This is Keith.

And this is Ben. And this is Main Street Lutherans. Well, it has been a week. We don't normally make these specific to a time. And to be fair, we didn't choose this topic. It's been on our list for a while. We probably accelerated. We moved it up a little bit because of the situation that we're going through right now. We are recording the Tuesday after Donald Trump was shot in Pennsylvania. It's led us to think more about the church in political contexts.

So we've talked about some of the Elca social justice messages and social justice statements from some other episodes. And there's one that was adopted in 2020 on government and civic engagement in the United States, subtitled discipleship in a democracy. And we wanted to look at this because, you know, we do live in a time where politically, it does seem that humanity in general and Americans in particular are referring to conspiracies and tribalism and gaslighting and blaming and finger pointing and labeling, especially around matters of politics and things that we associate with political issues and hotlines. And so we just wanted to talk a bit about how we, as ELca Lutherans, believe that we are called to respond as the people of goddess and collectively together as the church. And so we wanted to examine this particular social message in a little more detail tonight.

I think this is one of the things that people will look at our churches through a lens. Right? How did our churches respond to these particular political actions, political times, and how did our churches greet our neighbors? How did we deal with our, with our friends and the people who maybe we don't get along with. And that is one of those things that either draws people to a church or drives them away from it. I think these statements, we'll talk about these here in just a minute, but these statements could probably go both ways for some folks. I'm sure there are a lot of folks who want us to put a foot down much firmer in either direction. And there are folks who would be very attracted to the stance that we take and the methods by which we process evaluating our governments and the ways we can interact with our government. So I guess with no further ado, the statement opens with a very classic Luther example. Luther writes on secular authority.

He actually writes about it in lots of places.

Oh, he does. But it's probably most succinct in that document. Yes, he writes, and that's 1523. So he's not reacting to any kind, any of our politics, for sure. But he talks about two ways of governing, and it's talked about in a few different metaphors. One is a left hand, right hand metaphor. Sometimes people refer to them as swords. Sometimes it'll be kingdoms. Those are metaphors that I think get used in multiple ways. It depends on which theologian you're reading at the time and how they're processing Luther.

And remember that Luther was not, you know, he wasn't what we would have in seminary called a systematic theologian. He did not sit down and deliberately come up with these structures and then consistently apply the same terminology every time that, you know, he spoke or wrote.

As far as we know, he despised philosophers, which I think he would consider most modern theologians.

Right. Yeah. Even though Luther himself was quite the philosopher in some ways, too. But, yeah. So there is. There's a little inconsistency even in Luther about exactly how he uses these. But there's some commonalities in all of his writings that can be drawn or pointed to in how we sort of draw the way these metaphors are going to be used in this document and how we're going to use them in our conversation and all of them as metaphors. Generally, especially in metaphors for God and faith are always somewhat limited. They work up to a point, and then they kind of fall apart, which is why they're metaphors.

Right. Talk about the left hand, right hand idea of the way that God interacts with the world. So the left hand is the gift of faith that God works within us privately, our personal experience, our inner experience, through recognition of sin, the confession and the redemption that God gives to us. That gift through faith, the outer or the right hand, is a social, political, and economic system, action that God has. And so that is God's work being hidden behind human structures and actions. Luther believes that God is at work through even our. What we consider to be our own creations, that God is actually working through those for righteousness, for justice, and for all things good. Right.

So one way to be thinking about these two hands, then, is that the left hand of faith could refer to the church and the right hand of politics and economic structures and all of that as leading through government. And, you know, again, there's some overlap, too, because the church is in some ways, you know, it's based on faith, which is a gift from God, but it's also based on how humans decided to set that up. So it's also a human created structure, too.

Well, yeah. And in Luther's time, there's much less separation between how the church operated and how the civic government operated, because the civic government person was in charge of portions of the church when he talks about the princes that he goes through and all that. So things that he's writing about aren't quite the same as what we would experience in our current lives. Now, the ELCA recognizes five themes, and they say there could be more, but they've chosen five themes about how God. How the two ways that God operates in that format, how they relate to each other. Those five themes. I keep looking at this list, and my eyes keep showing me six. So maybe there's a six hidden one in there somewhere. God's law is God's will for human life, right? So that the way that God wills these things in the world is what God wants for all of us and human life. Not just God's believers, not just the people who belong to the exact right church, which may be St. Matthew's York. You never know.

