“If the Democrats are as evil and as anti-family and as anti-God as they have been made out to be, then they are the mission field. Well, if they are the mission field, why in the world would we want to position our church so that the people we’re convinced are lost and hell-bound aren’t welcome in our church?”
“If I’m not willing to break ranks with my political party, when my political party gets it wrong on an issue where the New Testament and the Scripture is clear, then I have elevated my party over my faith. I mean, it’s just that clear.”
“If I just remain silent in order not to rock the boat or not to lose friends on the Left or Right, as a Christian, I have just said not, ‘One nation under God.’ I’ve said, ‘My God, under my nation.’ That’s what I’m declaring. And no Christian would ever acknowledge or no Christian would ever admit that. But because of the nature of what’s happened in our culture politically and because everything is so politicized, so many Christians, I think unintentionally end up there. And it’s our responsibility as church leaders to call that out and of course, to examine our own hearts, because we are all so susceptible to that.”
“If I were to do a message on, ‘Don’t wrap your faith around your politics, you need to adjust your politics according to your faith,’ everybody listening to me would go, ‘That’s exactly right. And that’s exactly what I’ve done, the reason I’m a Republican is because I’m a Christian.’ And there’s another group that’s like, ‘No, the reason I’m a Democrat is because I’m a Christian.’ And so it is so difficult to tease this out and figure this out and to be honest with ourselves and to listen to others and to expand the sphere of people to whom we listen and things that we read.”
“The moment we so internalize a view that it becomes part of our identity, we’ve shut down the conversation.”
“I think every American should vote every single time they get to. We don’t have a Caesar. It is ‘we the people.’ And that’s the greatest privilege in the world.”
“When you follow Jesus through the Gospels, he was not here to win anything the way that we define win…he refused it. When people considered him an enemy, he refused to return the favor…And if I’m a Jesus follower, then my mission in life is to replicate the character and the nature and the tone of Jesus and to live to the best of my abilities.”
“This generation correctly expects our generation who claim to be Christians, not to hold the correct political views, but they actually expect us to act like Jesus.”
“What the next generation is looking for is not correct politics. What they’re looking for is a Christ-like posture. And we can maintain a Christ-like posture regardless of our politics.”
“We can walk away from these conversations disagreeing over who we vote for, but we as Christians, we should be the most curious people in the world and the less dogmatic when it comes to most things. And if I’m not curious enough to want to understand why you hold the position you do, then we’re never going to make any progress.”
“When we get a snapshot of Jesus praying for the future church, what is the thing he’s most concerned about? Not theological purity, although obviously that’s important…His number one concern was unity.”
