Written By: Margaret Njeri Gichuki, Nairobi Kenya.
Christians and politics and political Christians
When we look at the subject of politics in Kenya, it is always an emotive topic to discuss. In the past and present, it has been associated with all evils, dirt, corruption, assassinations, tribalism, clashes and so forth. When you ask a Christian about the ambitions and if it is acceptable to join politics, they give you a different message. I mean, who wants to join a dirty profession like this if they indeed believe they are in the world but not of the world! Your guess is as good as mine, None! However, God calls us to be the reflection of his kingdom wherever we are by: praying for the prosperity of the city we dwell, for in its prosperity is ours too. We are also to represent his kingdom by behaving like full ambassadors of heaven where we belong, rising to the occasion whenever situations call for such through advocacy for the poor, fighting for their rights and defending them. There is a last resort for the whole of this, in Proverbs 29:2, when the righteous are in power, the city rejoices, but when the wicked reign, the people mourn! This last resort is only for the courageous, the ones who believe in being the change that they are looking for! The daring Christian will pave way for the Lord’s reign on this imperfect world by availing themselves on the altar of being the political leader. Does it mean that we can have a perfect government here on earth by simply electing a Christian president? Read on and discover for yourself.
I shall give the case of Pastor Pius Muiru who vied for the presidency of Kenya back in the 2007 general elections. What the Christians slapped him with on the face was the rude shock of all time! Not even enough sympathy votes from his followers that were attending his many gospel crusades all over the country. To add salt to injury, we began a movement right under his face to warn any other “pulpit” minister never to try politics because they would surely fail like Muiru had. What a slogan we have developed over time; don’t mix God (church) with politics, unless you want to fail! Now this sounds very religious and almost godly and heavenly. But wait; did the same God anoint David, a man after his own heart to be king over Israel? Did God appoint Moses, a prophet to lead the Israelites in the same position as he did the kings of Israel? What shall we say of the wars that he led those he appointed to lead the people of Israel! How about the Messiah who was named the King of the Jews; and is coming back to be King over the whole world? Oh I hear you begin the circular argument that Israel’s arrangement was more than we can compare ourselves with today. But the policies stand true, that people who led Israel our role model as the church, were kingly shepherds over the nation of Israel.
Our situation back here is a democracy and not a theocracy, but we are talking of delegated authority to lead a nation on behalf of God whatever the system of elections is used to get the leader. This is because the Bible affirms that no leader comes to authority without God allowing them Romans 13:1-2. Our little history of elections in Kenya that I can remember having grown in a Christian home was that of avoiding elections so that one is not culpable when the outcomes do not favor the multitudes. Around the year 2002, I was old enough to vote, but some Christians did not participate in this exercise in our first democratically correct elections. Why do I call it first democratically correct? It is believed that thought the nation had embraced multiparty politics, at the polls things had turned out different due to corruption and rigging of elections. Back to the one elections that I participated in I guess, and this time round Christians did politics of avoidance because they believed that participating in the affairs of this world was sinful. It took a lot of training and mobilization to get those around my region to vote since they had not been voting to avoid sin. Can you imagine having to forsake their comfort zones of politics of avoidance into politics of participation! We have indeed come a long way as a church in this topic of politics.
Yes, God does not own an ID card in Kenya in order to vote in any president, I get it. However, as a believer, when I don’t utilize my voter-right, I am simply voting in the wrong leaders. So even if I pray for the nation to have good governance, and I refuse to participate in the elections, I am doing the opposite of my prayers. This type of a worldview of avoiding to participate in elections in a democratic nation like Kenya had crippled the nation in the early 2000. However, voter education through church leaders changed this into a participatory mode that was witnessed in the year 2002 going forward. However, this only solved one issue and left some of it unresolved. It solved the issue of agreeing to go to the polling stations and voting the choices on the ballot papers. However, no one taught the church that their vote counted for either the good or the bad leadership we witness after the voting process is complete. This is what my article is all about; that you get what you vote in! You have a right in a democratic nation, and to vote in the right leaders into the political positions too as a Christian. So we are in a dilemma as a church because we vote in the rest of the guys on the ballot papers, but we leave out any person who claims to be a Christian because we believe that the leadership of the nation is a worldly affair and can only be tackled by worldly men, not Christians.