Absolutely. Second is that God's rule in both hands is marked by equality, and that would be equality of persons, in particular, that we are not, again, as you were just saying, that we're not ranking believers above nonbelievers or people of one.

Denomination above another, or men versus women, or. I don't know how luther would have perceived this back then. Of course, this is our understanding of this. So this is the ELCA understanding. And so we believe that it's for all people, regardless of nationality, regardless of ability or what have you. Right?

Right.

Yeah. And then God's right hand rule. So that's the outer. The political system inspires powerful impulse of empathy. I'm kind of unclear on that one, because I think a lot of times, our government structure, I think of the way our government structures, I think there should be a should in there, maybe. Because if we think of how people are treated at the southern border, for instance, maybe there's not much empathy there. Think of how we detain combatants in wars. Certainly we've got examples of a lack of any kind of empathetic impulse, for sure.

Fourth of the five is that God has concern for justice in both ways of working. So both structures, the church and the government, faith and politics, are intended to move humanity towards justice, which would be, again, getting back to that notion that there is no the ranking, that one person is better than another, that one person deserves better or more than another.

Right. And actually, that just makes me think back to the one before this, that God's right hand influence on that system pushes toward empathy. So anything that makes us more empathetic to the people, our systems are dealing with economic systems, social systems, that we can recognize God's action in there through empathy. Right. And then the last one of these, of these themes is that God imparts purpose to the roles of worldly governments.

Yeah. That there's a. There's a reason for this.

Yeah, there's a reason for this.

And that those reasons really can, you know, be about not just structuring a secular society, but helping us to live lives of faithfulness.

So then the document moves on to talking about government roles and functions, and it gives us this big, big list, and we've sort of subdivided it.

These messages always seem to like lists.

Well, and it starts with a bunch of lists of how we have a lot of things, of how we've gotten things wrong through our government. So it's got a nice big list to show us some of our flaws, but also ways that we can redeem ourselves. And half in a lot of ways. But so these 14 guides for assessing government performance, we've got them grouped as. What is that? Four. Four different types of things.

Yeah. And they seem to, you know, the first. The first category is really about that sort of egalitarian nature of government, that it is intended to be, you know, structured in such a way that, again, it doesn't lift up one person or one group of persons and privilege them above the others. We're not saying that those things don't happen. We're just saying that God's intention of how a government should work is that those things would not happen. And so it gives us a direction to move towards.

So that's that the governed are consented to be governed. Right. And that they protect individual freedoms, and also that it accepts limitations on freedoms, that it's a balance there. Right.

Yeah.

And then we've also got how that government, since we're assessing the performance of the government, how the people working within the government operate and are treated by the system, it's got things like making sure that public service isn't seen as, like a hobby, but as a vocation, that it's for the general public benefit and that people are paid well, that work within the system. And probably one of the more political pieces of this is that we maintain a distinction between the role and the person that fills it. And I think we have a lot of trouble with that a lot of times.

Yeah. The next one is really about treating people like people.

Imagine that.

Yeah. Yeah. So neighborly service to strangers, respect and dignity towards both persons in government and persons being governed, and recognizing neighbors, not just citizens. So we think about that call to love our neighbor that Jesus gives us in the gospels, for example, and recognize that that is something that we can do through. Through government. And that that's, you know, that all of the people around us in our society are neighbors, not just. Not just citizens.

Right? Yeah. And then the fourth, the fourth group we've got in this, it deals with the possibility of corruption within our government in some form. You know, we have to acknowledge that as people, we are sinful by nature, trying to do the best we can. But sometimes the systems we build lean toward injustice rather than justice. And so talking about making sure that there is adequate regulation to protect people, our neighbors, that there is an ability for the government to be able to be reformed when it deviates from the direction it should be going, and then also that it is possible to draw attention to those abuses of power. And that might be something like our freedom of the press we have and enjoy in the United States.

