

these convictions ought to be shaped by the model of Christ before they are sharpened

by culture. It means we ought to ask, again and again: Does this make me more loving?

More honest? More merciful? More selfless?

And perhaps most importantly, it means remembering that every person we meet

carries a dignity that politics cannot erase. The person who agrees with you. The person

who does not. The one who is easy to love and the one who is not. The one who lives

next door and the one who just crossed your path. None of them are disposable. None

of them are beneath contempt. None of them are beyond the reach of grace or

compassion.

Faith is at its best when it makes us more human, not less. More caring, not less. More

willing to listen, not less. More able to tell the truth without forgetting tenderness.

The world already has enough noise, enough anger, enough people treating one

another like enemies. The church ought not add to that. The church ought to be one of

the last places left where conviction and compassion still know how to live in the same

house.

So let faith be faith. Let it form your soul. Let it guide your life. Let it call you to courage

and conviction. But do not ask it to bow before politics.

It was made for something holier than that.

Adam Johnson is a strategy consultant and ordained minister with two decades of experience in nonprofit leadership nationwide, currently the CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Jackson TN. He holds advanced degrees in nonprofit organization from the University of Memphis. Adam lives in Jackson with his wife, Kayla, and their daughter Josephine.