We unconsciously developed a strange worldview by adopting the Platonic worldview of a dualistic universe. Plato, the Greek philosopher envisioned a dualistic world which separated the material universe (matter) and the spiritual (incorporeal) world. The material world was viewed as dirty, unclean while the spiritual world was good and holy. That we have a sacred and a materialistic world is unconceivable because scripture teaches that Christ fills all in all (Colossians 1:15-17), yet as Christians, we seem to hold to Plato’s views. Every Good Endeavor by Tim Keller addresses the need to view life as a single unit without separating between ‘holy’ and ‘unholy’; Sunday or weekday behavior and so forth. That in all we do, we should do it as unto the Lord and not unto man. Where am I going with all this? That the professions that we engage in are to be seen as opportunities to represent the Kingdom of God every day wherever we are.
I know that in Kenya we have had various views when it comes to the Christian and the roles they play in the society. We even have both secular and sacred jobs, as well as titles that we have for the jobs that are not so much of a church-friendly environment. We created such dualistic views to life and have interrupted normalcy because one has to think if they shall sound Christians when they come up to their pastors to say where they want to work.
I shall give a personal example so that we can identify with what I mean. When I cleared my high school, I was left to decide what I needed to do with little finances available at hand anyway in terms of furthering my studies. My ambitions were leading me to study law in campus, and I had pursued History, English and Biology at very encouraging tempo so that my ambitions would not be cut short. However, when I approached my pastors and spiritual leaders, they were all opposed to my career choice because they said that studying law would result in me being a criminal since lawyers were corrupt and criminals. Lawyers were deemed to be hiding criminals by standing for them even when they knew that the criminals were guilty. I tried to say I would be different, but I was heavily discouraged. One of the leaders ex-communicated me from their fellowship for my persistence in wanting to study law. Another told me that the heart I had to see justice was the heart of love and compassion to pursue justice before God for the poor and didn’t mean that I needed to pursue law. My career goals were shattered when I was taken to my first Bible School to tame my desire for ‘secular studies’. However, by the time I was done with the third year, I went back and stated that I still wanted to pursue legal studies and all hell broke loose on me. I was disowned and even called an opportunist.
I seemed to be wavering and tried to exchange my godly calling for a secular desire! Long story short, I pursued theological studies, but I shall still pursue legal studies now that I know that we need Christian lawyers and judges to administer justice in our country. What a waste of time, and discouragement by my Christian people! They made me believe that legal issues were better off in the hands of crooks. Yes, I wouldn’t have made all the difference to the legal fraternity in my country, but my contribution was much needed! There is no career for the Christian and that of non-Christian if indeed all we do should be done as unto the Lord who made the whole world and for whom the world was made.
The compartmentalization that the Christians have made between the “sacred” and “secular” offices has brought us more harm than good. It has dragged us into thinking that politics is a “dirty game” and we have left the “dirty guys” to run for offices. It has led us into electing into political offices the wrong people while we have had Christians vying for the same positions yet we deny them. The irony in here is that we use our Christianated voter-cards to elect corrupt leaders into the offices and then we cry the rest of the years asking God to change them for the good of our nation. Both the clergy and the laity have fallen into this trap thinking we are doing God or the Christian political aspirants a favor by failing them on the ballot paper to shield them from the dirty profession. Who has bewitched us, that we have eyes to see, ears to hear, voter-ID cards to use, yet we act blindly? Shouldn’t we have encouraged the few Christians who vied for political posts by voting for them and later asking God to use the ones in authority to change our nation? What other magic are we waiting for God to perform by wooing him to our silly dance through tears, sack-cloths and fastings while we rejected the right opportunities? Time to think and act differently are already here with us, and we have about a year to preach this sober gospel, vote in the wrong people and cry to yourselves, or vote in the right people and see right results.
We are in a democratic nation, we have a choice to make between good and bad at the ballot. It is high time we wake up from our slumber of the 21st century of giving God our roles. We then need to do what we can do and leave the rest to God. We are the legal owners of our voter ID, and need to use our own discretion during the actual voting. May we not lie to ourselves that we shall arm-twist God into making our elected crooks into what we wish them to be, while we had the choice to vote them out.