And so really, you know, when it comes to even just something like voting, for example, you know, and I don't know that you've been, but in our congregation, we often will have conversations like, you know, taking the opportunity to vote is one of the gifts that we have, not only as american citizens, but as people of faith that we are, you know, discerning among folks that have risen up as being willing to do this particular job or that, that are subject to election. How, you know, how are we going to vote? And Lutherans will never tell you who to vote for, but we will encourage you to vote, and we will encourage you to vote in a, in a very deliberate and faithful way, to pray, to discuss, you know, try to figure out, you know, again, it's not always about the perfect candidate or the lesser of two evils or anywhere in between those perspectives. It's simply just about recognizing that people are people. That includes the ones that are on the ballot trying to, you know, move in garbly directions.

And going along with that, the document acknowledges that there is a call we can be, you know, as we talk about calling in the lutheran church, it's not just to the ministry, not just to a priesthood, but you can be called to civic engagement. And so it gives a list of things like running for office and being part of the system, doing work for the good of the world in the government. And we certainly have a lot of deacons that are called to that type of service. But it's beyond just being called to be a deacon in that way. But even just serving on school board might be one of ways that you're called to civilization, civic engagement. Specifically quoting from the document itself, it says, the LCA holds to the biblical idea that God calls God's people to be active citizens and to ensure that everyone benefits from the good of government. I think that's a good direction to go.

Yeah. And then the document also points out temptations to be avoided, ways that we do kind of tend to miss this, this concept up, this two kingdom or two sword or two hands. So the first is that the belief that God's two ways of governing are entirely unrelated. This is what happens when we talk about faith as a private matter, as something that has to do with me and my relationship with God, for example, that undermines all of those things. That list of 14 governing government roles and functions, and the 14 guides for assessing government performance. You know, it. All of that has to be done from a perspective of our faith and to believe that, you know, God has. Has given us government as a gift and something for us to be involved in. Again, it's not perfect, but it's something for us to be engaged in actively. And so if we say that matters of faith and matters of society are completely separate, then we miss out on that opportunity to say that as a person of faith, I am voting. As a person of faith, I am petitioning or advocating in government. As a person of faith, this is how I'm engaged in my government structures in our society.

We just talked with win about the perennial waters project and their involvement, trying to get involved in government action to protect water spaces.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The second temptation that they list is sort of, if that one is that these two things are completely separate, this is a temptation to just dismiss government entirely as being either unnecessary or completely evil, and so rejecting any kind of government thing. And this, you know, this would be the temptation to say, well, I'm going to live under God's rule alone. And so God didn't give me a speeding ticket or didn't give me a speed limit, so therefore, I don't respect the speed limit sign.

Right. I think we can be guilty of this in somewhat more casual ways, too, where I don't know how many times I've been in a Bible study or a faithful conversation in some way, and, you know, and someone not in a malignant, evil kind of way, but will say something that maligns, you know, all police officers or all politicians and just say, you know, I don't think any of these people really know what it's like to x, you know, whatever that is. Raise a family, buy groceries.

Yeah, whatever.

Yeah. What that prompts you to is to go back to that notion of treating people like people. And remember that, you know, politicians, people in government, whether they're working the bureaucracy or they are an elected official themselves of any level of rank, from your small town mayor who's paid part time, or the president of the United States, these are people, and we need to talk about them and refer to them and treat them as people and not as monsters or evil or inhuman or whatever.

And then our third one is probably the big one, the one that's getting the most talk about in certainly progressive and probably moderate christian circles, certainly mainline circles. Bishop Eaton has even released a statement on it herself. We won't talk about that unless the Yale ca backs it completely as a thing, because we're talking about the denomination, the temptation for any government, country, political movement or party to claim a privileged relationship with God or special status in God's kingdom for redemption. This leads us to the two big words, christian nationalism, which is the most obvious form of this. But there is also the other side. We have a temptation on the progressive side to say Jesus stands with us, right? Jesus doesn't stand with them. Jesus stands with us alone, because we are doing the work. Now, that's certainly a lot.

That's a lot. That's an entire podcast by itself.

