The events reported in the Bible have, of course, great spiritual lessons for us. However, those spiritual lessons are found in contexts remarkably like our own — with power politics at play, with economic forces at work, with national interests competing. Herod and John the Baptist represent two different approaches to the Roman occupation of Palestine. The prophet Jeremiah gets caught between two factions: “the priests and the prophets” versus “the princes and the people.” But the prophet says, I’m not taking sides, I’m simply presenting the truth. That has to be the way Christians make political decisions as well. What is the truth when we look at the realities around us? How does God want us to respond to those realities?
JULY302016
By Church Staff
