One of the big obstacles for in hashing out this \”God stuff\” is politics. It\’s just always there, a spectre looming over every thought I have and decision I make. It\’s a first-hand example of how politics (1) has taken center stage is the age of trump and (2) politics is/has replaced religion in much of our society. Whereas once our inner needs were met by faith, they\’re now met in the arena of politics. I wonder if the void has always been there, as our society has always been secular, full of largely nominal believers more interested in being American than Christ-followers.

In any case, it\’s there and it\’s ensnared me. Any decision I come to or belief I feel ready to accept is obscured by the umbra of liberal politics. \”How does this belief line up with my politics? Am I taking a dissenting opinion by embracing this? I don\’t want to take a dissenting opinion. I better leave that one alone for now.\”

The fact is that politics ought not factor in at all. I try to avoid blanket statements, so I\’ll say it this way: politics are MOSTLY incompatible with Christian belief. This is becuase politics are about power. They\’ve always been. Even social democracy, in the end, is about control and power. Christ proves through His Incarnation, life, death, and Resurrection that sacrifical love and humility are the most powerful things in the universe; government is not.

I\’ve mostly been socially conservative and politically liberal. I don\’t like abortion, for example, but I see no reason for a secular nation to make it illegal. This goes double when those who spend a lot of breath speaking against abortion rights in the name of life have no alternative, no holistic approach to the sanctity of that life. It seems there are fewer (and safer) abortions when abortion remains legal and when women have a say over their own bodies. I have, at times, enjoyed the \”sport\” of politics, especially when I was in college. It\’s fun to have facts to back up your point of view and to dispense those facts among friends and frenemies.

Now, especially in the now-waning light of trump\’s election, I find I enjoy it less and less. I don\’t really care to be right or to prove I\’m right or to vocalize how I feel about what\’s going on.

And that makes me complicit, because mainstream activists (read educated, middle class whites) have finally caught on to what minority activists have been saying all along: if you\’re not a part of the solution, you\’re a part of the problem. Which brings us back to the beginning. If \”God stuff\” nudges me away from the \”movement\”, whatever the hell that may mean these days, then I expect some kind of social backlash.

But I feel as though I\’m being pulled into a different solution, or Solution as it were. Life in Christ is the truth. Walking along the way to Him, participating in my slow resurrection, has to be a better path than Twitter activism.