It is, but that's the temptation. And anytime we find ourselves thinking God stands on my side alone, that we're overstepping, we are. For one, we're probably missing something that I tell my kids, nobody sees themselves as the villain in their life story, even if you can't imagine how they seem, like how they could see themselves as being good people. People don't act in a way that they try to be evil. And maybe I'm wrong, but I think if I treat people as if they must think of themselves as actually being good and try to give them that grace, that theyre not trying to be evil on purpose, that gives me a better way of being empathetic that we talked about with those folks, and maybe try to see some of what theyre doing. For instance, we have a congregation near us that has had some reaction to, I would say, the city surrounding the suburban area, surrounding their church property, and the families moving further and further out to try to escape the urban setting coming out toward them. It's still suburbia, but they feel like, because there are folks of different ethnicities, from what they're used to, they are feeling threatened, and they've expressed that threatening feeling in some very specific ways, that are very unhealthy for congregations. I can't believe that they just want to do harm to people, that that's not their goal, and that they have something else. And so I hope that we can approach the world that way. So where do we go from here, Keith?

Oh, I think to our catechism question.

Do we want to escape right. To the catechism question, or. I mean, I don't know if this is the thing that's going to go away. Right, right.

Well, it's. And I think that you've already touched on it, and just this notion that we try to see, you know, try to see people's actions in the best possible light. And certainly in some actions, it's really hard to do that. You know, in the, for example, an assassination attempt, you know, we're not trying to say, well, you know, he might have had a good reason. There is, you know, there are ways in which, you know, we make our political views and choices known and other views and choices known that are not. That are not acceptable. And violence is one of those ways that is not acceptable. No matter, you know, supposedly, how good we feel our cause is, it's never good enough to cause, you know, harm towards another person or another group of persons. Yeah. So, like you were saying about, you know, this fucking neighboring congregation trying to see people in the best possible light, trying to see their motives as pure as a human motive might be, given that we never know a person's whole story.

Yeah, well, and I think for me, as a father of two teenage boys, that it's not hard for me to see that if my kids get too disengaged from our church, for instance, or from our family, that I do not want them to find themselves getting on a rooftop and shooting at somebody. And so my empathy is sort of. It's self serving in that I want to understand what would cause somebody to do that so that I can make sure that I can provide the right parenting to my kids and that our church can provide the right leadership for our community and so forth. And our political leaders can be the right people as we go to vote for, say, township board members here in the fall in our community.

I can't remember the quote exactly, but Fred Rogers actually said something along the lines of, you can't not love somebody once you know their story. Something like that. So when you really know what's going on in another person's head and heart and life experience, that's what enables the empathy that we were talking about earlier.

Towards that doesn't mean approval.

No. No, it doesn't.

Yeah.

It doesn't mean approval, but it might mean. It might mean understanding.

Right.

And it leads us to be able to still treat that person with a measure of God's grace and see them as God's child, broken child, a hurt child. That's, you know, a hurt person that is hurting other people, but a child of goddess.

And that's hard.

It is.

So I think we're asked to try. It's hard. All right, so now I think. I think the catechism question, without skipping.

Through the answer question, last episode, we asked the question, what does the rainbow act as a reminder of in Genesis? And the answers, the potential answers, were a, that Adam and Eve would never bite into another apple, be that God would never again destroy the world in a flood c, that Abel would never taunt Cain about his offering not being good enough, or d, that the volume of a prism is equal to the area of the base times the height.

That was such a good answer.

It was. Yes. It's unfortunately the incorrect one, even though it is a correct answer of its own. But it's not the answer to this question. The answer to this question is that God would never again destroy the rain, destroy the world in a flood. That's what the rainbow is, a reminder of. Genesis.

Yes. And God has held that promise.

Yep, yep.

Yeah. So for this time, our question is, what are the two swords that we refer to in church history? Right? And so church history. Get back, you know, get out your encyclopedias. So are the two swords the swords of Richard the Lionhearted and Peter, the hermitage that were lost to history in the crusades, those being people who led crusades. B is the sword of the government and the sword of the church. C is the two swords held by the disciples in Luke 22 38 or D is metaphorically the crosses of the thieves that hung to Jesus right and left. Now, to respond to those, you can email us or approach us on the social medias that you'll hear Keith talk about here in just a minute.

Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fog. You can reach us by [email protected]. our website is mainstreetlutherans.com. we are on the socials as Mainstreet Lutherans, which includes Facebook, Instagram threads and YouTube. You can call to leave us a voice message at 734250. And until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to goddess.