We have had a warped mindset in that we think that politics is a dirty game and for the dirty whom we can call on God to change when it is convenient for us. No! We need to take responsibility and vote the right people into power since we hold the voter IDs with us. The reality that we are a Christian nation with 80% Christians yet among the most corrupt in the world is sickening to the core! What this reveals is that the remaining 20% are either too strong and too corrupt such that the 80% lose their active power. As they say, numbers don’t lie. I have asked myself many questions with regard to these figures, does it mean that when rapture occurs, there shall be no difference in this country since the effect of the 80% is very minimal? Does the Christian nation really do what they mean in their actions or they are lip-service types? When a Christian politician rises to vie for a president and the candidate fails, is it not the 80% that have voted the person out? When the debates against a Christian aspirant are discussed on social media negatively, is it not the Christians who take the lead in attacking their own? Isn’t it the responsibility of Fellow-Christians to support their own? But they are busy pulling their own down yet they will be the first ones to rush into prayer mountains to pray for peace, prosperity and restoration for the nation. In short, we love God with our lips but our hearts are far away from him. You ask me how? The fact that we elect the wrong choices and pray otherwise, and the fact that we pray for the right leaders but during the polls, we elect the alternative people just because they are famous. Probably it’s because God doesn’t like politics so we choose for him the non-Christians so that we can pray to him to change them and work better with them? Oh hypocrites! That’s what God would tell us when we yell at him in prayers to plead with him to remove corruption, bring justice, give us rains, remove locust menace etcetera in our national prayers or individual prayers after we fail to exercise our voter-right properly. Next time you see a Christian standing out for a political post, you need to support them because in good faith, they stand to represent God and your country, county or ward will run better in the hands of such a person. Negative comments on social media are traceable to a Christian who is busy pulling down their Fellow-Christian from vying for any elective position. This is really questionable as to what manner of Christians we have turned out to be.
We have had a few people try to stand out from the crowds and be on the ballot paper. What this takes is more than an ambition, it is more of offering themselves to be poured out as a drink in the blood-thirsty nation like ours. We have become like the Israelites, killing our own prophets and asking God to send us the Messiah/Moses. What can be done to such a generation that likes to pray and not act on their own prayers? How many times do we have to be pushed to the wall by our own poor choice of leaders? Does it mean that God is a sadist, whom we ask for godly leaders, then he delights in giving us (allowing) wrong leaders to be heads over our nation, counties and wards?
There is a thin line between open rebellion and ignorance. We have to act with what we have in our hands. Moses was asked about what he had in his hands during the mighty waters of the Red Sea. He answered, “a stick”, and God used it while it was still in his hands to deal with the challenging situation. Kenyan Church, what is that you have in your hands? We are a few months into our general elections. I have never seen the church that loves prayer like the Kenyan church. Politicians have known this about us and they flock our pulpits to pray prior to their elections. We barely use this power for our own folks who have stood up to face the evil in politics and instead of praying for our own, we dismiss them and discourage the few who try it out. Politicians will flock the places of worship to pray, donate cash, give for projects, be anointed and prophesied on and all manner of religious acts will be done in every last year towards general elections in this nation of Kenya. I have thought that the church does not like to be directly involved in politics but likes to pray the mess out of the nation when it finally spills out.
I am speaking for the many who have felt they can’t stand out and vie for political positions in our nation because of the prevalent worldview; politics is dirty and not for Christians, worse off, not for a minister of the gospel! But where is that written in the main Christian-Constitution, the Bible? Nowhere, and I dare you to challenge my opinion with the right scriptures and we shall negotiate on the same table as theologians. I have heard many arguments against a minister of the gospel standing for a presidential seat in this nation. I don’t know why the same people have not written anything to H.E Lazarus Chakwera, the president of Malawi to challenge him for being elected into power while he was a presiding bishop of his church. Instead, I saw numerous congratulatory messages to him on social media and to Malawi for having the courage to go against the currents. Indeed, we have an example of a sitting President who is a Christian and a minister of the gospel right here in Africa.
We mock ourselves by saying that God rules over the world, but he seems to lose it when it comes to politics especially in Kenya. It seems politics is a realm he has no control over unless it runs out of hands, and we call him for emergency “intervention”. We got to be more serious this time round and stop having double-standards. He is God overall and has power to rule the world through us. We have been made kings and priests unto our God, which gives us a moral authority to lead the way.
When a Christian stands to vie for the post of leadership position, the best we can do is to support them and pray for them daily because it is easier for them to hear God than a non-believer when changes are needed. If at all the Christian is not vying to be president for the devil’s domain in hell, then we need to encourage them. This coming elections of 2022 is another time to think of what responsible Christianity really means. Do we have any Christians vying for any post in the coming government? We need to rally behind such people whether they are our tribe or not because sooner than later, we shall be faced with the reality of the choice we take for 2022.
Even if we cover our eyes to not read this article and many other like-minded articles or thoughts, it shall be in vain to pretend to care for our nation while we give it into the wrong hands with our votes. We still have some time to think about our responsibility during the electioneering period and make the right adjustments. I know that having a Christian to lead the nation does not mean we have the perfect governance on this side of life because Jesus alone is the perfect King who will restore all things when he comes. But so long, let His kingdom come. May I use my voter’s card in the coming elections to seal my prayer.
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