That Time I Was a Minnesota Twins Fan

The last week of the 2014 MLB season was an exciting one for me. Going into the last week of the season I knew that my beloved KC Royals could either be out of the playoffs, win the division, get a wild-card road game, or get a wild-card home game. In order to win the division the Royals had to sweep the lowly White Sox and the even more dismal Minnesota Twins had to sweep the Tigers.

Normally I’m not a fan of the Twins. They have been terrible killers of the Royals for decades. But on this weekend I cheered for them. Now I’ll still cheer for the Twins over the Tigers any day. My loathe relationship with the Tigers means that I’m always favoring the other team. However, this makes me far from a fan of the Minnesota Twins. I’m a Royals fan.

The point I’m trying to illustrate here is that you can be “on the same team” with someone for a moment without actually being on the same team with them. I can cheer for the Twins for a weekend without needing to buy a t-shirt and seasons tickets. I’m illustrating this point because our inability to make this distinction in the political realm is absolutely deadly to our witness for the gospel.

I’m reluctant to give a specific example of this because I don’t want to get side-tracked on the specifics. But I think a specific example will help me make the argument so I proceed with caution. I’ve sat on this article for about a month now, sometimes I like to do that just to make sure I’m not caught up in the heat of the moment. But I believe this still needs to be said.

On Tuesday afternoon Missouri governor, Eric Greitens, gave an address to the messengers of the Missouri Baptist Convention. In this particular speech, to a rousing applause, Greitens called on us to join him in the mission. He promised his support to people of faith. He wanted us to know that we have a friend in the Governor.

I’m happy to have a governor who is pro-life and who is pursuing pro-life causes. I’m happy to have a governor stand with people of faith and fight for our religious liberty. I’m even fine with him calling on us to help him make Missouri a better place to live. We can gladly join him on this mission.

But we can only do so in the way that I followed the Twins that weekend a couple years ago. Eric Greitens is not a follower of Jesus Christ. We are with him on issues of abortion and the sanctity of life. We can even be with him on other issues as it concerns making Missouri a better place to live. But at the end of the day our mission is different.

I’m writing this because of all the comments I heard after Greitens’ speech. One woman was overjoyed that we had such a “man of God” as our governor. But according to Scripture he is not a man of God. He is one who is actively suppressing the truth and rejecting Jesus the Messiah. People are not brought into a relationship with God, nor to be considered a man of God, simply by agreeing with us on moral issues. We can love Eric Greitens, we can pray for him, we can even join with him in pro-life causes, but we do disservice to the gospel when we assume pro-life equals gospel-fidelity.

I fear that we are often dangerously close to giving only lip-service to the power of the gospel. Do we really believe that the local church is the power that God will use to bring transformation? Do we believe that even if all the world was against us and we didn’t have a friend in the governor that we could still continue on unabated in our central mission?

If you had thirty local church pastors who were on fire for Jesus in the local church or a handful of powerful politicians on your side, which one would you place your money on for creating change in your world?

If the applause of Missouri Baptists in Raytown is any indication I’m saddened to report that we’ve chosen the latter. At the conclusion of events Monday evening we had about thirty local church pastors, new to the state of Missouri, stand to a tepid applause. Moments later two lawyers received a roaring applause and standing ovation for their work in protecting religious liberty. I think we have that backwards.

I’m not saying any of this to diminish the work of our governor or these faithful lawyers. I thank God for them. And as I said earlier, we can joyously partner with them in gospel causes even though they do not necessarily agree on the gospel. But the power of God is found in the local church. We have one main mission and it doesn’t need a seat in places of power to be accomplished. This is why I wouldn’t give up my pulpit for Sean Hannity or even the President of the United States, unless they were going to faithfully exposit the Scriptures. This is the hope of the nation. Not political power or posturing.

So partner with governors in as much as we can. Cheer for Christian lawyers who defend the cause of religious liberty. But it’s more like cheering for another sports team who can assist your team in getting to the playoffs. To lose that is to be wildly close to selling your birthright for a pot of stew.

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Photo source: here