Faith, Leadership and Public Life. Preston Manning
believers we must also acknowledge that not only are we quite capable of acting foolishly in the name of God, especially at the interface of faith and public life, but we are also quite capable of acting viciously. Again, there is a need to be constantly cautioned against doing so.
In the case of Jesus’ early disciples, for example, while on their way to Jerusalem for the last time before Jesus’ arrest, they and their master passed through a Samaritan village where he was not welcome.107 This hostility toward Jesus obviously irked the disciples, and two of the most spiritual of them, James and John, suggested that they burn the place down. They did propose holding a prayer meeting first: “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But their intent was quite clear, to destroy the enemies of Christ.
How Jesus’ heart must have sunk when he witnessed this display of viciousness! He had this gang of disciples under his tutelage for three years. He ceaselessly taught them by word and example that the distinguishing characteristic of their lives and service was to be self-sacrificial love. He was on his way to Jerusalem to demonstrate how far he himself was prepared to practise that teaching by sacrificing himself for the sins of humanity on the cross. Yet here they wanted God to destroy a whole village of Samaritans—men, women, and children—not simply because of their hostility toward Jesus but out of the disciples’ own deeply ingrained prejudices toward Samaritans.
When Jesus picked these men he knew very well that they were perfectly capable of such prejudice and viciousness. That is why on the very first day that he commissioned them for public work and told them to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves, he also specifically told them, “Do not go among the Gentiles, or enter any town of the Samaritans.”108 He knew then, as became evident later, that they were not yet ready to communicate with, let alone minister to, the Samaritans, against whom they held long-standing racial, religious, and cultural prejudices. There would come a day, of course, when he would send them out again, this time saying, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”109 But that day would not come until a change of hearts had occurred—a change not in the hearts of the Samaritans but in the hearts of his followers, as a result of the work of the spirit of God.
On this occasion, however, when viciousness in the name of God so readily reared its ugly head among his followers, Jesus strongly rebuked them. “You know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of Man is not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.”110 Then they went on to another village.
The Graciousness of the Dove Demonstrated
Jesus not only instructed his disciples to be gracious in their public conduct, rebuking them when they failed to be so; he also demonstrated this graciousness in his own public conduct and addresses.
One such occasion is recorded in John’s Gospel and involved “a woman caught in adultery” by the Pharisees and teachers of the law.111 They dragged the poor woman (significantly, the woman but not the man involved) into the presence of Jesus and again publicly posed a difficult question.
This time the question was about sexual morality. In that day, to raise such a question in public was nothing short of scandalous, and even today this is the most difficult type of question for the believer to handle in the public arena. Once again, the sole intent of the questioners was to trap Jesus and get him into trouble.
“Teacher,” asked the legalists in the presence of a crowd of onlookers, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
If Jesus said, “Spare her,” he would be publicly advocating a violation of the law of Moses and guilty of heresy; if he said, “Stone her,” he would violate all his own teaching on love, mercy, and forgiveness. So what was he to say and do?
Once again, he didn’t respond right away. He didn’t rush to judgment as so many of us are inclined to do when confronted with a question on morality. Instead, John (who was present) recorded that Jesus bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. This prompted his interrogators to question him again, until suddenly he straightened up and delivered the perfect answer—wise as a serpent, but above all, gracious as a dove. “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
An answer as gracious as it is shrewd—fewer than twenty words, the perfect sound bite, eminently quotable, again sure to make the evening television news if the cameras had been rolling. What could his interrogators say or do in reply? None of them was spotlessly clean when it came to sexual morality. Jesus knew it, and perhaps some of their friends and neighbours in the crowd knew it. They were left speechless and gradually slipped away, leaving Jesus and his disciples alone with the woman, who was about to experience the full extent of his graciousness.
Jesus asked her, “Woman, where are they [your accusers]? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she replied. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now, and leave your life of sin.” In this reply Jesus made it clear that he did not condone adultery. But confronted with the sin of adultery—literally, missing the mark with respect to God’s intention for sexual relations between married people—he was not condemnatory. “Neither do I condemn you.” How many of us would have said likewise in that situation? Instead of condemning, Jesus demonstrated to the woman involved the graciousness of the spirit of God, that loves and forgives notwithstanding our conduct.
Would God that as followers of Christ today we could, in our time and circumstances, respond with such wisdom and graciousness to loaded questions on sexual morality designed to embarrass or discredit the Christian faith at the interface of faith and politics.
Implications for Us
1. The need for instruction
Jesus did not entrust his followers with public work in his name, nor did he send them out into the public arena, without giving them specific instruction on how to speak and act in that capacity in public. Is it not imperative, therefore, that we follow his example in this regard? That Christian seminaries, schools, churches, and para-church organizations provide specific instruction and training for those who will represent the Christian faith in the public arena so that they will do so with the wisdom and graciousness that Jesus himself modelled? Is this not especially important for Christian members and candidates of political parties, operating in a secular political arena hostile to faith and increasingly dominated by social media?112
2. The prayer for wisdom
There is such a thing as the prayer for wisdom, and surely it is a prayer that those of us operating at the interface of faith and public life should pray more often and more fervently.
Perhaps the most famous of such prayers by a man about to step into the public arena as a political figure is that prayed by Solomon, the son of David and Israel’s third king: “Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?” To which God then replied,
“Since this is your heart’s desire and you have not asked for wealth, possessions or honor, nor for the death of your enemies, and since you have not asked for a long life but for wisdom and knowledge to govern my people over whom I have made you king, therefore wisdom and knowledge will be given you. And I will also give you wealth, possessions and honor, such as no king who was before you ever had and none after you will have.”113
The importance of praying for wisdom was also later emphasized by one of the disciples who first heard Jesus’ instruction to be “wise as serpents.” Accordingly, the