The Christian who hates the left but loves the right, or who hates the right but loves the left, is serving a kingdom other than Christ’s.
The Kingdom of Heaven comes before the right and before the left. And that is the central message of Jesus. Honestly, that is the main message of the Bible.
On the first page of the Bible, God chooses to share the government of the earth with humans, and on the third page humans decide they don’t need God and that they can govern their own way. That’s the story that unfolds in the rest of the scriptures: the battle between these two kingdoms. The kingdom of men vs. The Kingdom of God.
The right has shadows of the Kingdom, just as the left has reflections of the Kingdom, but the complete picture is in the Kingdom.
The story goes on this way until the gospels. The first page of Mark is the Royal announcement of the arrival of a New Kingdom.
The gospel of Mark will show what the arrival of this new kingdom means: Prostitutes are set free; the blind are healed; people abandoned by society are rescued. The last are first. The poor have food. The widows get their dead sons back. And at the end of it all, humanity’s evil is defeated. And after that, Jesus invites us to give up our own kingdom, hand over our sword, and join him in announcing the arrival of this new kingdom.
Our only hope is this Kingdom. The story doesn’t end with “the saved” leaving this earth and going to a place far from here, but with this Kingdom being fully implemented right here. The Bible’s story isn’t about a few people going to live in a Garden in space, but about this Kingdom of God being implemented right here on earth.
We are not the KINGS. We are Witnesses of this King. We are His Ambassadors; we act as He acted and we speak about what He spoke about.
The Christian’s hope cannot be the New party, because there’s nothing new here on earth. We are all contaminated by this cursed virus, as Paul wrote to the Romans:
”… I decide to do good, but in fact I don’t do it. I decide not to do evil, but I end up doing it, one way or another. Something is very wrong inside me and always gets the best of me. It happens so much that it’s already predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to take me down. I’ve tried everything, but nothing solves it. I can’t take it anymore. ‘Is there no one who can help me?’ — isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus can and does help me. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions. Rom 7:19-22”
That’s why we surrender, study the scriptures, pray, and follow what our King said daily. Not because He forces us. But because He created us, loved us, and wants to rescue us.
A true Christian will always feel uncomfortable with the politics, culture, and religion of his time, because we live here but we wait for the Kingdom that already is but is not yet, and we fight for that Kingdom, Jesus’ Kingdom, not the kingdom of men.
Our shirt CAN be blue, red, or even CBF yellow, but our heart MUST be compared every day to that of the Master, and we should always prophesy against injustice — whether committed by the bearded one, by the myth, or by me.